Howard Zinn's cogent defense of civil disobedience with a new introduction by the author. In this slim volume, Zinn lays out a clear and dynamic case for civil disobedience and protest, and challenges the dominant arguments against forms of protest that challenge the status quo. Zinn explores the politics of direct action, nonviolent civil disobedience, and strikes, and draws lessons for today.

Civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act, contrary to law, carried out to communicate opposition to law and policy of government. This book presents a theory of civil disobedience that draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy. This book explores the ethics of civil disobedience in democratic societies. It revisits the theoretical literature on civil disobedience with a view to taking a fresh look at long-standing questions: When is civil disobedience a justified method of political protest? What role, if any, does it play in democratic politics? Is there a moral right to civil disobedience in a democratic society? And how should a democratic state respond to citizens who commit civil disobedience? The answers given to these questions add up to a coherent and distinctive theory of civil disobedience, which draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy to forge an account that improves upon prominent approaches to this subject. Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary political theory, political science, democratization studies, social movement studies, criminology, legal theory and moral philosophy.

Asking, Why, or in what circumstances, ought we to obey the law?, this work focuses on the common view that disobedience to the law, while justifiable in a dictatorship, is much more difficult to justify in a democracy. It then develops a theory of political obligation in an ideal democracy.

No other radical historian has reached so many hearts and minds as Howard Zinn. It is rare that a historian of the Left has managed to retain as much credibility while refusing to let his academic mantle change his beautiful writing style from being anything but direct, forthright, and accessible. Whether his subject is war, race, politics, economic justice, or history itself, each of his works serves as a reminder that to embrace one's subjectivity can mean embracing one's humanity, that heart and mind can speak with one voice. Here, in six sections, is the historian's own choice of his shorter essays on some of the most critical problems facing America throughout its history, and today.

Civil disobedience, the refusal to obey certain laws, is a method of protest famously articulated by philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau believed that protest became a moral obligation when laws collided with conscience. Since then, civil disobedience has been employed as a form of rebellion around the world. But is there a place for civil disobedience in democratic societies? When is civil disobedience justifiable? Is violence ever called for? Furthermore, how effective is civil disobedience?

"Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances of uncivil disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia movement, Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant abolitionism. She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes are often motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power and autonomy. Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so unlike the much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience, yet she reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use these admirable democratic principles as a justification for terrorism and killing. She uses a "bottom-up" analysis of events to explain how this transformation takes place, paying close attention to what members of these groups do and how they think about the relationship between citizens and the law."

This book asks how we—as citizens, immigrants, activists, teachers—can counter the abuse of language in our midst. How can we take back the power of language from those who flaunt that power to silence or erase us and our fellows? In search of answers, Linguistic Disobedience recalls ages and situations that made critiquing, correcting, and caring for language essential for survival. From turn-of-the-twentieth-century Central Europe to the miseries of the Third Reich, from the Movement for Black Lives to the ongoing effort to decolonize African languages, the study and practice of linguistic disobedience have been crucial. But what are we to do today, when reactionary supremacists and authoritarians are screen-testing their own forms of so-called disobedience to quash oppositional social justice movements and their languages? Blending lyric essay with cultural criticism, historical analysis, and applied linguistics, Linguistic Disobedience offers suggestions for a hopeful pathway forward in violent times.