When All Else Fails
When one has exhausted all other options, when speaking no longer works, nonviolent direct action is the answer. When one is being pushed aside and told to wait, non-violent direct action becomes the answer. Non-violent direction action is completely acceptable because it lets the voice of the mistreated be heard, forces the issue to be addressed and is completely nonviolent.
In using non-violent direct action, it calls for the voices of the minority to be heard. In 1912, Alice Paul set for the protest for the right to vote for women. The women picketed outside the White House during World War I (1917) for the passage of the 19th amendment. The movement put plenty of women in jail, each time with the sentence more severe, …show more content…
This is so important because many times the issues have been buried, hidden away and ignored. When the issue is brought to the surface and laid in front of the unjust, it no longer holds as “not my problem” thing. Rosa Parks was the first to take a stand on segregation on December 1st, 1955. Riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to give her seat to a white citizen. This started a protest against the public transportation that lasted for over a year. The racial segregation was forced to be addressed (at least for the public transportation system) since the black community made up most of the public transportations paying customers. A federal law was passed on December 20th, 1956, ruling that the segregation on the buses in Alabama was unconstitutional. King states in his Letter from Birmingham Jail “non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (Jr., p. 577). King is saying here that this action brings the issue to the open. They can no longer bury the issue when it is causing a problem in the …show more content…
Michael Lacewing, writer for Routledge, states in his article Justifying Civil Disobedience and Direct Action, “civil disobedience exposes society to harm- it can be diverse, it may encourage disrespect for the law, it could increase political instability, and in serious cases, it may even lead to reprisals on people who do not support the aims of the protestors” (Lacewing). While it may be true that these kinds of actions do, at times, cause mayhem, I think it is important to remember that it is not the goal for the action. In King’s Letter he writes “Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time, we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff. This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer” (Jr., p. 577). It is clear that the action is not aiming to cause mayhem where it is
When one has exhausted all other options, when speaking no longer works, nonviolent direct action is the answer. When one is being pushed aside and told to wait, non-violent direct action becomes the answer. Non-violent direction action is completely acceptable because it lets the voice of the mistreated be heard, forces the issue to be addressed and is completely nonviolent.
In using non-violent direct action, it calls for the voices of the minority to be heard. In 1912, Alice Paul set for the protest for the right to vote for women. The women picketed outside the White House during World War I (1917) for the passage of the 19th amendment. The movement put plenty of women in jail, each time with the sentence more severe, …show more content…
This is so important because many times the issues have been buried, hidden away and ignored. When the issue is brought to the surface and laid in front of the unjust, it no longer holds as “not my problem” thing. Rosa Parks was the first to take a stand on segregation on December 1st, 1955. Riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to give her seat to a white citizen. This started a protest against the public transportation that lasted for over a year. The racial segregation was forced to be addressed (at least for the public transportation system) since the black community made up most of the public transportations paying customers. A federal law was passed on December 20th, 1956, ruling that the segregation on the buses in Alabama was unconstitutional. King states in his Letter from Birmingham Jail “non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (Jr., p. 577). King is saying here that this action brings the issue to the open. They can no longer bury the issue when it is causing a problem in the …show more content…
Michael Lacewing, writer for Routledge, states in his article Justifying Civil Disobedience and Direct Action, “civil disobedience exposes society to harm- it can be diverse, it may encourage disrespect for the law, it could increase political instability, and in serious cases, it may even lead to reprisals on people who do not support the aims of the protestors” (Lacewing). While it may be true that these kinds of actions do, at times, cause mayhem, I think it is important to remember that it is not the goal for the action. In King’s Letter he writes “Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time, we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff. This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer” (Jr., p. 577). It is clear that the action is not aiming to cause mayhem where it is