Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris stood on the sidewalk outside the Renaissance Hotel at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, holding a banner and wanting to deliver a letter recommending Medicare for All to President Obama. Not surprisingly, a Renaissance representative came out to tell them to get off their property. Both physicians held their ground, but it’s the way they did it that serves as the right sort of way to go about civil disobedience. They engaged the rep and the police as reasonable people and never displayed a sense of arrogance or high-handed self-righteousness. They stood up for their principles and likely their patients, while standing up for many American citizens in the process.
They did not resist arrest or say anything that could remotely be construed as petulant and obstreperous. In the process they honored the humanity of everyone involved in this scene. And they offered a great example to those who would choose to engage in acts of civil disobedience.
This Tumbleweed Life 