nonviolent civil disobedience

Kaeley McEvoy 1-09-2024
The black and white photo shows Rose Robinson being carried away by three white men. The photo is layered on top of itself a few times.

Track star Rose Robinson refuses cooperation with police when arrested in 1960 for war tax resistance. / Jet magazine 

PROPHETS USE WORDS to encourage or condemn. The biblical prophet Micah’s command “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8), for example, has rung in the ears of many. Language is a powerful tool for social change. However, some prophets don’t use words at all: They use their bodies.

Social prophets today that use their bodies often stand arm-in-arm in front of police barricades or walk miles for justice. But some prophets have used their bodies in another arena: athletics. And many of these prophets are women.

How many know the story of track and field star Eroseanna (“Rose”) Robinson? Some recall in 2016 when football quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Few remember that in 1959, nearly 60 years before Kaepernick’s action, Rose Robinson refused to stand for the U.S. national anthem at the Pan American Games in Chicago because, to her, “the anthem and the flag represented war, injustice, and hypocrisy,” according to historian Amira Rose Davis. By refusing to stand, Robinson used her body to speak for justice.

But Robinson was a full-time activist on and off the field. Throughout the 1950s in Cleveland, she was a leader in the Congress of Racial Equality, an interracial group of students founded by the Fellowship of Reconciliation that paved the way for nonviolent actions in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Stephen Quirke 11-18-2019

THE WORLD HAS known since 2011 that at least 80 percent of all fossil fuels must stay in the ground to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. This means that 90 percent of U.S. and Australian coal, and all Canadian tar sands, must stay in the ground. Yet in an August press conference, President Trump reacted to a question on global climate action by defending, at all costs, wealth creation from fossil fuels.

“I’ve made that [fossil fuel] wealth come alive,” Trump said. “We have more of it than anybody else. ... I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well. ... We can’t let that wealth be taken away.”

That wealth, according to author and news anchor Chris Hayes, is valued at $10 trillion to $20 trillion. Hayes notes that $10 trillion in today’s economy is roughly equivalent to the wealth lost by U.S. slave holders as a result of abolition. Comparing the political economies of the slave trade and fossil fuels, Hayes suggests the movement against fossil fuel extraction ought to be called “the new abolitionism.”

Yet, with no global climate plan, the warnings from scientists have become more dire. Many now grapple with depression, while others undergo what’s been called “climate grief.” In 2015, global levels of carbon dioxide surpassed 400 parts per million, a trajectory that takes the world into global heating, ocean acidification, and species collapse. If governments and corporations won’t keep fossil fuel reserves in the ground, it’s clear that others will have to step in. Fortunately, some have.

Shut It Down

ON OCT. 11, 2016, five people orchestrated the largest coordinated shutdown of oil pipelines in U.S. history. With nothing more than bolt cutters, the “valve turners”—Michael Foster, Leonard Higgins, Emily Johnston, Annette Klapstein, and Ken Ward—used emergency shut-off valves to close five pipelines in North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, and Washington carrying Canadian tar sands crude into the United States.

In an action that “shook the North American energy industry,” according to Reuters, the valve turners disrupted 2.8 million barrels of tar sands heavy crude for almost a day—equal to 15 percent of daily U.S. consumption. Before shutting the lines off, the valve turners notified the engineers responsible for monitoring them. The five waited until local sheriffs took them into custody. The valve turners and their support team were charged with 27 felonies and 15 misdemeanors.

“There’s [a climate] emergency, and we have been late to the scene,” Foster, one of the five, told Sojourners. “As much as we have to stop all these new [fossil fuel] projects, we actually have to shut down some of our existing consumption, our existing production, our existing transportation. If we don’t do that, then we could spend the next 30 years fighting every new project, and win, but we would still all be eliminated.”

For activists like Foster, keeping 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground makes direct action a necessity. Others have taken similar steps: In 2015, Vanessa Gray shut off a pipeline carrying tar sands oil through her First Nation’s territory in Ontario. In 2017, Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek in Iowa pierced Dakota Access pipeline valves with welding tools.

Jim Wallis 2-26-2018

WHEN I RECENTLY spoke at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., on the subject of my book America’s Original Sin, the moderator introduced me with something that isn’t in my official bio. “Our speaker today has been arrested 22 times.”

It’s up to 23 times now, after I was arrested in December in the Hart Senate Office Building for reading biblical passages about poverty to protest the GOP tax plan, which disproportionately favors the rich.

In Shane Claiborne’s piece in this issue, he provides an overview of civil disobedience—both the biblical basis for disobeying unjust laws and how people doing so, often at great risk, have changed the course of history again and again. I want to share a few of my own reflections on civil disobedience.

In late 1983, on the heels of the Reagan administration’s invasion of Grenada, church leaders in Nicaragua called Sojourners and pleaded with us to help stop the invasion of their country, rightly fearing that the U.S. would target Nicaragua next. We asked ourselves, What can we do?

After much prayer and discernment, and in collaboration with many allies in the Christian peace movement, we launched “The Pledge of Resistance,” wherein Christians across the United States “pledged” to fill the offices of their members of Congress in massive civil disobedience if Nicaragua were invaded. Eighty thousand people eventually signed the pledge. Most of the signers were prepared to be arrested and go to jail if necessary.

Our hope in creating this pledge was to increase the domestic cost of a U.S. invasion—with a credible promise to mobilize tens of thousands to engage in principled law-breaking all over America—hoping that might make decision-makers reconsider. It worked.

Shane Claiborne 2-21-2018

Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner at the Hart Senate Building.

YOU MAY REMEMBER the images of disabilities advocates arrested last year, some handcuffed in their wheelchairs, outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office. Or the pastors arrested holding signs that said: “Love Thy Neighbor.” Or the waves of clergy and faith-leader arrests in Ferguson and Standing Rock, and those advocating for Dreamers and opposing tax cuts for the rich.

Maybe you heard about pastor Jarrod McKenna and Delroy Bergsma in Perth, Australia, who suspended themselves four stories above the office of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to persuade the Australian government to act for refugees held on Manus Island without supplies. Or last year’s witness on the steps of the Supreme Court where 18 people of faith were arrested protesting the death penalty. Or the August gathering in Charlottesville, Va., where hundreds of courageous pastors, clergy, and other activists confronted the hatred of torch-bearing neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

These events aren’t about going to jail. They are about countering hatred with nonviolent love.

Civil disobedience is holy work. Gandhi called nonviolent civil disobedience “our sacred duty.” There are many ways to nonviolently resist injustice: Boycotts. Divestment. Writing op-eds. Petitions. Lobbying. Prayer vigils. Groundswell campaigns. Picket lines. Strikes. Die-ins. Sit-ins. Lock-downs. Distributing flyers on street corners. (Famously, the late political scientist Gene Sharp listed 198 methods of nonviolent direct action.)

Going to jail isn’t the only way to resist evil. But it is one way. And a very effective way, with a rich tradition for Christians. Though questions of privilege arise when it comes to risking arrest, what also surfaces is that some people have nothing to lose “but their chains,” as the chant goes. Many marginalized people have found civil disobedience to be a way to rage collectively against injustice and to stop business as usual.

Kristy Powell 9-06-2011

Last Saturday, August 20, 2011, I got arrested. Having never been arrested before, it feels strange to write that. Like most Americans I associate getting arrested with committing egregiously unlawful acts that require punishment