Civil Disobedience

Will The Climate Justice Movement “Seattle” The Paris Talks?

June 9, 2015 Canadians, www.canadians.org Resist! Civil Disobedience, Climate Change, Paris, Seattle

By Canadians - While the New York Times editorial board says, "The Paris [climate summit] may well be the world’s last, best chance to get a grip on a problem that, absent urgent action over the next decade, could spin out of control", most are already bracing for another massive failure by the political elite at what is being disparagingly described as the "Conference of Polluters". Rising Tide North America is calling for a series of mass actions across the United States and Canada. They note, "From September to the end of November, Flood the System envisions an escalating series of direct actions and demonstrations targeting the economic and political systems at the root of the crisis, inspired by recent movements led by low-wage workers, immigrants, and communities responding to police brutality."

Companies Fight Back Against Protesters With Financial Pressure

June 4, 2015 Sarah Alvarez, www.npr.org Resist! Activism, Civil Disobedience, Money, Oil & Gas

By Sarah Alvarez in NPR - "We were picketing in front of where they parked all their construction vehicles, and then my co-defendant and I stopped a truck and we locked our necks to the truck with U-locks that you use like for a bicycle," he says. Firefighters came and cut the locks. Both the protest and the detaching took about 90 minutes. Tarr and one other young man were arrested and charged with trespass — they expected that. What they didn't expect was that the company, Precision Pipeline, would use Michigan's crime victim restitution laws to assess charges to make up for the value of equipment and workers idled during their protest. Tarr now owes more than $39,000. That's twice as much in restitution as he owes in student loans.

sHellNo Protesters Slow Work At Oil Rig With Mass Blockade

May 19, 2015 Hal Bernton, www.seattletimes.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Oil & Gas, Seattle, shell

The Terminal 5 protest against Shell’s massive Polar Pioneer oil rig ended peacefully Monday afternoon as protesters vacated gates they had sought to block. “We’re going to end today together and united as we have been through this whole process,” said Ahmed Gaya, one of the organizers, to several hundred protesters. By the time the protesters left, police officers had secured control of a main gate, using their bikes to form a line across the roadway. The decision to end the protest came out of meetings among protest organizers. There was concern that if they stayed longer, their numbers might dwindle. They determined to leave as a group.

The Profitable Theatrics Of Riot Control

May 8, 2015 Anna Feigenbaum, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Civil Disobedience, police brutality, Wars and Militarism

The unrest in Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray after he was critically injured in police custody has reopened longstanding debates over public-order policing. Where does protest end and rioting begin? What counts as violence? Is property damage ever legitimate? Listening to Fox News analyze the meaning of the word “thugs,” it feels as if we are doomed to repeat Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote “Riots are the language of the unheard” until we are blue in the face. Baltimore, like Ferguson, Missouri, has seen the deployment of a hyper technologized warrior-cop style of policing that has become unnervingly familiar, with recent exposés focusing further attention on the militarization of law enforcement. But these practices of so-called riot control are far from new.

Resurrection Unionism — 5 Ways Labor Can Rise Again

April 19, 2015 David Goodner, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Civil Disobedience, Labor Unions, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Despite its flaws, organized labor is the most powerful democratic force in American history. Fewer labor unions means more income inequality, and everyday people and hardworking families are sitting ducks to the corporate agenda without the effective counter-weight of a strong labor movement. That’s why it is imperative that organized labor heed the lessons of Wisconsin, soberly analyze the outcome, and draw the right conclusions from the fight in order to inform the movement’s next steps. The most important lesson to be learned from Wisconsin is that labor’s traditional electoral program is no longer effective, if it ever was. Labor and other allied groups spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2012 recall election and again in 2014 in an attempt to oust Walker, but their spending was still dwarfed by big money corporate interest groups. Even worse was the missed opportunity cost: Labor wasted four years telling everyday Wisconsinites to elect moderate, pro-business Democrats instead of stoking the flames of a historic uprising and working to pull off a general strike.

Activists: Civil Disobedience The Only Way To Stop Shale Gas

April 8, 2015 Philip Tees, www.cphpost.dk Resist! Civil Disobedience, Denmark, Environment, Oil & Gas, Shale

A group of citizens in northern Jutland have organised an anti-fracking campaign of civil disobedience to stop the French company Total from carrying out trial drilling for shale gas near the town of Frederikshavn. Aktion Bloker Boretårnet (‘operation stop the drilling rig’) yesterday stopped three lorries carrying equipment to the planned site of the drilling project, according to the group’s Facebook page. The group has told Energiwatch.dk that its members will continue its blockade to physically prevent the rig from being delivered. “Sometimes it’s necessary to use civil disobedience if the consequences of not acting is so great,” the group told Energiwatch.dk. Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF) in northern Jutland is also campaigning to stop the first drilling for shale gas in Denmark from taking place. Thomas Krog, the chairman of SF in the region who is a parliamentary candidate for the party, outlined the reasons why to Energiwatch.dk.

The Flood Wall Street Not Guilty Verdict Changes Policing

March 29, 2015 Shawn Carrie, www.mintpressnews.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Civil Resistance, Climate Change, Courts, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Nonviolent Action, Police abuse

For the first time, a New York judge gave judicial notice to the realities of climate change as he exonerated ten protesters on freedom of speech grounds. Judge Robert Mandelbaum found the Flood Wall Street Ten not guilty, commending the climate activists’ protest as “honorable.” This landmark decision could not only have resounding implications for the growing environmental justice movement — it could also potentially thaw the iron-fisted policing that has come to be routine in the United States, especially in New York. “The importance of judicial notice is that the judge accepted climate change and the need to do something about it as a fact without the necessity of any evidentiary support or proof at trial,” Martin Stolar, an attorney for the defense, told MintPress News. “To the best of my knowledge, this is unprecedented and has significance for future litigation involving climate change.” The legal recognition of man-made climate change as an indisputable fact sent shockwaves through the environmentalist movement both on the streets and in the courts, allowing the Flood Wall Street case to be cited by protesters, academics and lawyers alike.

