Festival of Civil Disobedience

Politics is a battleground - Nonviolent Civil Disobedience is a strategy for system change.

As everyday people, we have many tools at our disposal to fight for bottom up change. Strategically breaking laws or civil disobedience is perhaps the most powerful of these tools. Social research suggests that Civil Disobedience is a very effective strategy in bringing about large scale system change - think Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Indian Independence.

More locally in Australia refusal to obey laws and contracts has been used for positive result. For example, mass walk outs were used by the Victorian union movement to shift from a 14hr work day to our current 8hr work day. First Nations people and students consciously disobeyed segregations laws by supporting Indigenous kids to ‘illegally’ swim in the public pools of Moree and Kempsey. And of course there are the significant environmental wins from the non-violent direct action taken in the Franklin River and Jabiluka campaigns.

The Festival of Civil Disobedience is a celebration of our long history of rebellion in Australia reminding us all that standing together can (and has) made a difference. If you are working for change, come along to this event to find out how civil disobedience can help you and your movement create the system shift you value.

“Without taking up weapons, and with little money and few traditional resources, people forming non-violent movements succeed in upending the terms of public debate and shifting the direction of their countries’ politics. Non-violence in this form is not passive. It is a strategy for confrontation.” - Mark & Paul Engler, This is an uprising: How non-violent revolt is shaping the 21st Century

National Online Events

In Person Events