Everyday Dictionary of Resistances

Dave Efendi

1. A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons.

The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish "Land War" and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord, Lord Erne, who lived in Lough Mask House, in County Mayo, Ireland, who was subject to social ostracismorganized by the Irish Land League in 1880. As harvests had been poor that year, Lord Erne offered his tenants a ten percent reduction in their rents. In September of that year, protesting tenants demanded a twenty five percent reduction,
which Lord Erne refused. Boycott then attempted to evict eleven tenants from the land. Charles Stewart Parnell, in a speech in Ennis prior to the events in Lough Mask, proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was first applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated — his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail.

2. A sit-in or sit-down is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.

Sit-ins were first widely employed by Mohandas Gandhi in South African strikes. He may have been influenced by the Indian practice of Dharna, fasting outside the home of someone who owed one a debt. Sit-ins were later used in the Indian independence movement, and were later expanded on by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and others during theAfrican-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968). Also the protests in Germany. The Young Lords in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood used it successfully for a whole week to win community demands for low income housing investment at the McCormick Theological Seminary.

In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met. Sit-ins have historically been a highly successful form of protest because they cause disruption that draws attention to the protesters' cause. They are a non-violentway to effectively shut down an area or business. The forced removal of protesters, and sometimes the use of violence against them, often arouses sympathy from the public, increasing the chances of the demonstrators reaching their goal.

Martin Luther King was arrested in one sit-in, and was not released for 4 months. A sit-in is similar to a sit-down strike. However, whereas a sit-in involves protesters, a sit-down strike involves striking workers occupying the area in which they would be working and refusing to leave so they can not be replaced with scabs. The sit-down strike was the precursor to the sit-in.

3. A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash ofviolence against authority, property or people.

4. A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations.

5. A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.

6. A peace walk or peace march, sometimes referred to as a peace pilgrimage, is a form of nonviolent action where a person or groups of people march a set distance to raise awareness of particular issues important to the walkers.

7. A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.

8. Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviorsaimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state.

9. Samizdat (Russian: самиздат; Russian pronunciation: [səmᵻˈzdat]) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader.

10. A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissidentmovement.

11. Political dissent refers to any expression designed to convey dissatisfaction with or opposition to the policies of a governing body. Such expression may take forms from vocal disagreement to civil disobedience to the use of violence.

12. A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants.

13. Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve (of French: grève), or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances.

14. A grievance is a wrong or hardship suffered, which is the grounds of a complaint. A grievance may arise from injustice or tyranny, and be cause for rebellion or revolution.

15. A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state.

16. Nonviolent resistance (or nonviolent action) is the practice of achieving socio-political goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence.

17. Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always,defined as being nonviolent resistance.

18. The term civil resistance, alongside the term nonviolent resistance, is used to describe political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. (Examples of the use of the term include Howard Clark, Civil Resistance in Kosovo, Pluto Press, London, 2000; Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolution: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011; Michael Randle, Civil Resistance, Fontana, London, 1994; Adam Roberts, Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions, Albert Einstein Institution, Massachusetts, 1991).