Oppressed Peoples

“Oppressed People” “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Even in the time of the ancient Romans, violence has helped oppressed people become free from their royal bonds. An example of such oppression is the French Revolution, where the aristocrats and the king, Louis XVI mistreated their peasants, which lead to the poor revolting violently. On the other hand, some protests don’t use violent acts, such as Ghandi’s peaceful protests in India for independence from Britain. Although wars and other acts of violence have liberated oppressed peoples in the past, actions of non-violence have proved just as successful. In some cases, violence is needed in the process of gaining civil and political rights, when people feel that governments are exercising total control over them. A prime example of this is the French Revolution of 1789-1799. The king of France, Louis XVI, was an unfair ruler of his own people; he wouldn’t give his people enough food to sustain life and would keep all of the bread for him and the rest of the nobles. As a result, the citizens rose up against the government. The citizens marched to Versailles with soldiers heads stuck on spears, eventually toppling the guards to get ahold of the stronghold that contained all the gunpowder in France. In the end, the King was forced to sign a document called The Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was coined from the Americans Declaration of Independence. In a similar case to the French Revolution were violence was necessary to the people who were oppressed by the government is the American Revolution. The thirteen colonies broke away from the British Empire to form an independent nation. An excellent example of how the Americans revolted was the Boston Tea Party, where the Sons of Liberty tossed all of the tea in Boston that was sent by the East India Co. into the Boston harbour in protest of taxation without representation. Eventually the