A foundation of any free society is the ability to challenge the ruling powers. Civil disobedience is an active refusal to a law, order, or command by a governing power. When dissent is silenced or a significant violation of someone’s moral conscience occurs, there can be no healthy discourse or conflict needed to create progressive change. Civil disobedience is a tool used by the citizens of society to encourage and enact change. Just like voting, dissent is a tool the public uses to make its will known.
A classroom in a high school, or a research facility in a university are both examples of spaces where differences in opinions are expressed and progressive ideas are born through conflict and dialogue. In these environments, a diverse sample of opinions is respected and encouraged. When a citizen is denied the ability to express and enact change within society, civil disobedience can interrupt the status quo and force people to listen. Civil disobedience is an example of a form of debate the citizens of a state or nation engage in in order to be heard, in order to open up a dialogue that has been denied. …show more content…
Most recently the highest office of our country has begun to pass laws which the majority of Americans feel are unjust, and antithetical to the core values of our nation. Spontaneous demonstrations and civil disobedience in protest of the ban on immigrants from entering the country have broken out at LAX and Kennedy airports. Sit-ins, which actively and consciously break the law, are a tactic used to stop business as usual in order to convey the seriousness of the matter at hand. When a ruling power acts unconscionably, citizens must at times take actions that are illegal to make their voices