A People's History of Sabotage and Civil Disobedience in the US by Howard Zinn

The Boston Tea Party of 1773, which everyone knows about, is
the most striking example in our history of sabotage, done for a noble
purpose, resistance to the tyranny of England. Before that, in 1765,
colonists destroyed stamps to protest the Stamp Act. In the 1850s,
there were a number of instances in which property was destroyed by
anti-slavery groups breaking into courthouses and police stations in
order to rescue ex-slaves being returned to their masters by terms of
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. For instance, in February 1851, in
Boston, a man known as Shadrach was seized, threatened with return to
slavery. Fifty blacks rescued him from the court room. Eight blacks
and whites were indicted. The jury would not convict.
Later in 1851 in Syracuse, a slave named "Jerry" was rescued by
abolitionists breaking into a police station. Eighteen were indicted.
A jury would not convict them.
The historian Vincent Harding, in THERE IS A RIVER, writes; 'The
struggle over fugitives, heightened over the decades by the relentless
civil disobedience of individuals and committees, played a central
role in forcing the system of slavery to its breaking point."
In the 1930s there were innumerable acts of desperate
people violating property rights to get food for their families.
The sit-down strikes of 1936 and 1937 violated laws of private
property, but were part of a campaign to win rights for workers.
I think while it may be hard to find many instances of
actual sabotage, it is not hard to make a case that acts of civil
disobedience have a noble tradition, that they have played a role in
rectifying injustices, that the courts have acknowledged that free
speech is not confined to verbal behavior but can extend to symbolic
actions. For instance in the 1966 case of "Brown v. Louisiana", the
Supreme Court said that the principle of free speech is "not confined
to verbal expression."
It may be necessary to emphasize the role of civil
disobedience in general, of which sabotage is one possible tactic.
In his book THE WISE MINORITY, Leon Friedman says: "There is hardly a
reform movement in the history of the United States
that did not feel it necessary or desirable to violate established
laws as part of its campaign for justice." Thomas Jefferson said, at
the time of the disruptive acts of Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts in
1786: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on
certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive."
In their book THE LONGEST DEBATE, Charles and Barbara
Whalen, giving the history of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, point to the great protests in the South of 1963, in 800 cities,
as crucial in getting that Act passed by Congress.
During the Vietnam War, there were many acts of sabotage
involving the destruction of draft records to protest the war. A
number of these people were convicted and sent to jail. But in 1973 in
Camden, New Jersey, where the defendants had destroyed draft
records, they were acquitted by the jury.
In 1974, in Western Massachusetts, the anti-nuclear
protester Sam Lovejoy committed an act of sabotage by toppling a 500
foot tower that had been set up as a precursor to building a nuclear
power plant. This was seen by the judge not as an ordinary crime but
as an act of civil disobedience, and he called off the trial.
In the 1980s, starting with the "Plowshares Eight"
action in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where religious pacifists
poured blood on nuclear missiles, there were many such actions of
sabotage. Some juries found the defendants guilty. In other cases,
there were hung juries. In a few cases there were acquittals. Often
jurors felt forced to a guilty verdict by the instructions of the
judge, though, as one juror said about the 1980 "Plowshares" action:
"I didn't think they really went to commit a crime. They went to
protest...."
In March of 1985, three protesters against nuclear war,
who were charged with "malicious destruction of property" at the
Williams International plant in Walled Lake, Michigan, where the
cruise missile engine is made, were acquitted.
In asking that punishment be mitigated, I think it is
important to emphasize the intent of the defendants, which was not to
cause damage to any human being, but to make a statement about an
important social issue. In short, they are not criminals in the
ordinary sense of the word. Their acts are acts of CIVIL
disobedience, not CRIMINAL disobedience.

Howard Zinn