My understanding of civil disobedience was shaped by images of civil rights activists in the 1960s using passive resistance as a means to create pressure for overturning the laws and customs of racial segregation. On the surface, this demonstration appeared to prove only that the protesters could call attention to the newspaper strike and attract a crowd of television journalists to film them as they broke the law. Thoreau wrote "Civil Disobedience" in 1849 after spending a night in the Walden town jail for refusing to pay a poll tax to support the Mexican War. He advocated passive resistance as a form of pressure that could lead to reform of unjust laws or government practices. Thoreau's ideas had a powerful influence on the passive resistance adopted by Mohandas Gandhi as a tactic against the colonial rule of the British in India and by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in leading the movement to

In our community, certain unions have become an established order of the very nature addressed by Thoreau. They seek to preserve their established order, to hold on to their entitlements: to strike with reason. Some actions have been taken to reform the old order. These are revolutionary and express the best ideals of Thoreau. These are acts of civil disobedience that are bringing pressure on the established order: And that steadfast purpose certainly is civil disobedience to an establishment that resists change. The best that can be said of their actions is they produced a media event that was meant to draw attention to them as individuals. But it is for them to claim that this is civil disobedience in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau or Martin Luther King.

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;

When attempts by the people to correct wrongs in the society that were not being effectively addressed by the legislative and legal system then in place. As a man/woman of a very strong faith, they believed in the goodness o f people, even those who were hurting them. Their followers allowed themselves to be beaten and even killed with out offering resistance.

In his letter, King reasoned that it is possible for laws to be either just or unjust. Laws are unjust when they are contrary to God's law; or contrary to the moral law; or degrading to human personality; or imposed by a majority, but are not binding on that majority. Whenever laws are unjust, people have a moral responsibility to disobey them. Therefore, it must be right to disobey unjust laws; civil disobedience can be justified. One of the strongest objections to King's view was that acts of civil disobedience would encourage disrespect for law and order, which are essential for a society. But Dr. King offers an interesting reply: By agreeing that he should be punished for his civil disobedience, he was showing his respect for law and order.

One of the great orator

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Approximate Word count = 1319
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)