Civil Disobedience: A May Day Message

I spoke at the May Day rally in Omaha on May 1, 2026. The text of my speech - featuring notable Unitarian Henry David Thoreau - follows.

Hello, lovers of democracy!  Do you want to pump up people power?  (YES)  Do you want to undermine the authoritarian takeover?  (YES) Then huddle up, let’s talk about civil disobedience.
 
Civil disobedience. That’s deliberate non-cooperation with any law or authority that is not just. Saying no to actions of the state that hurt people.
 
To get into the spirit of civil disobedience, when I say “Do my bidding!”  I invite you to respond with a hearty “No!”
 
Let’s try that:
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)

One of my Unitarian ancestors, and one of our American cultural ancestors, Henry David Thoreau, is known as much for his writing on Civil Disobedience as for his experiment at Walden Pond. 

Thoreau’s own most famous act of disobedience was on principle refusing to pay his taxes. He withheld his funds from the government for six years, protesting its collusion with the institution of slavery, and protesting against the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846, a war that was very much tied up in the struggle over slavery.

By Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (Wikimedia Commons)

​Thoreau observed that a small number of people used the machinery of the government to wage the Mexican war for their own ends – a war to which, Thoreau wrote, “in the outset, the people would not have consented.”
 
Slavery is over, and the U.S. won its war of aggression with Mexico. But of course, racism is still with us. As are war and conquest – we’ve got how many? wars underway in the Middle East now, once again entered without the people’s consent, without Congress’ authorization.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)

Thoreau penned his essay on resistance of unjust government while sitting in a jail cell for his rebellion.
 
In Civil Disobedience, he wrote:
​

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and [humans], serve the State with their consciences … and so necessarily resist it … and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

Many have developed campaigns of strategic nonviolence, inspired by Thoreau’s concept of Civil Disobedience. Among them, people who indeed became martyrs, like Mahatma Gandhi & Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
I’m guessing most of us do not aspire to be martyrs. Let me make the case to you for why we should all, within our own risk calculus, practice civil disobedience.
 
Jamila Bradley advocates “a daily disobedience practice.” Jamily Bradley is a queer black writer that you can find on Substack. They draw the idea of a daily disobedience practice from another writer, James C. Scott.
 
Bradley astutely observes that “we are currently in a revolutionary crisis, and our nervous systems are wired toward compliance.” Because for a social species like ours, they explain, ​“compliance is a survival strategy that gets trained into the body…. much of the time, obedience is not a moral choice… It is the body making a calculation that says, I do not want to become target shaped today.” (I want to be safe.)

The upshot? Going against authorities does not happen easily and spontaneously for most of us, even if we theoretically believe in civil disobedience. Hence the value of a daily disobedience practice.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)

Bradley writes, ​​
​

“A daily disobedience practice is not about being reckless. It is not about collecting consequences. It is not about romanticizing deviance. It is about becoming unprogrammable.” 

Becoming un-programmable. Because “compliance is complicity” as Bradley puts it. And I’m guessing, if you chose to come and be here, you do not want to be complicit with all the terrible things happening.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
One could start with small things, breaking a trivial rule like jaywalking. Anything that goes against the rule-following instincts of all of us instinctive rule-followers. Better still if the action is not merely symbolic but practical – like, say, helping neighbors who are undocumented immigrants.
 
I think Thoreau would agree. He wrote that,

“Law never made [people] a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” 

In other words, you can mean well and still do harm if you mindlessly go along with unjust laws.
 
Moreover, Thoreau wanted people to spend less effort talking and more in concrete action. “It matters not how small the beginning may seem to be,” Thoreau wrote – “what is once well done is done for ever.”
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
If you skipped work or school or shopping as part of the May Day actions, you are already getting into the spirit of noncompliance.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
So I invite you to play around with a daily practice of disobedience, and what that might look like for you – using your own best judgment of what risks are reasonable, as you train your noncompliance muscles.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
Thoreau urged readers to “recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.” And he wrote, 

“to be strictly just, [the authority of government] must have the sanction and consent of the governed.”

Did you catch that?  A government that does not have the sanction and consent of the people loses its legitimacy to continue governing.
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
The historian Howard Zinn, introducing Thoreau’s political writings, observes, “Thoreau’s great insight was that there is a moral emptiness in government unless it is filled by the actions of citizens on behalf of justice. That corresponds exactly to the democratic philosophy of the Declaration of Independence,” Zinn continues, “in which governments have no inherent right to exist or to rule, but deserve to do so only when they fulfill the charge given them by the people: to protect everyone’s equal right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”

facing the speakers' podium at the May Day rally (Memorial Park, Omaha)

Of note on International Workers Day, Thoreau saw it as up to ordinary people, the working class, the middle class, to keep a check on how the government was used. Those who “would assert the purest right,” he wrote, “and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property…” In contrast, Thoreau wrote, “the rich man … is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.”  (e.g., is always in cahoots)
 
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)
 
So friends, I invite you to train your whole being, nervous system included, for resistance through daily acts of disobedience, be they substantive or playful. Because it’s up to We the People.
 
May we stop the madness together. May we restore democracy together. May we never stop working for collective liberation, not until all of us have a fair chance at ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Amen, ameen, ah-main, sadhu, tathāstu, ashe, so may it be.
 
One last time…
“Do my bidding!”  (Crowd - “No!”)​​

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​Source:
The Higher Law: Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform, edited by Wendell Blick (Princeton and Oxford:  Princeton University Press, 1973, 2004) – primarily drawing from the essay “Resistance to Civil Government” (later titled “Civil Disobedience") and the introduction by Howard Zinn.