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Essay On Civil Disobedience

800 Words4 Pages

We live in tumultuous times. America’s present is tinged with vestiges of struggles past. Inside the melting pot we flaunt to the rest of the world is a churning stew of frustration threatening to overflow. Our facade of diversity and unity is telling of a nation diverse in opinion, united by discord. Yet to express these opinions, citizens behave not only as individuals but cohesively, their calls to action heard through city streets, within college campuses, in front of federal buildings and historic landmarks. To take on civil disobedience is to keep in line with American tradition, and from that tradition we can only move forward. Immortalized as the First Amendment is the liberty of expression: freedom of speech, press, peaceful assembly. …show more content…

Internal turmoil suggests a spark beginning with Occupy Wall Street and spreading to Black Lives Matter, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and the anti-Trump movement. News of Colin Kaepernick, the Women’s March, and travel ban demonstrations has consumed the country just as unfettered criticism of civil disobedience has consumed those struggling to understand the need to resist. The focus shifts not to the message but to the supposedly violent nature of these protests, the question of what these protesters ask for when their rights are already “guaranteed.” We must be reminded that our founding father Thomas Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” We speak now not of revolution but of civil disobedience, not of the necessity of killing but of the necessity of expression—expression that may emerge as anger toward an issue that requires addressing. Our past is riddled with violence meant to condemn, from the 1968 Democratic National Convention to Stonewall, which ignited nationwide realizations about government, Vietnam, gay rights, and homophobia. People do not lash out without cause: When they do, they have something to say. And it is when they say something that they push others to truly dissect their beliefs, to truly think about their principles and thus for

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On April 16, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, a persistent civil rights leader, addressed 8 white clergymen on the way they responded to the protests from nonviolent Negros. He supports this claim by first emphasizing that all of what is going on is part of their heritage and how everyone has rights, then by telling them breaking the law and standing up for what they believe in embodies the American spirit, and finally indicates the protesters are heroes and they are doing what they can to defend themselves and show others their side of what is going on. Through King’s use of tone, rhetorical appeals, and rhetorical tools he effectively persuades the clergymen and the people of the U.S, to fathom what is happening everyday around them and

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Ronith Murali 4th hour Mrs.Schmidt AP Language & Composition During the 60’s in America, the civil rights movements for African Americans was at it’s peak. Following Martin Luther King’s assassination, the common response to the tragedy was violence. Cesar Chavez writes this article in hopes of informing the American people that violence is not the answer, and that if they continued on King’s non-violent path to equality, it would bring about more change. When looking at Cesar Chavez ‘s article, one can clearly see that he is easily able to persuade his vengeful audience to cease the violent protests throughout America, by utilizing several examples of juxtaposition, rhetorical appeals, and impactful diction.

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When disobeying the law in a peaceable manner, the participants lose out on media coverage (due to their lack of sensationalism and interest level to viewers looking for immediacy and sanitization in the coverage of current events) except when called upon by the court of public opinion. In a free society, censorship of topical media bars citizens from a truly transparent government run by and for the people. By speaking out against such bias through action, civil disobedience itself is an act of resistance against censorship, and therefore a proponent of the values of free press and speech. These are keystones in American

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Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds — families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns. But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus — as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country.

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"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. "-Socrates. Peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society because the society is not free unless it's able to check the government. As long as the protest of the law remains peaceful it is a good thing. It is the public telling the government that they will not let them gain to much power and crush their human rights.

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The active pursuit of injustice and constant disobedience affects change within the government. Likewise, the Declaration of Independence claims that disobedience becomes a part of a citizen’s duty. The Declaration of Independence starts with a similar call to action: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another … a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation”

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Today we are all called to enact on our own civil disobedience when we are faced with injustice and unfair laws, we are called to make a stand and a declaration to stand up for what we believe

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Change and Revolution have always been in the American bloodstream; from the first wave of immigrants that came to the states, the search for change and the rebellion of injustice has been constant. Through each of our distinctive eras, we’ve had profound leaders that gave our present time the voices and opportunities to achieve the goals they never could. Martin Luther King Jr. , a civil rights activist, and Henry David Thoreau, an 1849 transcendentalist, both are common public figures of their time, pushed the ideas of ethical nonviolent protest. Their diligence made them influential activists of their time in favor of making a change in American society. King and Thoreau strongly encouraged citizens to advocate for nonviolent protest

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To Americans and many others around the world, the U.S. is the face of what should be a “free society,” not including every society’s minor flaws. Maybe it’s because I’m barely entering the brink of my social awareness as a U.S. citizen or maybe is it more due to recent threats to our freedom as Americans, but now more than in the past decade or so, the media has brought the image of huge protests, riots, and demonstrations into the spotlight. And unfortunately, more often than not, many of these events result in violence, aggression, and opposition. Nonetheless, people’s intentions and visions of victory surely do not aim to end in chaos and harm to our societies.

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If slaves never disobeyed the former laws defending slavery, there would still be slavery in America. As a human being, one disobeys purposely to make an impact on certain issues or events that society disagrees on and that is how progress is made. Disobedience is indeed a valuable trait that promotes social progress. In order to change or make an impact there has to be some form of disobedience.

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Civil Disobedience is an important moral responsibility of a citizen, however it should not get to the level of illegal activity under any circumstances, because great reform can be brought peacefully not violently. In the title named "On Civil Disobedience" by Mohandas K. Ghandi once said: “No country has ever become or will ever become, happy though victory in war”(Mohandas K. Gandhi , 148). Even that long ago, when war was at high, and people embraced it, he knew that the only thing war brought was death, and depression among civilians. This method of civil disobedience has only resulted into more wars, and no real solutions. The most efficient way to the be civilly disobedient is to be peaceful, but willing to stand up for your cause.

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People's justification to engage in civil disobedience rests on the unresponsiveness that their engagement to oppose an unjust law receives. People who yearn for a change in a policy might sometimes find themselves in a dead end because their “attempts to have the laws repealed have been ignored and legal protests and demonstrations have had no success” (Rawls 373). What Rawls says is that civil disobedience is a last option to oppose an unjust law; therefore, providing civil disobedients with a justification for their cause. Civil disobedience is the spark of light that people encountered at the dead end and they hope that this spark of light will illuminate to show that an unjust law should not exist at all. Martin Luther King, Jr, in his “Letter from

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1251 Words | 6 Pages

Civil disobedience is nonviolent resistance to a government’s law in seek of change. Civil disobedience is an effective way to bring about change because it is a harmless way of fighting an unjust law or idea, it can educate people about the cause, and it has been successful many times in history. First and foremost, civil disobedience is

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Civil Disobedience is known as breaking the law because you don 't agree with a certain law or have a peaceful protest about that law or what you believe in. An example would be when Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to the Indian ocean as the citizens gathered more and more to fight for there Indian Independence. This occasion was called the Salt March. The reason for The Salt March was a March were all the citizens from India walked with gandhi to fight back for their Independence from the British, since it was taken away from the British.

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"Community engagement refers to the process by which community benefit organizations and individuals build ongoing, permanent relationships for the purpose of applying a collective vision for the benefit of a community.” Engaging the community is an essential task for museums to accomplish. In order to do so, the museums must “determine who those communities are, their needs, and how the museum can work with them to meet their goals”. As technology and the way people learn and communicate change, museums must evolve as well and accommodate exhibits in order to have the community fully engaged into what they are trying to convey in their museum.

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