The denotative meaning of civil disobedience is the refusal to obey laws as a way of forcing the government to do or change something. That "something" is usually a law or policy; but, in reality, how effective is civil disobedience by everyday citizens? Does peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society? The answer is not as clear cut as one might think; indeed, the results of civil disobedience are oftentimes subjective. On December 1, 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. She was arrested and charged with inciting civil disobedience and violating Jim Crow laws that permeated the South until 1965. The ensuing 381 day Montgomery Bus Line boycott is heralded as the start of the Civil Rights Movement (Korpe). In this case, Parks' actions were very effective in changing policy and positively impacting a free society. In 1849's "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau espouses "that government is best which governs least." He proclaims that governments do more harm than good.
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Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth century. But are bus boycotts and naturalistic treatises the most effective ways to bring about true, enduring change in our American democracy? Is there a better way to "rally the troops" and encourage dramatic, decisive change? In "Is It Right To Break the Law?", Charles Frankel argues "that civil disobedience can never be justified in a democratic society, because such a society provides its members with legal redress of their grievances." Do the Ferguson, Missouri, or Charlotte, North Carolina, rioters have it correct? Are more immediate and expedient measures called for? What would Martin Luther King, Junior say to the protesters of today against police killings of African-American men in cities across America? Are their acts of looting and nightly demonstrations truly what he had in mind fifty years ago? Has progress really been made? Is this the new face of civil disobedience? What would Bobby Kennedy say today? Is all of his work in vain? Is the threat simply internal? Morris Leibman asserts that "a nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we have came from or what we have been about." He admonishes the American public to remember the past struggles of civil disobedience and reminds us that, in fact, it is our duty to do so. Furthermore, he rails against "flouting the law." Leibman believes that there is "no justification for violent disobedience under our constitutional system." Only under the vile auspices of a despot ruler, would such acts of civil disobedience be justified. Our Founding Fathers died for their beliefs and so
Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth century. But are bus boycotts and naturalistic treatises the most effective ways to bring about true, enduring change in our American democracy? Is there a better way to "rally the troops" and encourage dramatic, decisive change? In "Is It Right To Break the Law?", Charles Frankel argues "that civil disobedience can never be justified in a democratic society, because such a society provides its members with legal redress of their grievances." Do the Ferguson, Missouri, or Charlotte, North Carolina, rioters have it correct? Are more immediate and expedient measures called for? What would Martin Luther King, Junior say to the protesters of today against police killings of African-American men in cities across America? Are their acts of looting and nightly demonstrations truly what he had in mind fifty years ago? Has progress really been made? Is this the new face of civil disobedience? What would Bobby Kennedy say today? Is all of his work in vain? Is the threat simply internal? Morris Leibman asserts that "a nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we have came from or what we have been about." He admonishes the American public to remember the past struggles of civil disobedience and reminds us that, in fact, it is our duty to do so. Furthermore, he rails against "flouting the law." Leibman believes that there is "no justification for violent disobedience under our constitutional system." Only under the vile auspices of a despot ruler, would such acts of civil disobedience be justified. Our Founding Fathers died for their beliefs and so