Oh you mean like when we separated from Britain by asking them to come down and have a nice little vote on it?

Or when MLK asked all of the south to politely, democratically fix the whole racism thing.

Sometimes protest has to break the rules. Because protest.

As I recall from my history classes, they did ask before breaking the rules.

MLK and company most certainly took steps that were not approved by some democratic process or approved by the state. Asking alone and letting "business as usual" answer the question "can we do this?" wouldn't have brought the change that humanity had deserved.

You seemed, to me, to be implying that all conscientious objectors must at all times observe complete obedience to the rule of law. That approach will never keep things running sanely for long. You can clearly see throughout history that it never has. Power must always be kept in check and in support of that, some of the rules ordained by that power must always be broken.

Didn't George W. start this trend with his "The Constitution is just a Piece of Paper" and "Unitary Executive" jokes? I thought we gave up that whole "voting" thing when 9/11 changed everything.

How do we have a democratic process about such matters when they're secret?

We've tried the "trust our elected officials" approach. We got mass surveillance. Next idea?

Such matters? I thought we were talking about putting a statue in a park. Was this a secret statue? I guess it was, since nobody knew about it until it showed up.