Civil Disobedience Training

Civil disobedience trainers teach the members of ACT UP techniques for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. At the March 13, 1989 meeting, Amy Bauer (ACT UP's main civil disobedience trainer) will give a 10-15 minute introduction to civil disobedience training, with the assistance of the other civil disobedience trainers. The civil disobedience trainers should gather at the beginning of the meeting and talk through the specifics of the training. 

This training will:

a) convince people that if they are going to engage in civil disobedience that they should come to one of the longer civil disobedience trainings that will take place before Target City Hall, and 

b) give anyone who does not come to one of those longer trainings a basic understanding of what they need to know about civil disobedience. 

This will consist of actually getting the people at the meeting to form small groups and practice sitting down in the street in protest, and making their bodies go limp if they are being dragged by police. Minute 4:10 to 18:28 of the video entitled ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings on this page shows this training in action. This document outlines the training.

Amy will also try to get a sense of who is planning to get arrested at Target City Hall. She’ll do this both when she is talking to the Floor and by going around to the various affinity groups to ask.

Civil disobedience trainers: 

Amy Bauer (lead trainer)

Gregg Bordowitz

Steven Cordova

Alexis Danzig

Mike Frisch

Jean Elizabeth Glass

John Kelly

Gerri Wells