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Alternative Title: passive resistance
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Civil disobedience, also called passive resistance, the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition; its usual purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power. Civil disobedience has been a major tactic and philosophy of nationalist movements in Africa and India, in the American civil rights movement, and of labour, anti-war, and other social movements in many countries.
Evelyn Thomas: protest of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Evelyn Thomas: protest of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Evelyn Thomas being removed by police from a fence near the White House to which she and others had handcuffed themselves to protest the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy regarding the service of homosexuals in the U.S. military, Washington, D.C., 2010.
Kevin Lamarque—Reuters/Landov
Witness the breadth of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement as civil disobedience spread across the U.S.
Witness the breadth of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement as civil disobedience spread across the U.S.
Protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement blocking a bridge in Chicago, November 2011.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, feels obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. It is because acts associated with civil disobedience are considered crimes, however, and known by actor and public alike to be punishable, that such acts serve as a protest. By submitting to punishment, the civil disobedient hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the government into effecting meaningful political, social, or economic change. Under the imperative of setting a moral example, leaders of civil disobedience insist that the illegal actions be nonviolent.
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