The effects of protesting may not be evident until days to years after the protest takes place. Sometimes, protesting might not even be helpful. They definitely are not the same as they used to be years ago. Whether or not they have evolved and become more useful can be argued. Several people have said that protesting no longer has the effect that it used to. There are many things that go wrong that can lead to the failure of a protest. Protests are not only about the people who care enough for the wrong that has been done, protests are about the reaction; the media getting close and personal to the protesters to get their opinions on sensitive topics; the pedestrian that walk with intense stares at the ground avoiding eye contact thinking …show more content…
I can understand how those people might feel when walking down the sidewalks of San Francisco, because I used to be one of those people; I used to bury my head or look to the other side of the street because I was afraid of the passion in the eyes of the protesters. As a kid, all I saw were people shouting aggressive words and swinging signs around. As a child, you can only imagine the visual of the people; having a man or woman that might not have showered in a couple days, because of being on the streets for so long protesting, yelling horrible things were going to happen if nothing was done. Imprinted with that image as a child, that child might grow up with the idea that protesters are dirty, aggressive people. That is why some men and women walk with their eyes down on their phones looking for something to distract them from the reality of the world. That is why protest are no longer the well oiled machine that it used to be just years ago; people hold grudges that they carry with them for years until they replace those grudges with new and harsher grudge against protesters and their reasons for taking issues to the …show more content…
He states that it continuing with the momentum giving from a protest is not carried to the next protest for the same issue; it's a one and done situation or the public that once gave attention, didn't stay interested in the protest therefore, the media doesn't continue to cover the protest and the issue at hand doesn't get fixed for a long time to come if ever. Niam also stated that the people that participate in protest are followers and not helpful by saying “the hodgepodge groups that participated had no formal affiliation with one another, no clear hierarchy, and no obvious leaders” (The Atlantic) also leads to the loss of momentum. Because of the lack of organization, the protesters don't know where to look next. People are generally followers and without a leader, people begin to freak out and it becomes anarchy. For example the Occupy Wall Street protest was one of the largest protest in this decade; for a while that was the biggest event that happened in the news that wasn't detrimental to hear about on the news. Though without a protest as organized or “large the Occupy movement has vanished from the headlines” (the Atlantic) and hasn't been talked about in the media as much as once did. Occupy Wall Street is an important stepping stone to the evolution
Others protest that has had an effect on America since the Amendment was ratified are protest against war such as Vietnam and Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Civil Rights Movement, and more recently the protest of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. Also the many strikes and pickets labor union have been involved in through out history. There are differences among these gatherings. The most striking difference is typically if the protest is violent or non-violent. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau referred to the use of civil disobedience. In the movie, ?Breaking the Spell? protesters felt they were not being violent since the items they damaged belong to big business.
When a citizen abides by the social contract, they initially agree to enter and be a participant of a civil society. The contract essentially binds people into a community that exists for mutual preservation. When a person wants to be a member of civil society, they sacrifice the physical freedom of being able to do whatever they please, but they gain the civil freedom of being able to think and act rationally and morally. Citizens have what is called prima facie obligation to obey the laws of a relatively just state. A prima facie duty is an obligation that we should try to satisfy but that can be overridden on occasion by another, stronger duty. When it comes to prima facie duty, this duty can be outweighed by a higher order obligation or
people might say that peaceful protests negatively impacts society because it wastes time, and it never works. For example, on January 21,2017, there was a women's march on washington in repsonse to donald trump's win. They exercised their first amendment rights and statements to let him know women have rights. Donald Trump was recognized for his comments about women. The women rights movement caused people to have a different perspective about them. But, i don't believe that peaceful protests negatively effect society because According to data compiled by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, at least 3.3 million people participated in over 500 Women's marches across the US. That is a huge turnout for solidarity for women. The effect of the marches probably will be there will be more women's
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr passed away from a sniper’s bullet. He gave us thirteen years of nonviolent protest during the civil rights movement of the 1950’s. Before I can give my opinion on the history of race relations in the United States since King’s assassination in 1968 strengthened or weakened his arguments on the necessity and value of civil disobedience? You should know the meaning of civil disobedience. The word civil has several definitions. “The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay (by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849) is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance”.
If something isn’t right, there is a way to fix it. Violence of course is never the answer therefore, non-violent protests were started. Non-Violent protesting had a slow start then it spread around the world when it hit media attention. Non-violent protest also had more effectiveness than violent protests. Non-Violent protests may have taken a while, but the results were successful.
Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means. The use of nonviolence runs throughout history however the fusion of organized mass struggle and nonviolence is relatively new.
