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Negative Effects Of Civil Disobedience

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Negative Effects Of Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience has a positive effect on a free society. It allows people to display their rights or beliefs without hurting others. A peaceful protest gets someone’s point across mush more effectively than a violent protest. In a violent protest people point to the protestors and easily take away credibility from the people protesting. The protestors look unintelligent as they resort to violence. The resorting to violence can show that people don’t know how to express their opinions in an intelligent manner. Thus, these people become angry and lash out at others. They make neutral parties angry and lose some people that could become supporters. One example is that the Black Panthers were never as popular than the Freedom Riders. The Freedom …show more content…
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote the Letter from a Birmingham Jail and criticized clergymen who spoke out against the timing of his protests, many Americans backed Dr. King up. His civil disobedience was heard and respected. In Civil Disobedience Mr. Thoreau talks about how it is your duty to fight unjust laws. However, he did not discredit violence. When Thoreau was arrested, he did not use violence to support his beliefs. He did not pay his poll tax because he thought it was going towards supporting the Mexican-American War and the expansion of slavery in the South. This was against his beliefs so he decided to stop paying his poll tax. He protested in a nonviolent manner and accepted the consequences. His beliefs were thoroughly studied by Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi. Both Dr. King and Gandhi used peaceful protests to stand up to oppressive forces and both eded up winning their battle. Dr. King was able to end segregation through the Freedom Riders and Peace Walks. These protests had a positive impact to society and were done with a minimal loss of life. If Dr. King would have used violence to express is beliefs, he probably wouldn’t have won any rights for African Americans. A more current event is the fight for women’s rights. The walks that many people are doing to express their desire to win equal rights between men and women are being done peacefully, and that helps these people get their voices heard. This raises the chances that some rights will be won for

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