I Would Prefer Not To

PORTLAND — Refuse to walk? We’ll give you a ride. pic.twitter.com/RibmhrTLSa

— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) October 5, 2025

Gene Sharp, Method 66 (Total personal noncooperation):

Very rarely, there have been cases in which a prisoner has literally refused to do almost everything except breathe because he believed his arrest to be unjust for moral or political reasons. The best known case is that of Corbett Bishop, an American religious conscientious objector during World War II. 

Bishop had initially cooperated with the alternative service program provided for conscientious objectors—Civilian Public Service—but over a period of time he concluded that his beliefs required him to discontinue cooperation in any form. Refusing to continue C.P.S. work, Bishop was arrested on September 9, 1944; he announced that his spirit was free and that if the arresting officers wanted his body, they would have to take it without any help from him. 

In the federal prison at Milan, Michigan, he refused to eat, stand up or dress himself. He was force-fed by tube. After eighty-six days he was brought to trial for walking out of C.P.S. camp, but the judge released him without bond until a decision could be made. Bishop refused to return to court and was rearrested in Philadelphia on February 20, 1945. Bishop then went limp and remained limp during his later hearings. 

He told the U.S. Commissioner: “I am not going to cooperate in any way, shape or form. I was carried in here. If you hold me, you’ll have to carry me out. War is wrong, I don’t want any part of it.” 

His limp body was carried into the court in Philadelphia on February 26. Shortly afterward, he was returned to Grand Rapids, where he was fined and sentenced to four years in prison. Bishop continued his complete personal noncooperation and finally, after 144 days, he was paroled without signing any papers or making any promises, under the Special Parole Plan of Executive Order 8641. 

He was, however, expected to work on a cooperative farm in Georgia, and when he refused to do so he was again arrested, on September 1 in Berea, Ohio, this time as a parole violator. Bishop again went limp, resumed his full noncooperation, and was returned to the Milan prison to finish his uncompleted sentence. 

After continued refusal by Bishop to do anything, and considerable newspaper publicity, the Department of Justice on March 12, 1946, released him on parole, with no conditions and without his signing anything; he returned to his home in Hamilton, Alabama, thus ending 193 days of continuous and total personal noncooperation.

More recently, there's American hikers Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattel, imprisoned in Iran from 2009 to 2011 (Swarthmore NV database; Mother Jones).  Anyway, point being that there are many ways to resist evil.

Selah.