My Conceptions Of Civil Disobedience

If you asked me a few weeks ago what I thought about civil disobedience and what actions are forms of civil disobedience I would have answered with very simple responses, such as marching, protestings, etc. But as I’ve begun to learn more about different forms of civil disobedience and developed a nuanced understanding of these said actions I can say that my beliefs and understanding has changed. The texts that I have read over the past week have provided me with insight that has vastly changed my conceptions and knowledge on what civil disobedience is and how it is practiced.
My conceptions of civil disobedience were originally fairly shallow as I briefly stated. Similar to others I only thought of civil disobedience as certain particular

I found that he pursued some other interesting ideas around civil disobedience. Specifically about unity and how it can help bring change. This reinforced my ideas on civil disobedience and how it occurs in more ways than I originally thought. From his essay one of the most profound things I read was, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself”. (Lewis, 2020). From this quote and the entire essay itself I felt that Lewis was trying to convey that we must work together to unite and bring change to our societies and rebuild communities. In my mind I was presented with two options by Lewis, that I either join in with a cause or I stand on the sidelines and take the side of the oppressors. And while Lewis did not explicitly state this in the essay I felt that this was a major point of the work. Now as I said before this continued building my ideas on civil disobedience. I now see unifying with others for a common goal in some ways being a form of disobedience. Similar to my opinions on Davis, I find that doing what society has conditioned us to avoid is another way of lashing out against a

I for a long time have and in some ways still am a strong believer that violence at times is a more efficient way to bring social change. This is not so say civil disobedience, which is widely considered non-violent, is not also effective but I believe violence is more often successful for bringing large social changes. One thing that these texts have presented me with though is new perspectives. I believe more so now that civil disobedience is effective and that because of the multitude of ways it can be practiced that in many situations it is much more effective than violent acts. There are two different sources that changed my opinion on this. The first being the “I’m walkin’ For My Freedom” exhibit. This exhibit by Southern Utah University displayed to me through images how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s was successful through non-violent means. (Matuszak, Stewart, & Braiker). While I knew a bit about the movement and who was involved I didn’t understand the true magnitude of it. I imagine this is why the exhibit was made though. To help inform those who don’t know much about the movement. So in that way it was successful. This built on my understanding of civil disobedience and how effective it can be. This exhibit paired with the TEDx Talk with Erica Chenoweth helped further convince me of the success of civil disobedience. In the TEDx Talk they provide statistical evidence