A staunch opponent of the Mexican-American War and slavery, Thoreau protested what he viewed as unjust activities of the State by refusing to pay a poll tax – resulting in brief imprisonment.

The term “ civil disobedience ” was popularized by Henry David Thoreau in his essay of the same name. Notably, civil disobedience has been employed by environmental activists and the climate movement to protest fossil fuel extraction by governments and corporations. These forms of protests have been utilized in social movements throughout history to challenge the status quo and bring about meaningful change. Their protests were inherently a form of civil disobedience, whereby residing in the forest – while technically illegal – they hoped to disrupt the construction of “Cop City” and bring wider attention to the issue. While mostly nonviolent, some protestors have faced charges of domestic terrorism after destroying pieces of construction equipment. Concerned with the destruction of a forest and militarization of their local police force in a neighborhood that has disproportionately been victim to police violence, Terán and other activists have been staging a sit-in in the forest since 2021.

Terán was an environmental activist protesting the construction of a $90 million police training facility referred to by protesters as “Cop City.” This training center is slated to be built in a section of the South River forest – a large area of urban greenspace surrounded by predominantly Black communities. On January 18 of this year, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who went by the name Tortuguita, was shot and killed by police outside of Atlanta. The Fight against Extraction: Civil Disobedience in the Climate Movement

Thoreau civil disobedience