Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey certain laws for moral reasons.
What do you do when you live under laws or policies you consider unjust? Many people grit their teeth and obey, but others take on what can be life-threatening risks to break the law. Made famous by activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, civil disobedience is the non-violent refusal to obey laws the protester believes to be unjust. What does civil disobedience look like? In this article, we’ll describe 15 examples supported by real-world case studies.
| # | Actions |
|---|---|
| 1 | Making salt |
| 2 | Burning draft cards |
| 3 | Refusing to give up a bus seat |
| 4 | Boycotting products |
| 5 | Refusing to leave a business until served |
| 6 | Walking off a job |
| 7 | Skipping school |
| 8 | Refusing to disperse when ordered |
| 9 | Tree sitting |
| 10 | Blocking roads |
| 11 | Hunger strikes |
| 12 | Voting |
| 13 | Selling alcohol |
| 14 | Burning a flag |
| 15 | Making street art |
#1 Making salt
Acts of civil disobedience involve breaking unjust laws. In 1882, the British Empire made it illegal for Indians to collect or sell salt. Instead, Indian citizens had to buy the heavily taxed mineral from their British rulers. Not shockingly, taxes oppressed Indians living in poverty. In 1930, activist and lawyer Mahatma Gandhi launched an act of civil disobedience known as the Salt March. With supporters, he walked 240 miles to a coastal town to make salt from seawater. While Gandhi was arrested, activists continued to break the law, and in 1947, India won its independence.
#2 Burning draft cards
In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States and Australia had a draft for the Vietnam War. The war was unpopular, and protests were common. The burning of draft cards became a frequent form of protest, and in August of 1965, President Johnson made destroying or mutilating a draft card a federal crime. In October, pacifist David Miller burned his card publicly and was sentenced to three years in prison. Knowing the risks, anti-war protesters continued to burn their cards. Miller was released after two years. In 1973, President Nixon ended the draft and military service became voluntary.
#3 Refusing to give up a bus seat
In 1955, the city of Montgomery, Alabama was racially segregated, like all cities in the South thanks to the Jim Crow Laws. On city buses, the first 10 seats were reserved for white passengers. Seamstress Rosa Parks sat in the first row behind these seats, but when the bus filled up, the driver told her and the other Black passengers to move back. Rosa Parks refused. She was arrested and charged with “refusing to obey orders of bus driver.” This act of civil disobedience is credited as the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.
#4 Boycotting products
When a company or country engages in human rights violations or other unsavory actions, it can be the target of a boycott, which is when people stop buying from them. According to the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives, a 35-year-long consumer boycott was “at the heart of anti-apartheid campaigns.” Consumers were asked to avoid goods like South African fruit, sherry and cigarettes until the end of apartheid. One poll found that in 1986, 27% of British shoppers were boycotting South African products. The boycott didn’t end until 1993 when the country began the process for democratic elections.
#5 Refusing to leave a business until served
In many countries, businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone as long as they aren’t discriminating against a protected class. During the era of racial segregation in the American South, no such caveat existed. Racial discrimination was legal. In Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, four Black students went into a drugstore and sat at a segregated lunch counter, waiting to be served. They refused to leave until the store closed for the night. This triggered a massive protest of segregated lunch counters. Protesters were harassed, spat on, hit with eggs and more. Despite opposition, the sit-ins were ultimately successful in raising awareness and, at many stores, forcing integration.
#6 Walking off a job
Labor strikes, which involve walking off a job, are a common form of civil disobedience. The strikers aim to not return to work unless certain demands are met. The Wave Hill Walk-Off, which began as a strike, helped jumpstart Australia’s First Nations land rights movement. For centuries, companies and the government exploited First Nations people for cheap labor. In 1966, the Gurindji community working at Wave Hill Station, home of a meat-packing company, walked off the job in protest of unfair wages. The dispute lasted seven years, but eventually, a small portion of the land was given back to the Gurindji people. In 2020, the Gurindji’s claim to the Wave Hill station was granted.
