John Locke's social theory not only permits disobedience but also a revolution if the State violates its side of the contract. Martin Luther King, Jr. says that civil disobedience derives from the natural law tradition in that an unjust law is not a law but a perversion of it. He, therefore, sees consenting to obey laws as not extending or including unjust laws.
At present, a new and different form of civil disobedience has developed with the invention of computer technology (Wray 1996). The Critical Art Ensemble's Electronic civil disobedience enables one to travel back to the historic periods of civil disobedience in the U.S. And how it developed through the years. The full potential of electronic civil disobedience has not been explored as a tool in effecting political change. The common opinion or view is that electronic civil disobedience will be go in the same direction. With more and more hackers getting politicized and protesters becoming computerized, the number of cyber-activities to engage in electronic civil disobedience will increase. Traditional acts of trespassing and blockage will be committed but, this time, electronically or digitally. The primary site will be cyberspace. In this millennium, the number of virtual sit-ins, wherein government and corporate web sites are blocked, will increase. If civil disobedience during the Vietnam War and the Gulf War sent thousands into the streets to obstruct the flow of normal business and governance by acting on physical infrastructure, civil disobedience of the future can take the form of clogging or actual interruption or destruction of fiber optic cables and ISDN lines by accessing electronic and communications infrastructure. Massive non-violent civil disobedience action has been used to shut down or suspend government or corporate operations. In the same way or reason, massive non-violent email assaults can obstruct or constrain government or corporate computer servers. At the current rate of expected and continued rapid growth and development of computer technology along with the increase of knowledge, sophistication and expertise of growing number of cyber-activists, no one can guess how far electronic civil disobedience can go in the future. What is certain is that electronic civil disobedience will be an essential element in the formation of new and radical social movements in the future. There already exist the theory and the practice of electronic civil disobedience and the government and corporations are aware of the potential threat posed by sophisticated cyber-activism.
Civil disobedience has now become more sophisticated with the emergence of the Critical Art Ensemble but the participation of street actions by real people is not seen as ending in the foreseeable future. Rather, many agree that electronic civil disobedience will more and more complement the traditional civil disobedience in the streets. They expect combined or hybrid civil disobedience actions, involving real people behind their computer screens while taking part in the traditional street demonstrations and other mass actions. Taking off from the direction taken by resistance movements in the United State at present, trends indicate possibilities of resistance as increasingly occurring in cyberspace. This shows how civil disobedience has been an important of the...
Regardless, to condemn Brown to death in Thoreau's view demoted the far greater human destruction of life via the institution of enslavement Brown attempted to end. This does not seem so much to be a contradiction or a defense of violence but a tempering of the anger that Brown created in the hearts of many Americans, and an attempt to put the violent acts of Brown in the context
The movement merely asked the founding fathers of this country to live up to their promises and provide freedom and equal opportunities for all. In the early phases of the civil rights movement leaders asked the government to live up to its promises and provide equal opportunities from all. It received much support from minorities and even whites living in the United States. After the period of 1965, considered the 'highlight'
Civil Rights: The Role of Black Churches The audience will understand the role that black churches played in the ongoing Civil Rights Movement. In this speech, I will show that black churches -- through methods of advocacy, spiritual leadership and active participation -- play a significant role in the ongoing Civil Rights Movement that began in the mid-20th century and clearly continues on into today's times. Everyone knows of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
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