Civil Disobedience Rhetorical Analysis

Henry David Thoreau was an American author and poet. He wrote many books such as, Walden and many more. Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War. Thoreau begins his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoint.

Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Many of this protests were led by some greatest people who

ever lived. They included Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. Not everyone who used civil disobedience were famous, the unknown man who defied the tanks sent to eliminate the peaceful marchers in China. All these people showed the world that civil disobedience works. Instead of using violent ways, they would use marches, strikes and boycotts to get the things they wanted.
In “ Cesar Chavez’s peaceful civil disobedience” (2015), Carlos Alcala states that “... Chavez announced that he would be arrested that he would be arrested in peaceful civil disobedience to an unjust order.” Alcala shows that Chavez wanted to show everyone that getting arrested would gain the public’s eye and even the world’s. He wanted to prove that civil disobedience really worked. Chavez wanted to push it a little more. Once in jail, the arrested strikers and Chávez continued their peaceful civil disobedience by refusing to sign forms for their release that were conditioned on their agreement to return to court. Chávez knew that without their signatures, the sheriff was forced to keep the strikers in jail until the jail filled beyond capacity.
Ironically, the sheriff who had been so eager to arrest the UFW strikers now begged to get the farm workers out of his jail. He complained that the jail was full, that Chávez was organizing the prisoners in jail for improved conditions, and that crowds were conducting candlelight vigils outside the jail praying for Chávez’s release. Chavez took this opportunity and decided to sign the forms but wanted the strike a win for them. So he vowed to stay in his jail cell and run the strike in his jail cell. Eventually, it was the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board that adopted regulations allowing the United Farm Workers (UFW) access to strikebreakers.
Civil Disobedience did not work all the time. Not all UFW strikes were as peaceful. Frequently, the strikers were beaten and some were killed, but César Chávez never wavered from his belief in peaceful civil disobedience.

In 1964, the US was facing a tough crisis with segregation.

Segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart. Whites and Colored people could not share; parks, restrooms, classrooms, drinking fountains voting sites. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to change life for the colored people. He believed that they the right to vote. According to the 15th amendment, “ it granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” By using this amendment King used civil disobedience to get his object completed. He want all minorities to get the right to vote as the

whites.
In Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”(April 1963), he begs that “ In any nonviolent act there are four steps: collections of facts, negotiations, self-purification and direct action. We have gone through this at Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.” King was trying to tell that Birmingham was the perfect spot to use civil disobedience. In 1963 Birmingham was the most segregated city in the United States. The infamous record of police brutality on the African American population . They beat them for no reason and turn a blind eye when they are involved in hate crimes. King wanted to change the voting segregation in Birmingham. African Americans had to take difficult entry exams and pay voter tax in order to vote. After talking with the city board, Birmingham decided to remove all voting barriers for Africans Americans.
39 years before the events in Birmingham, an Indian man named Mahatma Gandhi was tried of getting orders from an outsider. He wanted to stop listening to the British colonists. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram, at Sabermanti with several dozen followers on a journey of some 240 miles to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. Gandhi wanted to defy the British using peaceful ways. Instead of doing violent protests, he would march to be more peaceful There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha or march.
In the History Channel Website they write¨He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud.

Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud–and British law had been defied.¨ Gandhi didn´t care that police pohibit him from making salt. He was using peaceful tactics to achieve his goal of civil disobedience. Gandhi would later get arrested on May 21st but his movement would continue on.

In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison. He later met with Lord Irwin , the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India’s future. The meeting was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged Gandhi as a force they could not suppress or ignore. Gandhi had achieve his goal of using civil disobedience against the British colonists.

A recent example of civil disobedience is Nelson Mandela the South African activist. Mandela pushed to end apartheid in his home country of South Africa. He used civil disobedience to end this form of segregation He spent 28 years in South African prison for trying to end apartheid in South Africa.and former president Nelson Mandela helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human

rights.
A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the anti apartheid movement both within his country and internationally.
Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multi ethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. after retiring from politics in 1999, he remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world until his death in 2013 at the age of 95. (History Channel 2006)