#7 Skipping school
Students can engage in civil disobedience by skipping school. While students aren’t typically arrested for leaving school, they are breaking their school’s policies and risking punishment. In 2018, 15-year-old Great Thunberg began skipping school to sit outside the Swedish Parliament and demand climate action. Others joined her, leading to the creation of Fridays for Future (FFF), a youth-led global climate strike movement. The group encourages students to skip school on Fridays to protest outside government buildings and call for action on climate change.
#8 Refusing to disperse when ordered
People can gather in public spaces, but when governments and police tell protesters to disperse, it becomes civil disobedience when they refuse to leave. In 1989, a huge group of mostly students gathered in Tiananmen Square to call for government talks with Communist Party leaders. On May 20, the Chinese government declared martial law, but for weeks, hundreds of thousands continued to protest in the streets. The military cracked down, leading to a massacre with no official death toll. The story of Tiananmen Square reveals just how dangerous civil disobedience can be.
#9 Tree sitting
Environmental activists have used tree sitting as a strategy for years. It involves sitting in a tree to protect it from destruction. Supporters typically visit the sitter with food, water and other supplies. In 1997, 23-year-old Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed a thousand-year-old redwood to protect it from loggers. She stayed there for 738 days through storms, logger harassment and a record-breaking winter. She eventually reached an agreement with the logging company and the tree was saved.
#10 Blocking roads
Roadblocks are a risky form of civil disobedience. People can get hit by cars, while police brutality is also common. In December of 2023, Extinction Rebellion climate activists blocked part of a main highway in Amsterdam in protest of a bank’s financing of fossil fuels. Police detained dozens of the protesters, who also blocked one of the main roads into the Hague earlier that year. In the United States, many states let people block roads to protest, but only with a permit. As soon as activists block without permission, it’s an act of civil disobedience.
#11 Hunger strikes
A hunger strike is a non-violent protest where a person fasts until a certain policy change or demand is met. Hunger strikes are often undertaken alongside other acts of civil disobedience that break laws or policies, but not always. In 2013, detainees at Guantanamo Bay began fasting in response to the military searching their Qurans. At one point, most of the detainees were on hunger strike, while many were being force-fed. This was one of a handful of hunger strikes that occurred at the prison.
#12 Voting
Many people think of voting as a right, but for many groups, it’s something that has to be fought for. When it was illegal, voting was a form of civil disobedience. In 1872, women in the United States did not have the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony, a leader in the suffragette movement, cast a ballot in Rochester, New York. She was arrested and convicted for voting illegally. She had to pay a $100 fee and court costs. Women did not get the right to vote until 1920 when the 19th Amendment passed.
#13 Selling alcohol
The making and selling of alcohol has a complicated history. Throughout the world, people have often broken alcohol laws they believed were unjust. In the United States, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was illegal from 1920 to 1933. Millions of people still made and sold alcohol during the Prohibition Era, and while making alcohol purely for profit wasn’t necessarily civil disobedience, there were plenty of people breaking what they believed was an oppressive and unjust law.
#14 Burning a flag
The burning of flags is controversial, but when done in the context of non-violent resistance, it can be civil disobedience. The United States has an interesting history of flag burning. In response to more flag burnings during the Vietnam War, almost every state made it illegal to “desecrate” the US Flag. In 1984, a young protester was arrested for burning the American flag outside the Republican National Convention. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that burning the flag was protected speech. According to a 2016 article, at least 40 states still have flag-desecration laws on the books, while some Southern states even extend protections to Confederate flags. Burning a flag in these places is still civil disobedience.
#15 Making street art
Setting up signs or painting graffiti is illegal in many places. Many graffiti artists use blank walls and streets to express their creativity, but many use these canvases to raise awareness of social justice issues. Banksy, an anonymous artist, is arguably the world’s most famous graffiti artist and while he earns money from his work, he often breaks the law. Many of his works comment on social justice and political topics, such as police brutality, poverty, capitalism and more.
