I believe that civil disobedience is justified as a method of trying to change the law. I think that civil disobedience is an expression of one's viewpoints. If someone is willing to break a law for what they believe in, more power to them! Civil disobedience is defined as, "the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition" (Webster's Dictionary). This refusal usually takes the form of passive resistance. Its usual purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power. Civil disobedience has been a major tactic and philosophy of nationalist movements in Africa and India, in the civil rights movement of U.S. blacks, and of labor and anti-war movements in many countries. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider it unjust and hope to call attention to it. In his essay, "Civil Disobedience," American author Henry David Thoreau set forth the basic tenets of civil disobedience for the first time. The independence of India in the 1930's was largely a result of the nonviolent resistance by Mohandas Gandhi to the British colonial laws. In the United States, the nonmilitant efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped bring about civil rights legislation. There are numerous examples that illustrate how civil disobedience is justified.In late 1955 Rosa Parks, a leading member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. I don't blame Parks at all for what she did. The African American people had to take a stand on some issue some where in life. Martin Luther King was soon selected as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association(MIA), the organization that directed a bus boycott prompted by Park's jailing. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted for more than a year. By late 1956 K...
