Starting in the summer of 2016, I said many times to many,
many people, "I am using Martin Luther King's strategy."
by David Dessler - August 1, 2021
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Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speech
Memphis, Tennessee - April 3, 1968
Featuring the Book of Deuteronomy 34: 1-5
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by David Dessler - August 1, 2021
GETTING ARRESTED TO ADVANCE SOCIAL JUSTICE
My work places me in this category: "those who have been arrested and incarcerated to advance social justice." The all-time leader in this division is, of course, John Lewis. He was arrested and jailed 40 times. And these were not just any 40 arrests. Lewis challenged unjust laws where the police attitude was: "We're going to kill these niggers." He had his skull cracked three times. You want an American hero? Here is one of the greatest.
John Lewis said famously,
"Do something. Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble."
That is what I have done.
It is also what W&M undergraduate Basel Osman did.
"Do something. Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble."
That is what I have done.
It is also what W&M undergraduate Basel Osman did.
Basel Osman's arrest on June 1, 2020
W&M Class of '22 - Black Lives Matter protester, Richmond, Summer 2020
“During the Black Lives Matter protest, he would go into Richmond knowing he would be at risk with water bottles, with supplies to help people who got tear gassed,” Caboti-Jones wrote. “He was like the first aid person there, and he ended up getting jailed for the night because of it. He was so brave about it, and he literally tried to help people until the minute he was in handcuffs. Even then, he was able to smuggle his Apple Watch into the bus and was recording everything in case people were treated badly by the police.”
Arrest
Incarceration, Hearing, and Dismissal
Dessler's seven arrests, conclusion
I am in the subdivision of "those holding a doctoral degree who have been arrested and incarcerated to advance social justice." In this bracket, Martin Luther King Jr., of course, is #1, with 29 arrests. I have been able to find no one who counted up his days in jail. Many times, he was arrested and released. But in his most famous arrest--the one in Birmingham--he was incarcerated for eight days. I would guess MLK spent as many as 50 or 60 days in jail. When given the choice between paying bail or being incarcerated, or being fined or being incarcerated, he always chose jail. His first arrests were made in 1956, exactly 60 years before the first of mine. In one of them, he was told to pay a fine of $14 or he would spend 14 days in jail. He refused to pay the fine. The Police Commissioner of the city paid the $14, and he was released.
I am #2 in this subdivision with 7 arrests. In third place, it appears, are "scattered doctors of divinity" with one each. I might be the only individual in the history of the United States, other than Martin Luther King Jr., to (1) have a doctoral degree and (2) have been arrested more than once and incarcerated for months for the purpose of advancing social justice. If there are others, their work remains unrecognized.
In the game of getting yourself arrested to advance social justice, you must accept the penalty of jail. As MLK explains in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," if you are trying to get rid of immoral laws by breaking them and thus revealing to the world that these laws are unjust, you must show that you are objecting only to unjust laws, not to the law in general. To achieve a just society, everyone must affirm their respect for law and order; otherwise, lawbreaking could lead to anarchy. In short, one goes to jail to show respect for the law. By submitting to arrest and incarceration, one demonstrates that the protest is against injustice in the legal system, not the legal system itself.
MLK had to be guilty of each crime he was arrested for, and he had to be willing to serve jail time for each crime, because he was protesting unjust laws. I was faced with a different problem: unjust arrest procedures. To succeed, I had to modify MLK's strategy in the following way: I had to get arrested but in every case be clearly innocent of any crime. I then had to pay the same price that all nonviolent protesters must be willing to pay: I had to go to jail
Recall that MLK Jr. was, in fact, guilty of breaking the laws he broke, and that he broke these laws intentionally, in order to get arrested. For example, somewhere in Georgia one time, he was arrested for "parading without a permit." He was leading a group of civil rights marchers when he was arrested. The town had a law that said, to have a parade, you needed to go to the Sheriff and get a permit. The Sheriff deemed the civil rights march a parade. Of course, MLK and his followers knew he would do that. That's why they marched there. In Birmingham, Alabama, at the end of a long week of unrest in the city, a court ruled that no civil rights demonstrations would be permitted on Friday, April 12, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr. was fully aware of this court injunction--that is why he went into the city to demonstrate. He wanted to be arrested. He wanted to be, in each and every case, guilty as charged.
The point, of course, was to show that these laws were unjust. President Kennedy introduced the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 less than two months after the Birmingham arrest. Americans agreed with King that blacks should be able to protest, to speak out, without having to get a special permit, and without the interference of court injunctions. Laws were changed.
