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Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience And Free Speech Tested By Prayer In Ferguson

February 13, 2016 Sharmini Peries, www.therealnews.com , , ,
By Sharmini Peries for The Real News - On February 9 of 2016, after 20 minutes of a jury deliberation, Ferguson civil liberties protester Rev. Sekou was found not guilty on charges stemming from an arrest back in September of 2014, during the Ferguson uprisings. Rev. Sekou was detained when he knelt in prayer outside a local police department where police officers claimed that he was resisting orders. On to talk about his ordeal and what it means for the democratic right of civil disobedience and the right to protest is the man himself, Rev. Sekou. Rev. Sekou is an author, documentary filmmaker, pastor, theologian, and of course a political activist. Rev. Sekou, good to have you back on the Real News.

US Vets Lead Civil Disobedience Protesting Seneca Lake Gas Storage

January 28, 2016 Dan, www.wearesenecalake.com , , , ,
By Dan for We Are Seneca Falls - Watkins Glen, NY – Eleven veterans representing all branches of the U.S. armed forces, were among 13 arrested on Tuesday morning in a human blockade at Crestwood Midstream on Route 14 as part of We Are Seneca Lake’s ongoing civil disobedience campaign against gas storage in underground lakeside salt caverns. The protesters blocked all traffic entering and leaving the facility. Among them was former NY gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins (Green Party), a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Lessons From the Delta 5 Necessity Defense

January 26, 2016 Patrick Mazza, www.cascadiaplanet.blogspot.com , , ,
By Patrick Mazza for Cascadia Planet - What we did expect was that our act of civil disobedience, positioning on a tripod and blocking a fossil fuel train, would help generate a rising crescendo of actions spurring the public pressure needed to address those deadly threats. After many years when political response that scales to the challenge has been blocked by big money and corporate power, we believed that to make the political system work again, it needs the shock, dissonance and friction of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Activists To Defy Protest Ban With Giant Civil Disobedience

December 11, 2015 Martin Lukacs, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Martin Lukacs for The Guardian - As negotiators try to finalize a UN climate pact being hailed as dangerously insufficient, a network of groups will express their outrage and pledge continuing action in the new year with massive civil disobedience at an iconic French site. Organizers hope to send a message that leaders should not try to claim the agreement is a success - with industrialized countries refusing to commit to a fair share of emissions reductions, putting the world on a path toward a catastrophic 3 degrees of warming.

Activists Arrested Protesting Genetically Modified Trees

September 29, 2015 Global Justice Ecology Project, www.globaljusticeecology.org , ,
By Global Ecology Justice Project - A plan by activists to inform Andrew Baum, President and CEO of ArborGen that over 250,000 people signed letters and petitions [1] rejecting Genetically Engineered (GE) Trees was interrupted when police arrested the two people who intended to deliver that message. Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator of the international Campaign to Stop Genetically Engineered Trees, Anne Petermann, and Global Justice Ecology Project’s GE Tree Campaign organizer, Ruddy Turnstone were stopped by police and arrested. The letters and petitions rejecting GE Trees and international protests mark a growing concern about the dangers of GE Trees and the threats they pose to the environment.

Decriminalize Dissent

September 18, 2015 Cecily McMillan, www.america.aljazeera.com , ,
By Cecily McMillan in Al Jazeera - Yet, from Lower Manhattan to Ferguson, Missouri, and from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, such nonviolent movements continue to be met with paramilitary tactics and military-grade weaponry meant to maintain “law and order” at any cost. Targeted for arrest, assault and detention, young activists have been equated with criminals, dissidents with domestic terrorists. This equation has not made us any safer. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that such tactics lead to more violence, not less, in our streets. A forthcoming study of 192 Occupy protests by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute for Data Science finds that protest violence tends to be provoked by aggressive police tactics — not the other way around. By contrast, when police stand down, protests tend to persist, but with lower rates of arrest and a lower incidence of violence.

Climate Disobedience Launched

September 16, 2015 Climate Disobedience, www.climatedisobedience.org ,
By Climate Disobedience - The following are the guiding principles of the Climate Disobedience Center. We aim to... 1. Use creative conflict to break up business-as-usual, forcing attention to the underlying, fatal conflict between global survival and blind adherence to fossil fuel powered mass consumption, and unrestrained economic growth. 2. Replace symbolic, mass, photo-op climate protests with peaceful confrontation at the point of injury in order to create moral clarity, cutting through the numbing tangle of climate half measures, deceit and self interest, as the lunch counter sit-ins clarified and elevated the civil rights struggle. 3. Engage individuals who see no alternative but to use our bodies in a final effort to avoid the abyss, who approach the task of re-centering society imbued with the hope, joy and serenity which only flow from living in the truth. . .

Victory At Ende Gelande Opens Road Of Disobedience For Paris

September 9, 2015 Labofii, www.labofii.wordpress.com , ,
The raucous rattle of a low flying helicopter shakes me awake. It must be the Police. The sun hasn’t risen yet and the tent’s sides still smell of morning dew. I doubt I was the only one in this field who didn’t sleep deeply last night. Today is the day of action we have been waiting for Ende Gelände (Here and no Further) – 1500 people have pledged to enter RWE’s Garzweiler open cast coal mine, and block the gargantuan “bagger” excavators with their bodies, thus shutting down Europe’s largest source of CO2 emissions. This is direct action as it should be. It’s not just a symbolic gesture that tells a story and makes an injustice visible, but an action which targets the very source of the problem and stops it in its tracks.

