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The Facepalm Award Goes to… by David Atkins

The facepalm award goes to…
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino gets today’s facepalm award for his response to the arrests at Occupy Boston:

“We will tolerate demonstrations, we will tolerate expressions of free speech but when it comes to civil disobedience we have a real issue with that, that is why we moved in last night,” Mayor Menino said.

“Civil disobedience doesn’t work for Boston; it doesn’t work for anyone.”

That would be news to the people in Tahrir Square. It would be news to the marchers in Selma. It would be news to Rosa Parks. The suffragettes would have been surprised to hear this, as would Mahatma Gandhi.

There are limits to the efficacy of civil disobedience to be sure, especially when the forms of oppression are more subtle and the solutions less clear. But to claim that civil disobedience “doesn’t work for anyone” is simply asinine.

h/t Giles Goat Boy at dkos.

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Published inUncategorized