Thais Bonilla // Henry David Thoreau became disobedient. In the seventeenth century he refusing to pay the poll tax, a regular source of income for the state of Massachusetts, consecuently he went to prison. Unintentionally, this anarchist writer became a model of historical disobedience. For him, the prison was a way to make public his protest, a way to force his government to admit that there was an opposition. Opposition to slavery and to the war. “Thoreau recognizes that his association with the government persists through the tax mechanism, moreover, that this association will become an accomplice of injustice,” tells Antonio Casado in his book Civil disobedience from Thoreau (2002 Gakoa).
Civil disobedience is nonviolent. It is one of the key strategies of peaceful resistance. It seeks to use state law to report unfair laws.
Mohandas Gandhi’s Satyagraha against the British occupation, the struggle against apartheid with Mandela in South Africa, the velvet revolution of Czechoslovakia, the defense of Rosa Parks of human rights in the U.S. All were public behaviors that sought to awaken the public sense of justice. In a few words, actions aimed to nonviolent civic education of those dormant people, well known nowadays as the silent majority.
The current situation of dismantling Economic, Social and Cultural rights has increased disobedience as a method of struggle.
“We decided to use all possible channels of this democracy, until exhaust all avenues. Given the contempt of the authorities and the media, we thought about stopping evictions and use civil disobedience as a tool inside a greater strategy: get the ILP”, said Ada Colau, from the Platform of People Affected by Mortgage (PAH because its Spanish definition) in the first session of Nova-Innovació Social workshop about Civil Desobedience, held from October to November 2012.
Groups such as Iaioflautas, the PAH, Memetro, #Novullpagar and Free Gaza, among others, demonstrated the ability of good ideas and creativity in order to implement the four stages of the nonviolent struggle: dialogue, complaint, not collaboration and public disobedience. “What gives value to civil disobedience is that it is public, it has values and it accepts the consequences of the action. When going from the individual to the group action, the government days are numbered”, said Pepe Beunza, first conscientious objector with nonviolence perspective in Spain. Violence undermines the action, so the culture of peace and disobedient training is a key. Not everyone is ready for disobedience. Therefore, moving from individual action to collective is one of the challenges to discuss and improve disobedient actions.
A few months ago, from Catalonia It has been created a movement which is calling for civil disobedience for civil rights and against the financial dictatorship. Under the name of Action Base of Disobedient Citizens, they have supported the PAH as a group that implements all the features of nonviolent action. Now, they have released his first action: the refusal to pay the fiscal public tax for demanding public transparency.
All these mobilizations are demanding social justice and they fight every day against the politics of fear. They have taken one of the most powerful Thoreau phrases: “Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is jail.”
