The Return of Civil Disobedience
The sixties produced a conviction that “democracy is in the streets.” The Trump era may echo that.
On December 6th, less than a month after the election, Vice-President Joe
Biden, who was in New York to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of
Hope Award, for his decades of public service, used the occasion to urge
Americans not to despair. “I remind people, ’68 was really a bad year,”
he said, and “America didn’t break.” He added, “It’s as bad now, but
I’m hopeful.” And bad it was. The man for whom Biden’s award was named
was assassinated in 1968. So was Martin Luther King, Jr. Riots erupted
in more than a hundred cities, and violence broke out at the Democratic
National Convention, in Chicago. The year closed with the hairbreadth
victory of a law-and-order Presidential nominee whose Southern strategy
of racial politicking remade the electoral map. Whatever innocence had
survived the tumult of the five years since the murder of John F.
Kennedy was gone.