''Direct Action occurs when a group of people take an action which is intended to reveal an existing problem, highlight an alternative, or demonstrate a possible solution to a social issue. This can include nonviolent and less often violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action participants. Examples of direct action can include
strikes,
workplace occupations,
sit-ins,
tax resistance,
graffiti,
sabotage,
hacktivism,
property destruction,
blockades, and other forms of community resistance. By contrast,
electoral politics,
diplomacy,
negotiation, and
arbitration are not usually described as direct action, as they are politically mediated. Non-violent actions are sometimes a form of
civil disobedience, and may involve a degree of intentional law-breaking where persons place themselves in arrestable situations in order to make a political statement but other actions (such as strikes) may not violate
criminal law. The aim is to either obstruct another political agent or political organization from performing some practice to which the activists object; or to solve perceived problems which traditional societal institutions (
governments, powerful churches or establishment
trade unions) are not addressing to the satisfaction of the direct action participants.
In general, direct action is often used by those seeking social change, and non violent direct action in particular has historically been a regular feature of the tactics employed by social change movements.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action
Some example of direct action are:
Reclaim the streets is a collective with a shared ideal of
community ownership of
public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a
resistance movement opposed to the dominance of
corporate forces in
globalization, and to the
car as the dominant
mode of transport. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaim_the_Streets)
http://rts.gn.apc.org/
Centri Sociali are ''self-managed social centers appeared all over Italy during the mid 1980s, as a result of the recession and resignation of 1970s left-wing militant students and youth that were dissatisfied with authority.
Young adults with no money, place to meet, or fondness of authority squatted abandoned buildings, renovated them, and turned them into social youth centers. These self-organized groups began to find new purpose in the centers, as if they were operational factories, schools, prisons, gas stations, or stores that they once were before abandonment. These refurbished buildings became semi-legal, unconventional, independently run activity centers.
The
social centers were often located in the outer suburbs of larger cities and were run cooperatively by several groups that used the facilities as underground drop-in centers, youth clubs,
drug rehabilitation sites, recording studios, cinemas, art galleries, and eventually even computer venues that specialized in computer hacking. As a retreat for disgruntled youth, the social center became a breeding ground for Italian political music. Today, they are considered the heart of
Italian hip hop.'' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centri_sociali)
Community gardening can also be a form of direct action taken to use land for the benefit of the community:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_gardening
Ya Basta and the Dissobbedienti:
The
Ya Basta Association is a
network of Italian
anti-capitalist and pro-immigrants rights organizations and groups, fueled by the Italian
social center movement, formed in 1994, and known for the "authorship" of the
Tute Bianche, and later
disobbedienti phenomena.
Formed as a result of the "eros effect" of the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation uprising in Chiapas in 1994, the Ya Basta Association is sometimes confused with its corresponding tactical project, the
Tute Bianche. However these two projects are distinct in that while the Ya Basta Association is an overarching project involving many facets, including the utilization of the "white overall" tactic, the Tute Bianche was a broader tactic involving, at the time of Genoa 2001, many participants unconnected with the Italian Association.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_Basta_Association
Tute Bianche was a militant Italian social movement, active from 1994 to 2001. Activists covered their bodies with padding so as to resist the blows of
police, to push through police lines, and to march together in large blocks for mutual protection during
demonstrations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tute_Bianche
''Landless Workers' Movement (
Portuguese:
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or simply
MST) is a
social movement in Brazil, being generally regarded as one of the greatest (or, according to some, the greatest[SUP]
[1][/SUP]) largest social movement in
Latin America with an estimated informal 1.5 million membership[SUP]
[2][/SUP] in 23 out of Brazil's 26 states.[SUP]
[3][/SUP] According to the MST itself, its aims are: firstly , to fight for access to the land for poor workers in general,something to be carried out, secondly, through
land reform in Brazil, and, thirdly, through activism around social issues impinging on the achievment of land possession, such as unequal
income distribution,
racism,
gender issues, Media monopolies, etc.[SUP]
[4][/SUP]
In a shorter, alternative formulation, the MST strives at the achievment of a social covenant provinding a self-sustainable way of life for the poor living in rural areas.[SUP]
[5][/SUP]
Following in the tracks of various messianic or partisan-inspired movements for land reform in Brazil, the MST differs from its previous counterparts in its being mostly a single-issue movement, treating land reform as a self-justifying cause. It claims its effort at land occupations are legally justified and rooted in the most recent
Constitution of Brazil (1988), by interpreting a passage which states that land property should fulfill a social function. It also claims, based on 1996 census statistics, that just 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all
arable land in the country.
'' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement
''The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan is a movement that practised the Gandhian methods of
satyagraha and
non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in the
Garhwal Himalayas of
Uttarakhand,Then in
Uttar Pradesh with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in
Chamoli district,
Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department. Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region. By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and the
Western Ghats.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipko_movement
''
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land and/or a
building - usually residential -[SUP]
[1][/SUP] that the
squatter does not
own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
Author
Robert Neuwirth suggests that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every seven people on the planet.[SUP]
[2][/SUP] Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."[SUP]
[3][/SUP]
Some squatting movements are political, such as
anarchist,
autonomist, or
socialist.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting
''Anonymous (used as a
mass noun) is a loosely associated
hacktivist group. It originated in 2003 on the
imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an
anarchic, digitized
global brain.[SUP]
[4][/SUP] It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.[SUP]
[5][/SUP] It strongly opposes
Internet censorship and surveillance, and has hacked various government websites. It has also targeted major security corporations.[SUP]
[6][/SUP][SUP]
[7][/SUP][SUP]
[8][/SUP] Its members can be distinguished in public by the wearing of
Guy Fawkes masks.
In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized online community acting
anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily
focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative, international
hacktivism. They undertook protests and other actions in retaliation against anti-
digital piracy campaigns by motion picture and recording industry trade associations.[SUP]
[9][/SUP][SUP]
[10][/SUP] Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution.[SUP]
[11][/SUP] Some analysts have praised Anonymous as the freedom fighters of the internet,[SUP]
[12][/SUP] and a digital Robin Hood,[SUP]
[13][/SUP] although others have condemned them as "anarchic cyber-guerrillas".[SUP]
[14][/SUP]
Although not necessarily tied to a single online entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable
imageboards such as
4chan, their associated
wikis,
Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of
forums. After a series of controversial, widely publicized protests,
distributed denial of service (DDoS) and
website defacement attacks by Anonymous in 2008, incidents linked to its cadre members have increased.[SUP]
[15][/SUP] In consideration of its capabilities, Anonymous has been posited by
CNN to be one of the three major successors to
WikiLeaks.[SUP]
[16][/SUP] In 2012, American magazine
Time named Anonymous as one of the most influential groups of people in the world.[SUP]
'' [/SUP]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29
