Civil disobedience is a tactic, but it is also a statement, like singing “We Shall Overcome” with a bunch of strangers a block from the New York Stock Exchange. Protests and marches bring attention to our movement, but also define what our movement is fighting for: an economic order built on equality, not profits; a political order built on popular justice, not private self-interest; a fuller and freer democracy, not only in the political process itself but over the economic resources that we all depend upon to live. The law-and-order regimes that encircle our protests and cordon off our marches are saying, in effect, that these are not possible; we say they are. When we get arrested, we are saying, in effect, that the law is not sacred. And as our movement grows, in the face of ever intensifying efforts to contain us, the opportunities to define and to demonstrate again and again what it is we are resisting will only increase. We do not have to knock down barricades to overflow them.
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