Transform Now Plowshares Appeal Heard In Cincinnati

March 16, 2015 TNPlowshares, www.transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Law, Wars and Militarism

The purpose of our appeal was primarily to challenge the use of the sabotage statute to convict Megan, Greg and Michael—it is the reason they got such long sentences. Piece by piece, Marc peeled back the government’s rationale, applying case law and referring repeatedly to the intent of Congress in passing a statute meant to convict people who interfered with US war-making capability in war time. We argued the government has misapplied the statute, that interfering with Y12 (the Oak Ridge bomb plant) was not the same as interfering with the “national defense,” that the defendants general aspiration to bring about global nuclear disarmament did not equate to an intent to injure the national defense, and more.

The Changing Civil Disobedience Movement To Save Seneca Lake

January 3, 2015 Faith Meckley, www.theithacan.org Educate! Civil Disobedience, Law, Seneca Lake

By the time everyone had settled in, we had changed our strategy. Instead of pleading guilty and refusing our fines, we would all plead not guilty. I glared at the back of the chair in front of me as everyone went up, one by one. Something didn’t seem right. How could we know for sure they had taken away the jail option? The district attorney had left after Salamendra’s case, and he wasn’t here to breath down Judge Berry’s neck anymore. I stood and went over to stand next to Steingraber, who was in the midst of conversation with another person. “I think we should have one person plead guilty, just to see what happens,” she said as I approached, her eyes sliding knowingly to mine. “I’ll do it,” I said. If I could break through and get to jail tonight, it would be big news.

Gandhi’s Strategy: (1) Noncooperation & (2) Constructive Program

December 31, 2014 Brian Willson, www.brianwillson.com Strategize! Civil Disobedience, Gandhi, Non-Violence

To Gandhi, noncooperation was the nonviolent counterpart of guerrilla war while the constructive program was the counterpart of a parallel society from below similar to parallel hierarchies important in the Mexican, Chinese, and Viet Nam revolutions. He increasingly believed that noncooperation and withdrawal of consent, taken by themselves, were woefully ineffective, sometimes using the term useless, since they do not feed the hungry or permanently relieve the oppressed. Positive action was imperative to actually pursue social betterment and justice in every village. Nonetheless, he strongly believed that satyagraha was always available as necessary, and kept in mind its goal of conversion and moral transformation, not retribution. He rejected western materialist values and industrialism. But to achieve political independence, a fundamental and moral reconstruction of society from below was required which, to repeat, was centered on economic renewal of autonomous village life and sardovaya (social uplift for everyone).

Spanish Government Strips Away Protesting Rights

December 24, 2014 Kevin Mathews, www.truth-out.org Educate! Civil Disobedience, Democracy, Freedom of Expression, Law

Spain is showing signs of fascism with its new anti-protest legislation nicknamed the “Gag Law.” This past week, Spain’s lower parliament okayed the law, pushing it much closer to reality. Among the restrictions cemented by the law, punishable by a $700-37,000 fine: Holding a protest without obtaining a permit from the government first, Protesting the day before an election, Insulting a police officer, Burning a flag, Photographing/filming police officers and sharing said photos/videos, Protesting at a bank, Blocking a home foreclosure, Assembling near a legislative building, Wearing hoods or masks, as they prevent authorities from identifying you.

First University Program On Nonviolent Resistance

December 18, 2014 Priyanka Borpujari, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Civil Disobedience, Education, Student Activism

Perhaps never before has a professorship existed that was devoted to the knowledge of nonviolent action and civil resistance. It is also unique because the university sought a professor who is working with activists. So, the knowledge produced is also supposed to be knowledge that activists can use. A position like this means that nonviolent action and its knowledge is being more widely recognized today, as well as being used across different fields to understand why popular movements that apply unarmed means are so powerful and effective. At the same time, this means recognizing that there are some recurrent problems in movements, as we have seen in Egypt, Ukraine and elsewhere. So there is a need to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Disruption And Sacrifice

December 15, 2014 Ted Glick, www.tedglick.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Environment, History, Non-Violence

Mark and Paul Engler’s well-reasoned piece published just a few days ago reminded me of what was, without question, the most personally impactful action I have ever taken part in, over 44 years ago, in Rochester, N.Y. on the Labor Day weekend of 1970. I was 20 years old at the time, and for the previous nine months I had been actively involved with the Catholic Left, which at that point in time was the name for the network of priests, nuns, Catholic lay people and others who were neither Catholic nor, necessarily, religious. What this network of hundreds of people did for a period of several years in the late 60s and early 70s was to pull off or inspire nonviolent “actions,” as we called them, to disrupt the war machine.

Is Shut It Down The New Occupy?

December 12, 2014 Kate Aronoff, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Civil Disobedience, Ferguson, Occupy, police brutality, Social Change

As occupying public spaces was to the Occupy movement, “Shutting It Down” is to the new wave of protest around police brutality and systemic racism. “If We Don’t Get It, Shut It Down” has long been a favorite chant of the labor movement, but for the rapidly growing movement saying #BlackLivesMatter, it’s also become a tactical mandate. In the world of protests, “shutting it down” might seem self-evident. Disruption is the point: As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

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