Honorable protesters don't whine..Panagioti Tsolkas!

I couldn't begin to write this as well as the Dan Moffett from the Palm Beach Post so I will quote the article as written:

"Dishonoring civil disobedience

By Dan Moffett
Palm Beach Post Columnist

Sunday, February 08, 2009

What name does not belong?

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Cesar Chavez. Panagioti Tsolkas.

If you answered Gandhi, you're right. All the others are Americans. But you get extra credit if you answered Panagioti Tsolkas. The others understood the power of civil disobedience and used it to force social reforms. For Mr. Tsolkas, Palm Beach County's most devoted anarchist, civil disobedience means throwing a public tantrum to show contempt for things he is certain deserve contempt. For him, that amounts to just about everything.

Last week, Mr. Tsolkas, 27, began serving a 60-day jail sentence for three misdemeanor convictions from a protest last February against Florida Power & Light's West County Energy Center project. He and dozens of others tied themselves together with chicken wire and formed a human chain that shut down Southern Boulevard for hours. It took about 100 sheriff's deputies to reopen the road.

Mr. Tsolkas and his followers, including a protester who got 30 days, left the courtroom claiming that County Judge Laura Johnson had committed an unconscionable breach of justice. How was it, they complained, that two "community activists" received jail time for minor charges such as unlawful assembly and trespassing?

"This is the United States of America!" cried one supporter. Apart from its geographic precision, the remark was an unwittingly appropriate reflection of the moment in historical context. Judge Johnson's sentences were as American as it gets, and extended the legacy of the many distinguished and committed citizens who have gone to jail for acts of civil disobedience.

The difference between the ranks of the legitimately committed from other eras and Mr. Tsolkas' camp, however, is in the whining. Honorable protesters don't whine; they accept the consequences of their decision to break minor laws in order to advance higher causes.

In fact, the willingness to go to jail and sacrifice personal freedom for greater purpose is a common characteristic of all great activists. They wouldn't pout over a 60-day sentence they knew they had coming. Mr. Tsolkas and his associates deserved what they got because they had prior convictions for other minor offenses. Five other Everglades Earth First! protesters who had no records got probation. The judge was sublimely reasonable.

The FPL protest may have been nonviolent but it also was disruptive and expensive. It frustrated commuters and left taxpayers with at least $50,000 in cleanup costs. Mr. Tsolkas and his colleagues also wasted the time of two public defenders who concocted a grandiose defense theory that linked blocking Southern Boulevard to halting global warming.

All this compromised the credibility of the protesters, who have legitimate environmental issues about the FPL plant. Instead of drawing attention to those concerns, they made themselves the story with a self-congratulatory display of slapstick narcissism.

Four years ago, Mr. Tsolkas ran for mayor of Lake Worth. Apparently, anarchism isn't what it used to be either. Mr. Tsolkas told The Post Editorial Board that, in the unlikely event he were elected, he would abolish the police department and replace it with a system where "citizens would police themselves." Afghanistan has a similar plan in place.

Lake Worth voters have made a number of questionable decisions in recent years, but rejecting Mr. Tsolkas' non-platform platform wasn't one of them. Still, he is a better candidate than a protester.

Anarchists make terrible activists. After the street theater is over, they have no second act. For Dr. King and Gandhi, the second act was all that mattered."

I don't always agree with the PB Post but this said it all so well.

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