Because it's civil disobedience. If you fight back, resist arrest, evade the police, etc it is just disobedience. :)

The point behind civil disobedience is to publicly demonstrate the unjustness of the law, not fight it head-on. Remember when those nonviolent University students a little while ago got pepper-sprayed? Much, much better press for them and their cause than "students start brawl with police".

Some people believe civil disobedience doesn't have to be nonviolent, but most people agree on nonviolence and all the famous examples of civil disobedience were nonviolent (Rosa Parks, Thoreau, Gandhi, etc)

Both Snowden and Assange are avoiding apprehension while being non-violent.

I said nothing about violence - in fact, your comment is the first on this page to mention violence - so I don't really understand where you're coming from.

Ok, what's a better word? I mention violence because it is most common dividing line, but I think what I mean could be called "resistance". Whether we call it violence or resistance doesn't change my previous comment; as I clearly described, civil disobedience is typically considered to be passively accepting the consequences as part of a public display.