Examples Of Nonviolent Movement

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In the late 20th century, numerous movements demonstrated that people are capable of overturning long-standing regimes without bloodshed. Using the technique of nonviolent struggle, citizens were able to remove injustices in society. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. , and numerous others have emphasized the meaning of a nonviolent movement. Nonviolence is a civilian-based form of struggle that employs social, economic, and political forms of power without resorting to violence or the threat of violence. This kind of struggle means to determine which laws are just and to disobey unjust laws provided that the disobedience is open and peaceable (“An unjust law is itself a species of violence.”). Gandhi once said: “Nonviolence is the first article…show more content…
Henry David Thoreau, an American author, laid down the reasons why men should seek to govern their own actions by justice rather than legality. Thoreau’s refusal to pay taxes was a paradigm of civil disobedience. It was a civic act, the resistance of a person in his capacity as a citizen under government. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thought and actions of such notable figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 20th century, it was proven that nonviolent resistance can be more efficient than violent protests. In this paper, I will describe the nature of civil disobedience, Thoreau’s philosophy and his influence on future leaders of such nonviolent movements. I will show that injustice can be remedied without…show more content…
This is a belief that was further reinforced as a wave of nonviolent revolts which subsequently transformed numerous East Europe regimes. In 1989, in Czechoslovakia, a group of citizens protested against the Communist Party that was on power in that period. This nonviolent resistance resulted in the end of the 40-years-ruling of the Communist party in the country and the conversion of the government to a parliamentary republic. This was the so-called “Velvet Revolution”. In the same year, 1989, in East Germany, the Great Berlin Wall finally fell. Those movements indicate that nonviolent methods can result in political transformation – not only in stable democracies with fair and reasonable leaders, but also in countries with long-lasting authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and corrupt
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