4 ms·

Civil disobedience (such as the Rosa Parks, the Boston Tea Party, and lunch counter sit-ins) has been a vehicle for social and political change since forever.

• shredprez 11y ago
  This constructive noncompliance seems more pragmatic than political, to the point that it feels like a distinct form of disobedience to me. Your examples come to mind exactly because of their tight association with grander social-change movements, and I think that context sets them apart from individual acts of noncompliance in response to ill-conceived legislation. Where civil disobedience is often based in morality and identity politics and aims to reform broad inequities in society with a visible campaign, the examples of civil noncompliance seem to focus on the political change effected when individuals quietly eliminate minute inefficiencies by ignoring detrimental laws. And there may be something to be said for covert noncompliance in a democracy where strongly polarized political parties shoot down visible campaigns the moment they take off. Civil disobedience (openly democratic) is about kickstarting the political process, swaying society in the hopes of swaying their representatives. But civil noncompliance (covertly democratic) is about bypassing politics entirely, forcing authorities to either punish the community at large or acknowledge the impotence of the law in question. This is all very stream-of-consciousness on my end, hopefully it's coming across with some clarity.