It takes on those in control more openly and directly, and is more in your face . It will involve action designed to disrupt, such as invading a meeting, blockading a road, holding demonstrations which have not been coordinated with the police and the local council, occupying buildings, and going ahead with a strike that has been decreed unlawful by the authorities. So environmental activists, for example, will picket a uranium mine, block an underwater outlet from a chemical works, and dump waste outside a company headquarters. In many countries people involved in confrontational action tread a fine line between action which will result in prosecution and action which, although technically illegal, will not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Activists may occupy a building not knowing whether the police will arrest or simply eject them.
Violent action involves damage to property and violence against people.
So the students or workers in some countries take to the streets, and literally do battle with the police or armed services. Taking such action involves flagrantly breaking the law, or confronting authorities who will offer little leniency if the activists are detained. Taking such action is physically dangerous, and involves stepping across both legal and moral boundaries. The three kinds of action I have described correlate loosely with Harbermas s tripartitions. We can see that violent action in its simplest form relates to the physical and objective worlds.