Five Examples of Civil Disobedience to Remember

Ever since the global financial cabal drove the world's economies into a ditch, popular movements have been rising up to fight "austerity measures" that exact punishment on the poor and leave the rich untouched. This is a familiar biblical meme for the definition of injustice. The words of the prophet Jeremiah come to mind: "Your clothes are stained with the blood of the poor and innocent" (Jeremiah 2:34).

The Guardian's Richard Seymour writes:

"When Spanish mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo recently led farmers on a supermarket sweep [6], raiding the local shops for food as part of a campaign against austerity, his political immunity as an elected assembly member protected him from arrest. He now asks other local mayors to ignore central government demands for budget cuts and refuse to implement evictions and lay-offs. In this era of austerity, such flagrant disrespect for the law ought to be encouraged. Sometimes, the greatest strength of popular movements is their capacity to disrupt. So here, for the benefit of imaginative indignados [7], are five examples of civil disobedience:

1. Salt March led by Gandhi

2. Extremadura Campaign, a peasan't land reform movement in Spain

3. Flying Pickets and Sit-Ins, labor movements in the United States

4. Dismantling unwanted enterprises, Jose Bove's anti-globalization movement in France

5. Poll Tax Non-Payment, anti poll tax mobilization in London in 1990s"

Read the whole article and see great photos here [8].