According to recent Recorder news stories, some Greenfield residents oppose the proposed “Safe City” ordinance because “everyone in the community must follow the laws” and because “the town shouldn’t be picking and choosing which laws Greenfield police enforce.”
Although it’s not clear that the proposed ordinance would require the town or police to actually violate any laws, this issue raises a broader question: must all laws always be obeyed?
During the 19th century, before slavery was abolished, were individual Northerners and sometimes whole Northern communities, including some here in Franklin County, wrong to violate the federal law known as the “Fugitive Slave Act” by participating in the “underground railroad” and refusing to hand over runaway slaves to their Southern “owners”?
In recent weeks, were many of our western Massachusetts neighbors wrong to violate a trespassing law in Sandisfield in order to protest clear-cutting in a supposedly protected state forest in order to allow construction of a pipeline that will carry toxic “fracked gas” and thus contribute to the galloping climate crisis that threatens all of us?
Randy Kehler
Colrain