History is littered with direct action, civil disobedience, proving pivotal - Diggers and Levellers during the English Civil War, Tolpuddle Martyrs, campaigners against the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic, Suffragettes, Gandhi and the salt marches, Black civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests, poll-tax riots, anti-road protests, direct action against genetically modified crops.
When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of equal protection of laws, or when such guarantees exist on paper but are not respected in practice, opposition and even social unrest may ensue.