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Freedom riders

Practitioner:
Hundreds

Date:
May 4 1961

The first legislative victory of the Civil Rights era was obtained by hundreds of people going where they weren’t invited. In 1961, Black and white Freedom Riders, well trained by SNCC in nonviolent action, rode Greyhound buses from Washington DC…

Humor to overthrow Mubarak

Practitioner:
Egyptian revolutionaries

Date:
May 4 1961

from “Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising” by Anna Louie Sussman, in 2011. Revolutions can be messy. They can be tragic. As long as the Internet is working, they can be tweeted. And, as Egyptians demonstrated during their…

Gandhi’s Salt March to the Sea

Practitioner:
Mahatma Gandhi

Date:
May 4 1961

In 1930, the Indian National Congress adopted satyagraha (essentially, nonviolent protest) as their main tactic in their campaign for independence. Mahatma Gandhi was appointed to develop a plan of action; he proposed marching to the sea to make salt in…

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Practitioner:
Claudette Colvin, NAACP, Rosa Parks

Date:
May 4 1961

In 1900, Montgomery, Alabama had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race, and conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal. The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites,…

Daniel Defoe’s “The Shortest Way with Dissenters”

Practitioner:
Daniel Defoe

Date:
May 4 1961

“The Shortest Way with the Dissenters;” Or, “Proposals for the Establishment of the Church” is a pamphlet by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1702. Defoe was prompted to write the pamphlet by the increased hostility towards Dissenters in the wake…

Otpor Barrel Action

Practitioner:
Otpor

Date:
May 4 1961

The Milosevic regime ruled over Serbia and Yugoslavia for about 13 years. To maintain control, the Milosevic regime was infamous for arbitrary arrests, beatings, imprisonment and even murder of avid opponents. In 2000, before the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, a…

ACT UP protests

Practitioner:
ACT UP

Date:
May 4 1961

In 1987 with AIDS deaths in the thousands and government policy still criminally indifferent, activists formed ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) with the purpose of turning grief and fear into rage and action. Over the next decade, rage…

Diagram of the “Brookes” Slave Ship

Practitioner:
18th century abolitionists

Date:
May 4 1961

This diagram of the ‘Brookes’ slave ship is probably the most widely copied and powerful image used by the abolitionist campaigners. It depicts the ship loaded to its full capacity – 454 people crammed into the hold.The ‘Brookes’ sailed the…

Levitating the Pentagon

Practitioner:
The Yippies

Date:
May 4 1961

It was 1967, and sentiment against the Vietnam War was in the air nationwide. The counterculture was flourishing on the heels of the Summer of Love. Organizers from Mobe — the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam…

The Condom on Jesse Helms’ House

Practitioner:
ACT UP

Date:
May 4 1961

On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house. Why? Because, as the condom said, “Helms is deadlier than a virus.” Senator Jesse Helms was one of the chief architects of AIDS-related stigma in the U.S.…