Arizona UPRISING -- Passive Resistance OUTLAWED?

Now that the Arizona House of Representatives no longer has to deal with Daniel Patterson, it can turn its attention to other, "more pressing" matters.

The Arizona House voted this afternoon to concur with changes made in the state senate to HB2071 which, unless the governor vetoes, will make PASSIVE RESISTANCE the most serious crime in the state short of a felony.

Passive resistence is defined in the bill as:

For the purposes of this section, "passive resistance" means a nonviolent physical act or failure to act that is intended to impede, hinder or delay the effecting of an arrest.

Thank you John Kavanagh.

If you believe that Ghandi had it wrong, DO NOTHING.

But if you see this legislation as an effort to keep citizens from exercising CIVIL LIBERTIES * to show dissent to government agencies, actions and policies, please call AND write to Gov. Brewer's office and tell her to veto the bill.

From CivilLiberties.org:

Civil Disobedience is the act of disobeying a law on grounds of moral or political principle. It is an attempt to influence society to accept a dissenting point of view. Although it usually uses tactics of nonviolence, it is more than mere passive resistance since it often takes active forms such as illegal street demonstrations or peaceful occupations of premises. The classic treatise on this topic is Henry David Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," which states that when a person's conscience and the laws clash, that person must follow his or her conscience. The stress on personal conscience and on the need to act now rather than to wait for legal change are recurring elements in civil disobedience movements. The U.S. Bill of Rights** asserts that the authority of a government is derived from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it.

Throughout the history of the U.S., civil disobedience has played a significant role in many of the social reforms that we all take for granted today. Some of the most well known of these are:

1) The Boston Tea Party -- citizens of the colony of Massachusetts trespassed on a British ship and threw its cargo (tea from England) overboard, rather than be forced to pay taxes without representation to Britain. This was one of the many acts of civil disobedience leading to the War for Independence, establishing the United States of America as a sovereign state.

How ironic that lawmakers who embrace the recent Tea Party movement have, in the wake of a more genuine populist movement -- OCCUPY WALL STREET (and the local movements throughout the country, including OCCUPY PHOENIX) -- moved to stifle opposition in this manner.

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*NOTE -- It is certainly true that nothing so horrifies today's false constitutionalists as the actual exercise of civil liberties. -- John Nichols, UPRISING, page 19

And this bill serves as documentation of Nichols' insight.


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**NOTE -- that language actually comes from the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...  (emphasis added)