civil disobedience

 

refusal to obey a law or follow a policy believed to be unjust. Practitioners of civil disobediance basing their actions on moral right and usually employ the nonviolent technique of passive resistance in order to bring wider attention to the injustice. Risking punishment, such as violent retaliatory acts or imprisonment, they attempt to bring about changes in the law. In the modern era, civil disobedience has been used in such events as street demonstrations, marches, the occupying of buildings, and strikes and other forms of economic resistance.

The philosophy behind civil disobedience goes back to classical and biblical sources. Perhaps its most influential exposition can be found in Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849), in which he claims that the individual, who grants the state its power in the first place, must follow the dictates of conscience in opposing unjust laws. Thoreau's work had an enormous impact on Mohandas Gandhi and the techniques that he employed first to gain Indian rights in South Africa and later to win independence for India. Gandhi developed the notion of satyagraha [Sanskrit: holding to truth], acts of civil disobedience marked by Indian tradition and his own high moral standards and sense of self-discipline. Attracting a huge number of followers from the Indian public, Gandhi was able to use the technique as an effective political tool and play a key role in bringing about the British decision to end colonial rule of his homeland. His was one of the few relatively unqualified successes in the history of civil disobedience.

The philosophy and tactics of civil disobedience have been used by Quakers and other religious groups, the British labor movement, suffragists, feminists, adherents of prohibition, pacifists and other war resisters (see conscientious objector), supporters of the disabled, and a wide variety of other dissenters. In the United States, the most outstanding theoretician and practitioner of civil disobedience was civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During the 1950s and 60s he achieved international fame by leading numerous peaceful marches, boycotts, and sit-ins. Like Gandhi, he was jailed several times. The beatings, mass arrests, and even killings of civil-rights demonstrators pledged to nonviolent civil disobedience were important factors in swaying public opinion and in the ultimate passage of new civil-rights legislation (see integration). Civil disobedience in the United States traditionally has been associated with those on the left of the political spectrum, as were most participants in the anti–Vietnam War movement, but toward the end of the 20th cent. the strategy also began to be employed by those on the right, for example, by those involved in confrontational but nonviolent antiabortion activities.

Bibliography

See G. Woodcock, Civil Disobedience (1966); C. Bay and C. C. Walker, Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (1973, repr. 1999); D. R. Weber, ed., Civil Disobedience in America: A Documentary History (1978); J. De Nardo, Power in Numbers (1985); P. Harris, ed., Civil Disobedience (1989); H. A. Bedau, ed. Civil Disobedience in Focus (1991); P. Herngren, Paths of Resistance: the Practice of Civil Disobedience (1993); M. Randle, Civil Disobedience (1994); S. L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed (1998); R. Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics (2000).

Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form (known as ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement.

Civil disobedience has been used in nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's social welfare campaigns and campaigns to speed up independence from the British Empire), in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American Civil Rights Movement and in peace movements worldwide.

The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government". The driving idea behind the essay was that of self-reliance, and how one is in morally good standing as long as one can "get off another man's back"; so one doesn't have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it). This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War.

Theories and techniques of civil disobedience

In seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may choose to deliberately break certain laws, such as by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally. Protesters practice this non-violent form of civil disorder with the expectation that they will be arrested, or even attacked or beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack, so that they will do so in a manner that quietly or limply resists without threatening the authorities.

For example, Mahatma Gandhi outlined the following rules:

1. A civil resister (or satyagrahi) will harbour no anger.
2. He will suffer the anger of the opponent.
3. In so doing he will put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate; but he will not submit, out of fear of punishment or the like, to any order given in anger.
4. When any person in authority seeks to arrest a civil resister, he will voluntarily submit to the arrest, and he will not resist the attachment or removal of his own property, if any, when it is sought to be confiscated by authorities.
5. If a civil resister has any property in his possession as a trustee, he will refuse to surrender it, even though in defending it he might lose his life. He will, however, never retaliate.
6. Retaliation includes swearing and cursing.
7. Therefore a civil resister will never insult his opponent, and therefore also not take part in many of the newly coined cries which are contrary to the spirit of ahimsa.
8. A civil resister will not salute the Union Flag, nor will he insult it or officials, English or Indian.
9. In the course of the struggle if anyone insults an official or commits an assault upon him, a civil resister will protect such official or officials from the insult or attack even at the risk of his life.

Gandhi distinguished between his idea of satyagraha and the passive resistance of the west.

Examples of civil disobedience

India (indios)

Civil disobedience has served as a major tactic of nationalist movements in former colonies in Africa and Asia prior to their gaining independence. Most notably Mahatma Gandhi developed civil disobedience as an anti-colonialist tool. Gandhi said "Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice". Gandhi learned of Civil Disobedience from Thoreau's classic essay, which caused Gandhi to adopt a non-violent approach.

South Africa (Africans of Color)

Both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Steve Biko advocated civil disobedience. The result can be seen in such notable events as the 1989 Purple Rain Protest, and the Cape Town Peace March which defied apartheid.

Civil disobedience in the United States

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, a leader of the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s also adopted civil disobedience techniques, and antiwar activists both during and after the Vietnam War have done likewise. Since the 1970s, pro-life or anti-abortion groups have practiced civil disobedience against the U.S. government over the issue of legalized abortion. From the 1970s onward, various groups and organizations such as the Puerto Rican Independence Party, have successfully performed civil disobedience campaigns to stop military war games staged in areas close to civilian populations living in the islands of Culebra and Vieques, Puerto Rico. See, for example, the Navy-Vieques protests.

Civil disobedience and religion

Many who practice civil disobedience do so out of religious faith, and clergy often participate in or lead actions of civil disobedience. A notable example is Philip Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest who was arrested dozens of times in acts of civil disobedience in antiwar protests. Also, groups like Soulforce, who favor non-discrimination and equal rights for gays and lesbians, have engaged in acts of civil disobedience to change church positions and public policy.

See also

• Henry David Thoreau
  • Civil Disobedience
• Mahatma Gandhi
  • Satyagraha
• Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Rosa Parks, "mother of the civil rights movement"
• Abalone Alliance and Clamshell Alliance, anti-nuclear power groups
• Christian anarchism
• Conscientious objection
• Direct action
• Draft resistance
• Holocaust rescuers
  • Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, French town
• Insubordination
• Hunt sabotage
• Nonconformism
• Nonviolence
• Nonviolent resistance
• Sousveillance, passive campaign against surveillance
• Tax resistance
• Tree sitting
• Trident Ploughshares, anti-nuclear weapons group

External links

• Pensions for Peace ~ ACT for the Earth
• Civil Disobedience, by Peter Suber. From Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia, edited by Christopher Berry Gray, Garland Pub. Co., 1999, vol. I, pp. 110-113
• On Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau
• Manifesto against conscription and the military system, with an updated list of all signatories from 1993 to 2005
• ReclaimingQuarterly.org features photo-coverage of contemporary civil disobedience actions
• DirectAction.org offers online organizing resources for civil disobedience
• [1] a project of the Traprock Peace Center

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