Civil Disobedience, started on July 1846, means acting directly on the object of your protest or the source of your grievance, as opposed to petitioning or lobbying for your elected representatives to act. There were three significant people who protested against the government; Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther king, Jr. They tried to get human rights for black people. "Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient" (Thoreau, 1846). Thoreau opens his essay with a radical paradox. A paradox is a statement that expresses the complexity of life by showing how opposing ideas can be both contradictory and true at the same time.When the poet Emily Dickinson wrote the line "Much Madness is divinest sense" (Textbook page 404), she was expressing a paradox. William shakespeare is expressing another paradox when he has one of his young lovers say, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." Paradox was one of Thoreau's favorite literary devices. There is a citation, which is king's Easter epistle on Civil Disobedience by David B. Oppenheimet
. THis article is part of the 50th anniversary of the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr's decision to violate an injunction forbidding him to pray, sing or march in public in Birmingham. There is information about that event; on Good Friday 1963 (which feel on April 12 that year), king led a march from the 16th street Baptist church (where four black children would be killed in a bombing five months later), heading toward city hall.
Mohandas K. Gandhi, borned on the 1869s and died on the 1948s, was a leader of India's fight for independence from British rule and he is considered the father of his country. As a young lawyer, Gandhi worked for the rights of Indians living under the racist and repressive government of South Africa. "All strong people in the world adopt this course. Everywhere wars are fought and millions of people are killed. The consequence is not the progress of a nation but its decline...." (Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1869) from on Nonviolent Resistance. He tried to make nonviolent resistance. There is an article called "Credibility Gap in Civil Disobedience Over Guns" by Joseph N. Bee. . IT contains one of the compelling ironies of recent months is playing out in California these days. Owners of assault guns-the "sporting" weapons capable of wiping out a herd of elephants or a platoon of soldiers, both recurring problems in california-are citing the precedent of civil disobedience to justify their refusal to register these guns as required by a law passed in June, 1989.
Martin Luther King, Jr., the brilliant and eloquent leader of the U.S. Civil rights movement in the 1960s, was inspired by the ideas of both Thoreau and Gandhi. King's courageous commitment to nonviolence and passive resistance captured the attention and respect of the nation. "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law..." (Martin Luther King, JR, 1963) from letter from Birmingham City Jail. he gave some examples of unjust and just laws. "THroughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote despite the fat that the Negro constitutes a majority of the population" (Martin Luther King Jr,1963). There were some leaders of civil disobedience movements around the world, such as Cesar Chavez(United States), Leo Tolstoy (Russia), Rosa Parks (United States), Lech Walesa (Poland), Aung San Su u Kyi (Myanmar, formerly burma), or Nelson MAndela (SOuth Africa).
