Martin Luther King's Use Of Civil Disobedience In The United States

At the moment that I am writing this essay, already CNN, ABC7, and other news stations are broadcasting several protests going on across the country. While most of these protests seem like they're not doing much other than standing and yelling, they're actually performing one of the most powerful tools a citizen can use in a time of crisis: Civil Disobedience. This form of disobedience has not only been used in today’s recent protests, but has been a strong form of protests for the past several decades. In Martin Luther King’s freedom marches, women’s marches, today’s marches against seemingly unfair bills and legislation, civil disobedience is used by the American people every day, and is used to help positively affect our free society.

Why hasn’t Thoreau payed this tax? Because he was against the Mexican-American war. He felt that it was an unjust war, and decided to not pay his tax in protest. After his night in jail, he had wrote a letter about his experience, his thoughts, and some of his conclusions on society and titled it “Civil Disobedience.” Let’s start by analyzing one of his first conclusions: that government can end up turning just as corrupt as an individual, especially when working on a majority rule. “Unjust laws exist,” he writes in his statement, and he says that people must try and be a “counter-friction” to these unjust laws of the government, even while they may be put at risk of imprisonment because of it. But what does he say about imprisonment? Thoreau says to accept the punishment, so others could see the example that they make when acting against

Well, almost 120 years later, these principles would be resurrected in the form of the Civil Rights movement, in, Martin Luther King Jr. Much like Thoreau, he disobeyed state law ((an injunction against public demonstrations)) and led a peaceful march through the streets of Birmingham until he was detained and arrested. While in jail, he had worked on his own letter, and published it after he was released as “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which analyzes the process of civil disobedience, and more. When he begins to analyze civil disobedience, he starts off with a very important point, the beginning stage of disobedience is to determine whether there is even injustice in the government. If there is injustice, then you don’t even start with protest, you actually first attempt to negotiate some form of agreement between you and the “oppressor.” If that doesn’t work, then you come up with a peaceful plan, and then go forward with the protests. If one doesn’t go forward with civil disobedience unless there is an injustice then it can only really positively affect society. In fact, sometimes direct action is the only course that could be taken in order to stimulate the negotiation process with “stubborn