How bad would things have to get for you to engage in civil disobedience?

[Kubo]

I don’t mean polite marches with amusing/satirical home made signs. I mean angry demonstrations/disruption. Risking physical harm or imprisonment, as the suffragettes did.

So much of politics and the UK today is making me scared and angry, but I am also scared by my response, which has been impotent and apathetic. I haven’t even been to any of the polite marches.

So much unprecedented shit seems to be happening that I’ve lost my faith in UK politics and can see how countries slide into populism and fascism and no longer trust that it is something that can’t happen here. But I don’t know where I would draw the line and actually do something.

Do we always wake up too late?

Ooh you say so many different things in your post. So you are angry, but not angry enough to currently act. You feel scared, but paralysed to do anything? You feel that action already taken has been 'polite' yet people have been arrested, have lost time from work, school, have taken a stand? You sound like you are judging others for not reacting violently, but what scale of violence are you talking about? I just read an article about how mental illness in Greenland is off the scale as they are so terrified about the global crisis that we are currently facing. Surely that is a form of action in its own right?
No, I don't believe we always wake up too late, so many people, so many scientists are screaming in their own way about the fact that we need to change, right now. They are trying to be heard by governments that are still driven by the belief that success is in the form of financial gain, when what we are currently facing could be the downfall of that old, ingrained belief. But it's a hard one to let go of, and it will take time. Just show up and do what you can, in whatever way that looks like for you.

I think i would be tempted to join an angry violent mob if my loved ones died as a result of government incompetence e.g. preventable medication shortages.

I know exactly what you mean and feel very similar. If we don’t get no deal blocked pending a general election and some robust regulation/accountability on the reporting of it all I really like to think I’d “do” something. What I don’t know but anything less represents a system I’ve lost all faith in and respect for. I have a nasty feeling I’d carry on obediently going to work and paying the bills though.

The suffragettes didn't win the vote because of their civil disobedience. It raised awareness, but women didn't actually get the vote until after the first world war, when women had turned their hands to the jobs men usually did. It was their civic mentality and proof that they were just as useful to society that won the vote.

The current unrest in HK is an exact example of this. They are winning the world's sympathy, but the Chinese government are going to crack down even harder as a result.

I consider it to be bad enough now, but I'm too pregnant and tired to spread anarchy! I just cheer internally when other people fuck things up on my behalf.

I would lose my job so civil disobedience is sadly a no for me and DH by association

I actually have an ex colleague who has spent his entire life being civilly obedient. Since he's retired he's a fully paid up member of Extinction and has spent the last few months cheerfully chaining himself up to things and lying in roads