To expose unjust arrest procedures, I had to get arrested and make it clear I had committed no crime. To reveal that what I faced was a corrupt system--something enduring, something systemic, something that was claiming many victims, it was not a fluke and not something invented only for me--I had to get falsely arrested several times. That is, I had to get arrested on invented charges that were known to be inventions, and I had to do so in a series of actions that everyone could see were not wrong and did not come close to being wrong. If I erred and did something that could possibly be construed as breaking the law, my arrest might be justified under the Fourth Amendment standard of "probable cause." My aim was to get arrested by taking actions that never came close to doing anything that might provide evidence that would constitute "probable cause." I succeeded in this task.
To show my respect for the law, I willingly went to jail. I served 103 days because they helped make my case. I was respectful of the arresting officers in every case. I was respectful of the guards in jail. I was respectful of the judges. The two people I did not respect were the W&M Human Resources Chief, John Poma, and the Williamsburg/James City County Commonwealth's Attorney, Nate Green. My emails reveal the contempt I had for them and what they were trying to get away with.
I am #2 in this subdivision with 7 arrests. In third place, it appears, are "scattered doctors of divinity" with one each. I might be the only individual in the history of the United States, other than Martin Luther King Jr., to (1) have a doctoral degree and (2) have been arrested more than once and incarcerated for months for the purpose of advancing social justice. If there are others, their work remains unrecognized.
In the game of getting yourself arrested to advance social justice, you must accept the penalty of jail. As MLK explains in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," if you are trying to get rid of immoral laws by breaking them and thus revealing to the world that these laws are unjust, you must show that you are objecting only to unjust laws, not to the law in general. To achieve a just society, everyone must affirm their respect for law and order; otherwise, lawbreaking could lead to anarchy. In short, one goes to jail to show respect for the law. By submitting to arrest and incarceration, one demonstrates that the protest is against injustice in the legal system, not the legal system itself.
MLK had to be guilty of each crime he was arrested for, and he had to be willing to serve jail time for each crime, because he was protesting unjust laws. I was faced with a different problem: unjust arrest procedures. To succeed, I had to modify MLK's strategy in the following way: I had to get arrested but in every case be clearly innocent of any crime. I then had to pay the same price that all nonviolent protesters must be willing to pay: I had to go to jail
Recall that MLK Jr. was, in fact, guilty of breaking the laws he broke, and that he broke these laws intentionally, in order to get arrested. For example, somewhere in Georgia one time, he was arrested for "parading without a permit." He was leading a group of civil rights marchers when he was arrested. The town had a law that said, to have a parade, you needed to go to the Sheriff and get a permit. The Sheriff deemed the civil rights march a parade. Of course, MLK and his followers knew he would do that. That's why they marched there. In Birmingham, Alabama, at the end of a long week of unrest in the city, a court ruled that no civil rights demonstrations would be permitted on Friday, April 12, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr. was fully aware of this court injunction--that is why he went into the city to demonstrate. He wanted to be arrested. He wanted to be, in each and every case, guilty as charged.
The point, of course, was to show that these laws were unjust. President Kennedy introduced the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 less than two months after the Birmingham arrest. Americans agreed with King that blacks should be able to protest, to speak out, without having to get a special permit, and without the interference of court injunctions. Laws were changed.
To expose unjust arrest procedures, I had to get arrested and make it clear I had committed no crime. To reveal that what I faced was a corrupt system--something enduring, something systemic, something that was claiming many victims, it was not a fluke and not something invented only for me--I had to get falsely arrested several times. That is, I had to get arrested on invented charges that were known to be inventions, and I had to do so in a series of actions that everyone could see were not wrong and did not come close to being wrong. If I erred and did something that could possibly be construed as breaking the law, my arrest might be justified under the Fourth Amendment standard of "probable cause." My aim was to get arrested by taking actions that never came close to doing anything that might provide evidence that would constitute "probable cause." I succeeded in this task.
To show my respect for the law, I willingly went to jail. I served 103 days because they helped make my case. I was respectful of the arresting officers in every case. I was respectful of the guards in jail. I was respectful of the judges. The two people I did not respect were the W&M Human Resources Chief, John Poma, and the Williamsburg/James City County Commonwealth's Attorney, Nate Green. My emails reveal the contempt I had for them and what they were trying to get away with.
I said, "I am using Martin Luther King's strategy," and
MLK Jr.'s STRATEGY WORKED
THE FUTURE
by David Dessler - August 3, 2021
The future is already coming into focus.
In it, I believe that observers will agree: I was in the right and those who arrested me were in the wrong.
And the emails I wrote, which today are held against me, will be entirely forgotten.
by David Dessler - August 3, 2021
The future is already coming into focus.
In it, I believe that observers will agree: I was in the right and those who arrested me were in the wrong.
And the emails I wrote, which today are held against me, will be entirely forgotten.