Civil Disobedience Index Civil Disobedience Index
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass, African-American abolitionist
The history of
Civil Disobedience is a long and international one. ACT UP practices
a form that comes from a variety of progressive movements. Below
are several pages describing some of the history, theory, and
practice of civil disobedience.
Many of these sections
were taken (with love) from the Handbook for Nonviolent Action
available from the
War
Resister's League
in New York City.
- ACT UP Direct Action Guidelines
- History of Mass Nonviolent Action
- Nonviolent Response to Personal Violence
- Practicing Nonviolence
- Nonviolence Training
- Affinity Groups and Support
- Steps Toward Making a Campaign
- Consensus Decision Making
- Legal Issues/Risking Arrest
- Legal Flow Chart: What Happens in an Arrest and Your Decisions
- Legal Terms: What They Mean
- Jail Solidarity
see also the following DOCUMENTS:
- The Demonstrator's Manual [crucial]
- NEW _Advantages/Disadvantages to Disclosing Your Status when Arrested __
- Marshal Training Manual
- Getting Arrested: Why do we do it?
Civil Disobedience Training
ACT UP, an activist group famous for its direct action against government inaction and drug company profiteering involving AIDS, is widely acknowledged as re-energizing civil disobedience tactics in America. From its inception in 1987, ACT UP continually held 5-hour training sessions for its members. DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists) taped one of these sessions and edited a 29 minute video, which was originally telecast on public access. The video describes how to do civil disobedience and what must be planned for it to take place safely and successfully.
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