Civil Disobedience IndexThis is an ACT UP Historical Archive. For more up-to-date information, visit our current website. Consider making a donation, getting some merchandise or come to a Monday Meeting.
Civil Disobedience Index
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
– Frederick Douglass, African-American abolitionist
The history of Civil Disobedience is a long and international one.
ACT UP practices a form that comes from a variety of progressive movements.
Below are several pages describing some of the history, theory, and practice of civil disobedience.
Many of these sections
were taken (with love) from the Handbook for Nonviolent Action available from the War
Resister's League
in New York City.
download complete training .(pdf)..328KB
- ACT UP Direct Action Guidelines
- History of Mass Nonviolent Action
- Nonviolent Response to Personal Violence
- Practicing Nonviolence
- Nonviolence Training
- Affinity Groups and Support
- Steps Toward Making a Campaign
- Consensus Decision Making
- Legal Issues/Risking Arrest
- Legal Flow Chart: What Happens in an Arrest and Your Decisions
- Legal Terms: What They Mean
- Jail Solidarity
see also the following documents:
- The Demonstrator's Manual [crucial]
- NEW _Advantages/Disadvantages to Disclosing Your Status when Arrested __
- Marshal Training Manual
- Getting Arrested: Why do we do it?
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download complete trainings .(pdf).
