In response to Donald Trump’s inauguration as the forty-fifth president of the United States, the Women’s March was a powerful demonstration of peaceful resistance to what protesters believed was an assault on their freedoms. People of all religious, economic, and racial backgrounds rallied together to express their dissatisfaction with the incumbent president. In the streets of cities throughout America, people marched for their rights. This march was only one in the long history of public protests, both legal and illegal, in the United States, the largest “free society” in the world. Resistance to laws, in the form of civil disobedience and authorized public displays, can positively affect a free society. By communicating their thoughts in a public way, citizens of a free society are able to find solidarity with others and gain the support that they might not otherwise be able to obtain. Civil disobedience is not only a natural right of all citizens, but it also positively influences a free society by furthering the dissemination and reinforcement of democracy and individualism. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right of all citizens in free society. That is why it is important that the right to peacefully protest is protected by all free governments, including our own. The First Amendment clearly states that congress shall not prohibit the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” As citizens of a democracy, all Americans have the right to peacefully protest and voice their discontent with the government. Through times of turmoil and division, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches or the Dakota Access Pipeline Protest, the concept of civil disobedience has helped keep our otherwise polarized nation together. Though some may find it troubling that there are such dividing sentiments within one country, it is important to remember that a free nation is not meant to have one harmonious thought or opinion. The government does not exist to think for the people; the people exist to think for the government. A true free society thrives on the philosophy that different
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Most people are too stubborn to contemplate perspectives different from their own. Peaceful protest allows people to comprehend issues that they previously had never considered. During the sixties, the United States was, and still is, divided on the issue of The Civil Rights movement; so many people were apathetic or opposed to the cause for they had never considered what life in the U.S was like for an African American. A middle class white woman in Alabama never had the reason to wonder what it felt like to be forced to sit in the back of a bus or to send her children to lesser funded schools. Bloody Sunday, a heartbreaking event where six hundred peaceful African American protesters were brutally beaten by the local Selma police, tore bystanders and those watching on T.V away from their comfortable visions of reality. It demanded that they pay attention to the plight of black Americans. After watching peaceful men and women bloodied by the billy clubs of people who were supposed to protect them, the eyes of all Americans’ were forced to acknowledge the urgency of the Civil Rights Movement. Without peaceful civil disobedience, people would be unable to grasp movements, ideas, or individuals that they normally would never have the need or opportunity to understand or empathize
Most people are too stubborn to contemplate perspectives different from their own. Peaceful protest allows people to comprehend issues that they previously had never considered. During the sixties, the United States was, and still is, divided on the issue of The Civil Rights movement; so many people were apathetic or opposed to the cause for they had never considered what life in the U.S was like for an African American. A middle class white woman in Alabama never had the reason to wonder what it felt like to be forced to sit in the back of a bus or to send her children to lesser funded schools. Bloody Sunday, a heartbreaking event where six hundred peaceful African American protesters were brutally beaten by the local Selma police, tore bystanders and those watching on T.V away from their comfortable visions of reality. It demanded that they pay attention to the plight of black Americans. After watching peaceful men and women bloodied by the billy clubs of people who were supposed to protect them, the eyes of all Americans’ were forced to acknowledge the urgency of the Civil Rights Movement. Without peaceful civil disobedience, people would be unable to grasp movements, ideas, or individuals that they normally would never have the need or opportunity to understand or empathize