May 3, 2011 12:30PM 

# “This time they said, ‘We’re not going.’ ” 

By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) 

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“This time they said, ‘We’re not going.’”

That was the quote that caught my attention in last week’s PBS broadcast of “Stonewall Uprising,” a documentary about the “Stonewall riots” that launched the gay rights movement in 1969. And it made me think of other people who finally said “no” to oppression — like Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, and Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia.

[At the Britannica blog](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/05/were-not-going/) I look at the connections among these resisters and movements and ask:

> What causes some acts of resistance to succeed? Is it historical inevitability, just the right moment for the dry field of hidden dissatisfaction to be set on fire by a spark? Some libertarian — and other — radicals wonder why Americans don’t revolt against what the radicals see as tyranny.

##### Related Tags 

[General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) 

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