>Tom rightly cites Sheehan's Camp Casey -- which isn't quite illegal.
Being "illegal" is not the point of civil disobedience. In fact, the borderline situation is undoubtedly better for making the point that much of "you can't do that" thinking is illusory. Rosa Parks on the bus. Sit-ins at lunch counters. If those actions were illegal than whatever laws they broke were more fundamentally illegal. Early in the Camp Casey occupation -- around August 11 or 12 -- there was a confrontation with police who told Sheehan and her supporters they had made their point and should move on. The cops massed and the demonstrators made plans for non-violent resistence. The arrests never came. Maybe the lawyers advised there was no law being violated or maybe the White House pr people advised that mass arrests would bring greater publicity to Sheehan.
It is far, far better to stage a disobedience action where no one gets arrested or where the legality of the arrests are so extensive and/or ambiguous that no one gets convicted of anything. After all the point is to CHANGE the law, not to be crushed by it.
There are also very important "laws" that are not laws at all.
The Sandwichman