Sometimes people who are stuck within the politics-is-the-only-answer paradigm, look at civil disobedience and noncooperation and ask, “Where are the successes?” Many of these folks only judge success when there is an official policy change. Each instance of civil disobedience and noncooperation is a personal success at the very least. It’s empowering to say, “No” to those who wish to control you. Beyond that, we have seen plenty of civil disobedience / noncooperation wins including the cops giving up on enforcing cannabis laws around the historic 420 celebrations in Keene, Manchester, and Concord. Parking tickets have been dropped due to activists’ noncooperation. The court lobby video ban has been violated multiple times without incident. Plus, the events have frequently garnered thousands of dollars in free publicity for Free Keene and the Free State Project, only insuring more movers and more future successes. All that stemming from just the activism here in Keene.
However, Keene is not the only place where civil disobedience is happening. Orlando, FL has recently become a hotspot thanks to the efforts of John Kurtz and other liberty activists (many of whom will be at Porcfest next month). John has used civil disobedience to successfully violate the city’s ban on feeding the homeless near city hall as well as to prove that the panhandling law is selectively enforced against the homeless. Now he’s teamed up with Julian Heicklen, the jury nullification outreach superactivist, to purposefully violate a ban on jury outreach.
Robed man Belvin Perry issued an “ORDER” a few months back banning all contact with jurors on the courthouse grounds. No sign-holding. No talking. No flyering. Total ban. Rather than support Julian Heicklen in his plan to violate the prohibition, the Fully Informed Jury Association a.k.a. the American Jury Institute openly spoke against civil disobedience as a tactic and said they would appreciate their activists not engaging in such an approach. Heicklen pressed forward and violated the robed man’s prohibition on outreach to jurors on two consecutive occasions. Once on a Friday – media was present and Heicklen was ignored by the courts enforcers. Their claim was that it was fine for him to hand out the fliers, as there were no jurors that day. Heicklen returned on Monday and again flyered people at the courthouse, including people wearing juror tags. He was again left unmolested. It was a clear win for civil disobedience and noncooperation, and Heicklen could have stopped there.
But this week, the 79-year-old former professor, Heicklen (who tours the country doing jury outreach and has been arrested many times) returned to the Orlando courthouse grounds and again handed out more jury nullification information. Now here’s the kicker, the robed man himself, Belvin Perry, walks by Heicklen and the other activists and laughs it all away like it was some kind of joke.
All the while, FIJA is still pursuing overturning the matter in the court system. How much will this approach cost? How long will it take? Will it even be a success?
Heicklen, Kurtz and the Orlando activists have overturned the ban by openly violating it. They did it with immediacy and they won without spending anything besides the money to print a few fliers and the gas it took to get to the courthouse. Oh, and of course they were willing to risk being caged, which is part-and-parcel of disobedience and noncooperation, and exactly why so many people are afraid to walk this road. I hope someday more people will choose this path – it’s a proven success even with small numbers of people. Imagine how impotent the state would be if more people just said, “No.” If a lot of people would take a little risk, we could see amazing changes nearly immediately, and that would eventually lead to a change in policy. They’ll have to change their policy if they can’t get away with enacting their aggression anymore.
Here’s the video of the robed man just laughing it up when Heicklen violates the prohibition right in front of Perry:
