Right before the Baltimore riots Malik Zulu Shabazz told a crowd of demonstrators to shut the city down. (Malik Zulu Shabazz is former chairman of the New Black Panther Party and National President of Black Lawyers for justice.)
When cornered by the press, after the violence began, Shabazz claimed he called for civil disobedience not mass violence.
But what is civil disobedience?
In 1846 Henry David Thoreau believed the American war in Mexico was immoral, and he refused to pay taxes to a government that waged an unjust war. He was jailed. Afterwards he wrote: An Essay on Civil Disobedience. Thoreau stated if a law made an individual an agent of injustice then it was a principled action to break the law.
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