Civil Disobedience Persuasion
Throughout history, civil disobedience has been the mainstay of ordinary people protesting against the government and unethical laws. Civil disobedience is a peaceful form of protest, without any violence or breaking any government law. People like Gandhi, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. showed the public eye that it was possible to get your point across without any acts of violence. Sit-downs, marches and hunger strikes were used as a peaceful, but powerful form of getting your point across to the government and American people. I believe that civil disobedience is an effective mode of persuasion. During the 1930s, a well known Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi began a march in protest of the British monopoly on salt, also
known as the Salt March. Britain’s salt acts restricted the Indian population from selling or collecting salt, which resulted in India’s lower class to endure hardships because of the heavy salt tax that Britain established. Gandhi set out from Sabarmati on a 241-mile march to a coastal town of Dandi along the Arabian Sea. Once Gandhi and his followers arrived, the defiled the British policy by making salt from the saltwater. Thousands upon thousands of people followed after Gandhi in protest of the British government. This protest was a groundbreaking step for India to achieve independence from Britain rule. India was finally granted independence from Britain in August 1947. On December 21, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Famously known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was a political protest against racial segregation and an influential event in the Civil Rights movement. After Parks was arrested, ninety other individuals followed suite in boycotting bus services. People used private cars, bicycles, horse-drawn buggies and hitchhiking to get to places they needed to go. However, most boycotters were physically abused from the White Citizens’ Council. On June 4, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on Alabama buses was unconstitutional. The protest was a victory.
known as the Salt March. Britain’s salt acts restricted the Indian population from selling or collecting salt, which resulted in India’s lower class to endure hardships because of the heavy salt tax that Britain established. Gandhi set out from Sabarmati on a 241-mile march to a coastal town of Dandi along the Arabian Sea. Once Gandhi and his followers arrived, the defiled the British policy by making salt from the saltwater. Thousands upon thousands of people followed after Gandhi in protest of the British government. This protest was a groundbreaking step for India to achieve independence from Britain rule. India was finally granted independence from Britain in August 1947. On December 21, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Famously known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was a political protest against racial segregation and an influential event in the Civil Rights movement. After Parks was arrested, ninety other individuals followed suite in boycotting bus services. People used private cars, bicycles, horse-drawn buggies and hitchhiking to get to places they needed to go. However, most boycotters were physically abused from the White Citizens’ Council. On June 4, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on Alabama buses was unconstitutional. The protest was a victory.