Disobedience

What does it take to enact substantive societal change?

Has any major change in American society, or throughout human history, occurred without a movement?

An important tactic in political movements is civil disobedience.

Hope is belief in the plausibility of the possible, as opposed to the necessity of the probable.

We don’t have the tanks, and we don’t have the armed forces. Nonviolent civil disobedience is me making my voice heard against a powerful force that is holding us back.

Keystone turned out to be a great victory because all over the country and the world, people looked up and saw that you actually can beat big oil.

It may seem impossible right now to defeat/prevent climate chaos, but social movements have shown that the limits of the possible are there to be moved.

To practice civil disobedience is necessary to be able to pursue a better life for our people.

It’s the people who are engaged that determines what government does. And all we have is a choice to make about whether we’re going to be one of those people or not.

BreakFree2016.org

Join the global movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

What makes a breach of law an act of civil disobedience? When is civil disobedience morally justified? How should the law respond to people who engage in civil disobedience? Discussions of civil disobedience have tended to focus on the first two of these questions. On the most widely accepted account of civil disobedience, famously defended by John Rawls (1971), civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as this shows their fidelity to the rule of law. Civil disobedience, given its place at the boundary of fidelity to law, is said to fall between legal protest, on the one hand, and conscientious refusal, revolutionary action, militant protest and organised forcible resistance, on the other hand.

Depending on the outcome of the 2016 general election, more civil disobedience may be necessary nationally.

In Arizona, because government, political, and election systems are so dysfunctional and corrupt, civil disobedience may become a prerequisite to keeping our state from becoming an official Koch Enterprises colony.

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Today it is a case of the grasshopper pitted against the elephant. But tomorrow the elephant will have its guts ripped out. Le Loi, Vietnamese emperor, 15th Century