What Is Civil Disobedience?

Howard Zinn once said “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” Objecting to laws has played a vital part in forming the country we live in today. An act as far back as The Boston Tea Party has been a key part to what has led to what we value here in The United States of America. Zinn, along with many other legendary social activists believe that civil disobedience is essential to bringing about social change in a democracy. A democracy functions on the basis that all citizens of the state are to be involved with decisions on affairs- a government by and for the people. Civil disobedience acts as a force within the state that keeps laws in check while helping the progression of movements …show more content…
There are many activist groups that attempt to draw awareness to specific issues in our society and claim that they act in terms of civil disobedience, but only a select number of groups can truly be defined as performing acts of civil disobedience. Howard Zinn defines civil disobedience as the deliberate, discriminate, violation of law for a vital purpose. The spirit of that definition lies within the heart of a democracy, but what differentiates some of the most effectively practiced forms of civils disobedience from others is intelligence. Not only do we need civil disobedience, but from my own reasoning, I believe that the most effective civil disobedience is one that combines the intelligent reasoning and well thought through non-violent deliberate and discriminate violation of law for a vital purpose to the greater good. Organizations like Anonymous whose intelligence, vigilantism, and benefits they bring to society are all deliberate violations of law for the vital purpose of freedom of information, which are true representations of civil …show more content…
The technology that is available today helps various organizations to build upon the legacy of civil disobedience established by Dr. King and Gandhi. Anonymous has been using technology to perform acts very similar to those of MLK and Gandhi. Dr. King’s movement against racial segregation included bus boycotting aimed to financially effect the bus industry enough to draw attention and make a changes to the issues at hand. Anonymous operates similarly in which when going against large corporations they are able to affect them financially by outing them through scandals that lose customers and therefore create a huge financial decline. In fact the ability for Anonymous to navigate through technology allows for them to go beyond traditional approaches which creates for very immediate effects rather than a long drawn out process such as boycotting, which would take