Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience is a tactic for dealing with repressive, regressive, and corrupt governments. When there are unjust laws on the books, the tactic of non-violent civil disobedience is often the most effective measure to focus attention on the issue and motivate responsible officials to correct the inequities in the system.

The American author, Henry David Thoreau, demonstrated the practice of civil disobedience and wrote a classic essay on it entitled, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." In the 20th Century, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King employed the tactic of non-violent civil disobedience to address a range of issues including freedom from political oppression and the promotion of civil rights.

Civil disobedience is a consciousness raising process that brings about change not by coercive techniques or by the exercise of political power, but by a natural process of moral self-education. It's often a slow process, but that's unavoidable since learning is often a slow process among those who seek to exercise political power and domination over others.