That “hijinks” not “hijacks” – there’s been some ambiguity on that point.

Some time ago, John Gilmore of the EFF (one of my personal favourite orgs) managed to get an entire planeload of passengers turned around and headed back to the gate before take off because he refused a captain’s order to take off a “suspected terrorist” button. Not very suprisingly, people’s views differ on wether that was a good thing to do or not.

Larry Lessig is a law professor at Stanford and maintains a blog. He commented on John’s actions. Lots and lots of people commented on those comments and now John has sent a letter to Larry. I thought it was pretty interesting to hear his motivations from the source. Like a lot of really “successful” activist actions, it looks like he wasn’t trying to make a point, just trying to routinely live his life according to a slightly different view of the world (think Rosa Parks but less heroic).

I like this qoute, even if it sort of disproves what I just said about him:

“Let me also say in my defense that I seldom fly these days, so I am not used to life in a gulag. I had zero expectation that my refusal to doff a button would result in the captain returning the plane to the gate. But even if I did fly often, my response would be the same: to constantly push back against the rules that turn a free people into the slaves of a totalitarian regime. I push back using the rights granted me by the constitutional structure of the country, plus my own intelligence and resources.”

Many of comments from people angry with John’s actions were along the lines of “he should know better by now that you can’t do that” and “he enormously inconvenienced his fellow passengers”. I hear that but I hate it. Nothing gets so deeply under my skin as the argument that if we don’t do what’s convenient and polite, it’s because we lack an ability to “get it”, or are unable to behave productively. Like Maslow used to respond to people who advocated “well-adjusted” as the benchmark of psychiatric health, “adjusted to what?”. Another favourite, if slightly tangential quote, comes from Kurt Vonnegut. To paraphrase: “It is considered the height of rudeness to reject that which is given to us in a spirit of love. Well, too bad.” I’ve suffered professional and personal setbacks because of flight delays and missed connections. I know what that feels like. If I thought that some passenger was to blame because they grandstanding politically it would drive me nuts. But John Gilmore wasn’t exactly grandstanding, and even if he was sometimes we have to tolerate some short term pain to save our society. Go Gilmore, too bad passengers.

Interesting note: according to some biographical info I found on the EFF website, John co-founded “alt” newsgroups. huh.