Originally Posted by
Blue Order
The traffic laws are in no way similar to the Jim Crow laws, and interfering with people trying to get home from work is not an act of civil disobedience. "It's a temper tantrum on wheels," to quote one Critical Mass defender. It harms cycling for the sake of gratifying the chip-on-their-shoulders temper tantrum. It's anti-cycling advocacy.
I think that "civil disobedience" applies to those whose motives and methods we find disagreeable just as much as for those causes we think justified (especially in 20:20 hindsight).
From the perspective of a developer or logger, a person who chains herself to a tree on their property is blocking them from earning the money to put food on the table. But it's non-violent civil disobedience with a pretty cut-and-dry legal penalty.
The trouble with civil disobedience is that it is often designed to create social conflicts that under certain unintended conditions can become violent (for example, when a non-participant reacts) and then things get out of hand.