Civil Disobedience Book Report

Many controversial debates concerning Planned Parenthood and an exceeding amount of government funding to the organization are occurring in today’s news. A recent case in particular that caught the eye of many who weren't yet aware of the deliberation was when President Trump decided to sign an executive order on January 23, 2017 concerning the defunding of Planned Parenthood (Richardson). Not only did he sign this policy surrounded by seven privileged white men, but he signed it two days after the largest peaceful protest in U.S. history: The Women’s March. This matter does not only concern women, but it concerns men and children as well. As an organization, Planned Parenthood provides affordable

Civil disobedience, or the act of peacefully resisting a law, has been a fundamental part of society for centuries. Henry David Thoreau in 1849 wrote in his essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” that if a law is unjust that one not only has the right to oppose the law, but that they are in fact obligated to break the law. In this light, peaceful resistance to laws not only positively impacts society, but is indeed crucial to maintaining a fair and just society. For without this resistance, citizens would go about their business simply accepting the oppression under which they live; resistance to unjust laws is the driving force behind positive change in society, which can be seen in resistance movements throughout history.

On the eve of Martin Luther King day, the topic of civil disobedience seems particularly relevant. Civil disobedience is the method in which we, in the words of Dr. King, from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community”.

Critics of the use of civil disobedience however, will argue that civil disobedience is not always needed to cause non-violent change to an issue and progress will happen slowly over time. I will argue however, that sometime radical and fast change is needed for a society to advance, and that sometimes there are evils and wrongs that are so bad that the ends will justify the

Civil disobedience is an inherently ambiguous term, hard to distinguish from other forms of dissent, protest, and rebellion. However, over the course of history and societal development, civil disobedience has come to encompass the active protest of a power or ideology through non-participation coupled with passive resistance. As the definition of civil disobedience has developed, so has its power to accomplish societal change. Disobedient figures in history such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, and its original advocate Henry David Thoreau, have set an historical precedent for the power of civil disobedience that has persisted into a powerful instrument of social change in the present.

A man once said, “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ” And in order to make any necessary changes to the unjust law, you must use civil disobedience. Due to the fact that civil disobedience might be the only way one can express how one feels about the situation, while gathering public’s approval, in order to make the adjustments. As first demonstrated in Sophocles’ Antigone, the concept of civil disobedience can be defined as defying a law that is unjust with one’s morals. Along with evidence from a variety of other sources on civil disobedience, such as The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, Analysis of Plato’s Crito on Sparknotes, BBC News’ Ukraine marks Orange Revolution, and David Thoreau’s

From the time we are children and throughout the duration of our lives, we are told to abide by certain sets of rules. In most situations this is a perfectly acceptable expectation; speed limits, remaining quiet in libraries, and waiting until the age of twenty-one to drink are all reasonable things to ask of people. After all, these rules and laws are put in place to ensure a peaceful and safe society. However, when these rules begin to infringe upon the rights of certain groups, some citizens turn to civil disobedience as a form of protest. While some may argue that civil disobedience is nothing more than a violation of the law, it has also proven to have a positive impact on society, in more ways than one. Used by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin

In recent years, the issue of peaceful and violent protests has arisen in the United States of America, and from these protests, a question has arisen: how do these peaceful protest affect our free society? The answer to this controversial question lies in the meaning of peaceful protest and application of this definition. Civil disobedience, or a peaceful protest, is the orderly and nonviolent purposeful violation of laws in order to change a law or governing system. This practice has been used to change the opinion of the citizens or the government. The repeated use of civil disobedience has led to our society’s improvement as a whole and has impacted the USA positively; these impacts are seen in the acts of the 1968 Olympic Medalists, Tommie

The American people have always stood up to oppression and lead the fight against inequality. Our nation’s history is packed with people who were not afraid to stand up for what they believed in: fleeing religious oppression, fighting unfair taxation, and standing against mistreatment of a fellow-man.

Civil disobedience, the deliberate breaking of laws, is one of those struggles that free society needs. When society has fallen ill to corruption, to immoral legislation, to injustice, it is the duty of the citizens to stand up and speak (or scream,

America’s laws often contradict the values it seems to promote. People are encouraged to express themselves and fight for causes they believe in. However, like many infomercials shown in the media today, there is a catch. While standing up for what people believe in, they must recognize what is considered crossing the line into the territory of civil disobedience. As new laws and regulations are made, there is a lot to be learned by studying the past. Relatively, without civil disobedience, a lot of the advances in society would not have been made. According to Harrop A. Freeman, former Cornell University Professor of Law, civil disobedience is comprised of acts taken against a specific law and is “an intentional act,

Another problem that rises with civil disobedience surrounds what constitutes an “unjust” law. What differentiates a law that one has a moral obligation to break and a law that should never be broken? Can someone stop paying taxes because they believe it supports an “unjust” cause? What is an “unjust cause”? One that kills people? One that wastes money? These thorny questions can be avoided entirely if we simply set the standard of following the law, all the time, every

Civil disobedience is a concept that is valued throughout the world. If the government abuses its laws and symbolizes injustice, one can disobey those laws. Such prominent leaders that signified the importance of civil resistance through words, speeches, and walks were Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mohandas K. Gandhi. They were significant in their lifetime; they spread peaceful and meaningful resistances to prove that the government was not always right. Civil disobedience is a citizen’s moral responsibility because it demonstrates a person's capability in governing their own life no matter what the consequences are and it shows that authority only has power if the people let it control them and regulate them with unjust laws,

Socrates believed that civil disobedience was unethical. If a person does not wish for a law to exist, then they must take it to higher powers to appeal that it is wrong and should be removed (Hass).I agree with this to an extent. If there is a just and logical court system or appeal system, then by no means should people be permitted to fight the law by breaking the law. This is especially the case if the laws aren’t actually causing damage to any person’s well being. However, if the court or appeal system will not hear an argument, and their decision can or will hurt people, then I believe it is okay for a person to fight the law in a way that does

All across history, humanity has participated in the act of civil disobedience as a means to express to a higher power their disagreement with a series of actions or legislation. Civil disobedience is the act of deliberately disobeying one or more laws in order to advocate for change (Lefkowitz 204). Approaching civil disobedience in a systematic manner is necessary, however, to ensure people’s safety and to be as civilly responsible as possible. The first step is to be patient and see of the issue will take care of itself. Upon determination that the issue is one that is progressing rather than digressing, the second step is to begin negotiation. Should negotiation not be successful, demonstrations may become part of the third step. Finally,