Civil Disobedience
Nonviolent direct action has a long and honorable history—from Gandhi and Martin Luther King to Thoreau. The Civil Rights movement didn’t begin with a letter writing campaign: it took off when Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in the white section of the bus and when people sat in at segregated lunch counters in the South.


There’s a wide range of opinion on what tactics are necessary to win the battle over our environment. There’s a lot more to civil disobedience than we could possibly put in this guide; it’s a big decision, and one that group should discuss very carefully. If you choose to do direct action, prepare yourself and your group for what you’re getting into.

• Build unity by agreeing beforehand on guidelines and principles for the action.
• Try to get non-violence training from community groups in your area, or SEAC can help find someone.
• Know what to do if you are arrested.
• Assign people in advance who are willing to be arrested, others who will join them with a legal demonstration
• in which they will not risk arrest), and a police liaison to coordinate and deal with police in as friendly and neutral a way as possible.

Creativity
Here are some other wild and wacky things people have done:

• Putting pollution tickets on congresspeople’s cars with info about the Clean Air Act.
• Collecting a day’s worth of styrofoam and building an enormous “styro-monster” in the middle of the school.
• Having 100 people
• including faculty and administrators) carry their trash for a week.