How Is Civil Disobedience Similar To Gandhi's Oppression

Many of these people stood up for similar or the same groups. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation?" (Saxby). This quote is from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. Thoreau believed that the public was being oppressed by their government and that government stifled free-thinking and free will. His belief became manifest in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union cut off communications and trade between itself and the rest of the world, and thus between its peoples and those of the rest of the world. The Iron Curtain and actual walls, such as the Berlin Wall, kept the Soviets separated from the rest of the world. Its people were not free to go where they pleased or do as they pleased. They were oppressed by their very

“We [Indians] made it clear to the said Government that we would never bow to its outrageous laws” (Applebee). The native Indians too were oppressed by their government. In addition to the Indians, Gandhi also stood up for the South Africans. “In opposing the atrocious laws of the Government of South Africa, it was this method [satyagraha] that we adopted” (Applebee). How the South Africans were treated is similar to how the African Americans in the United States were treated: like second-class citizens who were oppressed by people who thought themselves superior due to deep-seeded racism. But there were always people to stand against such oppression. Thoreau, in his Civil Disobedience, protested slavery. Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, protested the continued oppression of African Americans in the days following the end slavery in her speeches by saying, “We have been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we… will come up again” (Gilbert). And this oppression continued well past those days too. The characters in The Great Debaters stood against oppression as