Julian Bond’s Final Speech: ‘We Must Practice Dissent’

August 22, 2015 Julian Bond, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
By Julian Bond, As King counseled, every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we all must protest. And protest we did. And in so doing, we helped to end the war, and we changed history. Now we have both a Vietnam Memorial and a Martin Luther King Memorial. But we don’t tell the truth about either. Honoring returning soldiers doesn’t make the war honorable, be it Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq. And the best way to honor our soldiers is to bring them safely home. We practiced dissent then. We must practice dissent now. We must, as Dr. King taught us, "move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history." As King said then, and as even more true now. . .

Anti-fracking Activists Discuss Their Arrest

August 17, 2015 Steve Ahlquist, www.rifuture.org , , ,
By Steve Ahlquist in RI Future - The two activists who chained themselves to a gate at theSpectra pipeline project site Thursday morning were released that afternoon from District Court on $1000 personal recognizance pending an August 25th court date. Peter Nightingale, a physics professor from the University of Rhode Island and Dr. Curtis Nordgaard, a pediatrician from Massachusetts left the courthouse in good spirits. Those tasked with disentangling the activists from the gate they had locked themselves to were for the most part respectful and took care not to harm them, said Nightingale. The point of the action is to call attention to the dangers of fracked gas, and the terrible effect such extraction has on the planet’s climate. Nordgaard reflected on his privilege, which kept him from facing the worst aspects of his short time in jail and guaranteed his good treatment at the hands of the police.

Activists Arrested In Burrillville, Protesting Gas Expansion Project

August 17, 2015 Bob Plain, www.rifuture.org ,
By Bob Plain in RI Future - Police arrested two environmental activists arrested this morning who were protesting a methane gas pipeline project in Burrillville, Rhode Island, by chaining themselves to a gate at the project site. Peter Nightingale, a University of Rhode Island physics professor and occasional RI Future contributor, and Curt Nordgaard, a pediatrician from Massachusetts, were both arrested according to Fighting Against Natural Gas, of FANG, the grassroots group of activists who have been calling attention to the Algonquin pipeline project that would cut through northern Rhode Island. “I’m taking action today because as a parent and a being pediatrician compels me to use any and all nonviolent means to stop this project,” said Nordgaard in a prepared statement.

Protesters Storm Open-Pit Coal Mine In Western Germany

August 17, 2015 CT Post, www.AP.org , , ,
By Associated Press - Environmental activists have stormed a lignite mine in western Germany to protest the use of coal, a major source of greenhouse gases. The German news agency dpa reports that several hundred people from a group calling itself EndeGelaende — which loosely translates as "it's finished now" — broke through a police line in Garzweiler, west of Cologne. Police spokesman Anton Hamacher says officers used pepper spray to stop the crowd and are removing protesters from the site. A spokesman for German energy company RWE says several huge bucket-wheel excavators used at the open-pit mine had to be shut down for safety reasons. Spokesman Lothar Lambertzsays RWE has canceled plans to bring employees onto the site to rally in favor of coal mining.

U. Of C. Bans Protesters Who Barricaded Themselves In Building

August 6, 2015 Sam Cholke, www.dnainfo.com , ,
By Sam Cholke in DNA Info - The University of Chicago has permanently banned from campus eight trauma protesters who barricaded themselves in a university building in June. The eight non-student protesters who participated in a protest on June 3 that ended in firefighters breaking down a wall and sawing through a door to remove them said they have all been permanently banned from the university campus. A ninth protester who was a student has not been banned. “It turns out every moment on campus into an act of civil disobedience,” said Alex Goldenberg, one of the eight arrested and an alumni of the university. “I don’t think it will stop any of us though.” Jeremy Manier, a university spokesman, said the protesters risked the safety of people of campus in their efforts to advocate for a trauma center at the university’s hospital, so the university is justified in the ban.

Occupy Wall Street Just Won

July 18, 2015 Tom Toles, www.washingtonpost.com , ,
By Tom Toles in Washington Post - The leaderless, agenda-less, amorphous blob that camped out in New York and Washington and various other cities before disappearing without a trace had become a symbol of how not to achieve political change. Until it won. It was a movement born out of frustration and idealism and eventually wore out and was swept out of its soggy civic encampments by the municipal broom. There it was, and then there it wasn’t. It was criticized for its lack of agenda items, and if you visited it while it was around, it was all a little vague as to what was going on. It was essentially there as a witness, to an idea. The idea was that economic and social inequality were getting out of hand, and that financial and corporate power were running away with the game. They did achieve one thing in their not-all-that-brief moment in the sun and not-so-sunny, and that was to put the idea of the 99% into the public discussion.

Eric Garner’s Death Remembered With A Week Of Actions

July 18, 2015 Ashoka Jegroo, www.wagingnonviolence.org , , , , ,
By Ashoka Jegroo in Waging Non-Violence - After a week of actions, Black Lives Matter activists in New York City are set to march today to commemorate Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who was killed by police last year on July 17. His death — along with that of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the ensuing non-indictments of the police officers responsible in both incidents — sparked months of nationwide protests and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Garner’s family recently accepted a $5.9 million settlement from the city, which Comptroller Scott Stringer noted was not an admission of liability. For Garner’s family though, the settlement is far from the end of the fight. “Don’t congratulate us,” Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, told CNN. “This is not a victory. The victory will come when we get justice.”
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