One of the biggest distinctions between successful activism and unsuccessful activism is how the movement is organized. If the movement is just a group of interconnected people with no system of authority, otherwise known as a network, it is more likely to fail. However an activist initiative that has a system or organization in which some people are ranked above others, also known as a hierarchy, is much more likely to succeed.“Networks are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.” (Gladwell 139) The reason networks do not work is because it is very hard to organize anything meaningful without a central authority to oversee it Sure a network can organize a small, low risk event that people can easily participate in, but when it comes to organizing high risk, well thought out protests, networks are almost completely worthless. That’s because high risk events need plenty of planning to carry out, something that a network is unable to do. In order to organize a high risk event, there needs to be someone of authority in charge, who will make the tough calls required to plan something of that magnitude. Networks don’t have this person. There is no person of authority in a network, everyone is virtually an equal. Since there is no person above everyone else, there is also no person who has the responsibility of someone in charge. Meaning that there is no person who will make the difficult decisions needed to successfully organize anything of note. Networks aren’t good at getting important things done. And important things need to get done for any movement to be successful.
Around the world many people wonder why people choose to protest topics they disagree with. Protesting can change political views, help society, stop government actions, and most importantly save lives. Protests are normally started by a person or people wanting to make a change and stand up for what they believe in. People have been protesting for years because it is effective.
Rodney King a black man who lived in Las Vegas was severely beaten by four white police officers. The officers were brought into court and tried on charges of assault. The officers were acquitted of the assault charges. Immediately protestors took to the streets, to express their angry over the judge’s decision. Protestors found the ruling to be unfair and was fed up with the ill-treatment. The violent protest turned into a riot. A lot of damage occurred; over 50 people were killed, over 2,300 people injured, 8,000 arrests and estimated over $1 billion in property damage. The riots exposed the police abuse, poverty, and lack of economic opportunity. If it was not for the violent protestors no light would have been shed on the way black were being
By definition, civil disobedience means to actively refuse to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence (Wikipedia 2007). Many of the influential people in history have felt passionately about what they believe. These passions caused them to rebel against a government or authority. Many times they felt so strongly about what they believed and how they were being treated was wrong they became disobedient. They would take physical and verbal abuse for being disobedient but would never retaliate. They believed in what they thought was wrong and tried to change the way they were governed. Albert Einstein once said 'never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.' Albert Einstein's views seem to be reasonable. The claim by Albert Einstein is accurate because people should stand up for what they believe, they should know when they are right and their government is wrong, and they should trust in themselves and their own beliefs.
In America, protest has been used throughout history as a vehicle to change. Protests bring attention to issues that would or could be overlooked or ignored. A current protest receiving national attention in our media is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest, along with other Occupy branch protests are essentially ineffective protests. When compared to successful protests in the past, they are not having as much success gaining public support. There are many reasons this could be the case. There is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome resulting from the protests. They are managing their funds inefficiently and in many cities they are creating more problems than they are solving.
(An analysis of how Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau has impacted people through time.)
From the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Civil Rights Movement and the Pro-Life Movement of the 1960s, to the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street Movement of current times, “those struggling against unjust laws have engaged in acts of deliberate, open disobedience to government power to uphold higher principles regarding human rights and social justice” (DeForrest, 1998, p. 653) through nonviolent protests. Perhaps the most well-known of the non-violent protests are those associated with the Civil Rights movement. The movement was felt across the south, yet Birmingham, Alabama was known for its unequal treatment of blacks and became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, African-Americans in Birmingham, began daily demonstrations and sit-ins to protest discrimination at lunch counters and in public facilities. These demonstrations were organized to draw attention to the injustices in the city. The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of protesters, including Martin Luther King. After King was arrested in Birmingham for taking part in a peaceful march to draw attention to the way that African-Americans were being treated there, their lack of voter rights, and the extreme injustice they faced in Alabama he wrote his now famous “Letter from Birmingham.”
I am a pacifist; I do not believe in nor promote violence. I do, however, promote peaceful protest. The act of civil disobedience, of protesting something that is unjust, unconstitutional is well within our constitutional rights. The right to criticize our government is one that was given, that was fought for by our founding fathers. It is an act that affects our society in a very positive way; peaceful resistance encourages others to criticize a cruel and unfair government. Peaceful protests, strikes, and boycotts have the opportunity to gain the government's attention, to try and stop these so-called "anarchists". When we look back at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we see a hero. We see someone who is intelligent, who is not afraid to argue,
The Right to Protest The word ‘protest’ carries a vastly different connotation for every person who hears it, and it is everywhere in today’s politically divided society, hundreds of thousands of people are flooding to different events to protest acts, people, and organizations, to make their voices be heard. Some of these are peaceful, some are not. Every protest is different, but as there is no denying they are happening and will continue to happen it is important to question: to what extent should citizens be allowed to protest and defy the government?