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