Civil disobedience
From RationalWiki
Civil disobedience is the time-honored practice of breaking the law as a protest in favor of a principle or to stand up for human rights. Famous examples include the actions of Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, the satyagraha[1] philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi (and later adopted by Martin Luther King), the 1989 student-led anti-government protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, and the September 2007 mass protests led by Buddhist monks in Myanmar.
Thoreau coined the term when he wrote a famous essay entitled Civil Disobedience about his refusal to pay a poll tax because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War.
As a general rule, those who participate in civil disobedience expect to go to prison or even die for their actions. Though there is some overlap, this is unlike denialism, which would, in defense, attempt to deny the law exists in the first place.
[edit] Compare to
[edit] See also
- Jury nullification -- a form of civil disobedience in which a jury acquits a defendant in defiance of a law seen as unjust
- Passive resistance
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ also known as non violent resistance
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