Sometimes, the most civil act is to be disobedient. We are living in those times now. Non-Violent Civil Disobedience (NVCD) is central to our country and retaining our freedoms, and to our movements to reverse global warming, restore a livable future, and build a better world.

Whether it’s protecting reproductive rights, protesting a pipeline, a  coal train, genocide in Gaza, fighting for a world where we all belong, restoring clean air and water for everyone, or many other critical life-affirming issues, the basic right to dissent and protest is under severe attack.

The Koch Brothers, and their American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) started moving anti-dissent legislation at the state level six years ago. Sadly, some unions got on-board. That’s right, they got on board with the same Koch Brothers who have promoted anti-labor legislation across the country.

Their anti-dissent legislative initiative makes protest a crime with large financial penalties and prison sentences. What’s worse is that in some states labor unions carved out exemptions for themselves.

Labor can protest, but no-one else can.

The right to protest is not issue-specific. You may disagree with pipeline fighters, or people protesting genocide in Gaza, but their right to do so is sacrosanct. In America it is never, ever, unpatriotic to question anything our government says or does.

And when the actions of government and corporations are so disagreeable that they imperil people and planet, it is our solemn duty to dissent and protest.

When it comes to global warming, our international institutions have failed us, our national institutions have failed us.

We all have to stand up, sit down, get arrested, go to jail, if that’s what it takes. Rosa Parks did it. Cesar Chavez did it. Dorothy Day did it. Doctor King and Ghandi did it, Nelson Mandela, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Mother Jones, and many others, did it. So can you.

For Joe’s full statement go to https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/lns-president-says-protect-dissent/