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Violent vs non-violent protest
Violent vs non-violent protest
Why non-violent protests were effective in civil rights movement
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Throughout history, revolutions have been effective in voicing the peoples opinions and changing the government using the mass population of the people. Non Violence campaigns as well as violent campaigns have proved to both be successful overtime. You may think of Martin Luther King Jr. leading the civil rights march or the French revolution in the late 1700s, but the question is which is truly more effective? Popular violent campaigns may make the headlines but when it comes down to it, the using of violence in revolts simply does not warrant the same results. The most powerful and efficient form of protest is nonviolent because it is safer with less death, the outcome is more positive in terms of what was trying to be achieved, and lastly, and probably most important, it has a much higher success rate in the results. Nonviolent protests do not take as many lives which gives it more appeal to others. The fact that anyone …show more content…
According to political scientist Erica Chenoweth, “Nonviolent campaigns typically attract more participants, including women, elderly folks, and others who do not want to take on the risks or the moral burdens of running around with guns and explosives, but are willing to pass on information about government atrocities, and to engage in boycotts, strikes, or nonviolent protests.” This shows that nonviolent protests gain more followers, which leads to larger scale marchs and also allows the ideals of the strike to be spread more easily. An example of this is the Women's March in January of 2017, when nearly 4.2 million people peacefully marched all over the United States to show support for women's opportunity. If it had
Nowadays, this concept of using nonviolence is hard to achieve. This is because people think that peaceful protest aren’t effective compared to taking action with their hands. One example is the Blacks Lives Matter Movement. Although there are peaceful protest, there are times when people turn violent against police. This can be counterintuitive since watching these harsh actions by protestors, people start forming negative views about the organization. This leads to people not supporting the cause anymore. Without the support of the public, an organization can’t
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
It has been debated though out history whether or not nonviolence “works”. Many societies, and this without question includes the United States, have mostly relied on violent tactics. Many people believe that violence is the only way to stop wars, even though it creates war, and people tend to believe that violence is the one solution to many global and political problems. However, recent literature and research is starting to prove otherwise. Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist, recently published a book, Why Civil Resistance Works in 2011. The research highlights data that shows throughout history, nonviolent tactics are more effective than violent ones in various ways.
Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind.” This is true in most circumstances but there are exceptions. By comparing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with acts of violent civil disobedience it is apparent that force or violence is only necessary to combat violence but never if it effects the lives of the innocent. A recurrent theme in each of these examples is that there is a genuine desire to achieve equality and liberty. However, one cannot take away the liberties of others in order to gain their own. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that political change would come faster through nonviolent methods and one can not argue his results as many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed. Similarly, through nonviolent resistance Gandhi was able to eventually free India from the rule of Britain. It is true that sometimes the only way to fight violence is through violence, but as is apparent, much can be said of peaceful demonstrations in order to enact change. Thus, it is the responsibility of we as individuals to understand that nonviolence is often a more viable means to an end than violence.
As Dr. King stated in Letter from A Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. I must confess that I am not afraid of the word, tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Such as in the case of the 1969 student site-in against the Vietnam W...
Likewise, violent protests raise awareness in a negative and oftentimes irrational light. Following the tragic shooting of Michael Brown in the fall of 2014***, countless riots shed light on a new twist on a century-old issue; race in America. The man shot was an African-American, unarmed, young adult. He was shot by a white police officer who believed the young man to be a threat to his safety. His death became the catalyst for the modern Black Lives Matter movement’s stance on equality in American justice systems. While the movement places an emphasis on a need for change, much like Martin Luther King did in the 1960’s, the mass riots from Ferguson, Missouri to Baltimore, Maryland contradict civil disobedience. The riots caused hundreds of vandalisms, countless injuries of police officers in both cities, and created fear for the movement. Awareness for the issues were raised because of this movement, but the violent initial spark of it derailed the solid proof of the need for change. This further proves the necessity that civil disobedience is on a free society; peaceable expression of views has a heavier weight when it comes to altering the course of a
There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That’s no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”(MalcolmX, Message to the
Although most people would find violence a necessity to gaining what they want, Caesar Chavez recognizes the benefits of nonviolent resistance. Violence is the instinctive reaction people have to a variety of situations. This was often the case with opposing views people had during the Civil Rights Era. In a magazine of religious organization the author Chavez emphasizes how nonviolent resistance will earn them equal rights with little to no bloodshed through the use of several rhetorical devices.
Nonviolent civil disobedience was a critical factor in gaining women the right to vote in the United States, this changed the face of the South. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) initiated modern nonviolent action for civil rights. I also believe that the gay and lesbian community is the action of direct nonviolent activism and when the ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to unleash Power) was formed it focused not only on AIDS but on the increase of homophobia and attack on lesbians and gays.
Conclusion: Nonviolent protest are more effective than violent protest in effort to bring about social change.
If a person want a peaceful protest, then sit at home and use social media to protest and wait for change. However, violent protest raises awareness and get the issue resolved much quicker than just holding hands and chanting. Violent Protest shows the anger and frustration of the person or people. It also shows how people are willing to risk their life by standing by something they believe in. When violence is used during a protest it gets the point across much quicker. Violence cannot be ignored and it forces the authorities or whomever to take notice.
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.”
Violent protests were more effective than peaceful measures in resolving the colonists’ conflicts with the British. The colonists were unhappy with the British and their actions, so the colonists wanted to show that they were mad through violence. The colonists demonstrated many acts of violence towards the British. Violence is better than nonviolence because they need to get their point across, it will change for the better, and lastly will scare them to make it change it their way.
To properly determine the factors affecting success or failure of a revolution, it is first necessary to clearly define what is meant by ‘revolution’. Robert Dix defines revolution as “a process intended by its initiator to win power by violent means, in order to effect a radical restructuring of a country's polity, economy, society, and external relationships.” (Dix 1983, 423) Skocpol furthermore says that “[T]he word ‘revolution’ [has a] modern connotation of a fundamental socio-political change accompanied by violent upheavals from below.” (Skocpol 1988, 151) Both of these definitions take violence as a necessary part of a revolution. That, however, is too narrow a view. It is possible for revolutionaries to use other means, such as strikes and n...