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Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience involves protest or illicit action based on an individual’s prioritizing of obligations to religion, humanity, conscience, and legal codes of city, state, and nation. Lawbreakers commit themselves to ignoring or violating codified laws that disrespect or contravene spiritual or humanistic truths. As a concerted demand for human rights and freedoms, civil disobedience by marginalized groups targets the disenfranchisement of racial and religious minorities, immigrants, laborers, refugees, and women and children. Illegal actions range from the unfurling of forbidden flags and banners, concealment of runaway slaves and draft dodgers, sit-ins in government buildings, and nonviolent obstruction of trains and convoys to the dismantling of torture chambers, ruination of files and records, and vandalism against artillery and war planes.
During the colonial era, Bartolomé de Las ...
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