Peer review on Civil Disobedience Definition

Please respond with 5-8 sentences of friendly constructive and concrete comments for TWO of your peers regarding their responses to the Solnit and King essays.
In your response, please remember to comment both on the following questions:
What connections do you see between your own response and the response of your peers’?
What struck you as interesting? What do you not yet quite understand in their responses? What other ideas or experiences or events can you connect to your peers’ responses?
Each response should include some specific concrete feedback on both points above.

No work cited required in your response.
Below are TWO papers from my peers:

PAPER 1:

15 March 2022
Civil Disobedience Discussion Board:
Civil Disobedience Definition: “refusal to obey governmental demands or commands, especially as a non-violent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Civil Disobedience Definition: “bending the proverbial arc of the moral universe toward justice” (Meriam Webster).
My Definition: Civil Disobedience is fighting the “unjust” in just ways through passive and non-violent acts. Doing so will create a government free of injustice and allow a more honest government to preserve the “hope” in people.
Paragraph: Civil Disobedience “is” an act where the person stands up for what is right and goes against an oppressive government that stands before them. When someone practices civil disobedience, their main goal is to provide a victory for the ever-so-long battle of injustice so that their government will benefit from it. In his letter from Birmingham Jail, King states, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is
forced to confront the issue.” (5). Civil Disobedience “is not” the act of anarchy as a way to get their point seen. Riots do not help the case at hand; inciting a violent and evil action to get the point across will lead to more chaos and evil. Whether that is an “unjust” law or “unjust” condition for those people, they have to approach the situation peacefully to provide a more honest and moral government. In perspective, a person can succeed in life with two routes, but one path will lead to long-lasting effects the other will not. A person can either work hard or gain knowledge through failure in a peaceful and timely manner, resulting in them learning and growing as a person. Alternatively, a person can skip their way through life to attain similar success, know nothing, and hold onto that success for a short period. This process leads to a struggle that lasts a lifetime. However, there are drawbacks to civil disobedience. The main drawback we see in civil disobedience is the birth of chaos since it goes against an oppressive government that is supported. It often leads to turmoil due to opposition. The other side chooses to use immoral and “unjust” ways to keep their position against those who use civil disobedience. The main objective is to win small victories because it will take time for what they are fighting to change as long as what they are fighting is “unjust.” If people keep their “hope” that the small victories will be a step toward change, it will result in more change because then the people will not give up and continue to use civil disobedience to keep on fighting, just like Gandhi and Martin Luther King jr.

Works Cited:
“Civil Disobedience.” The Merriam-Webster.Com Dictionary, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20disobedience. Accessed 15 Mar. 2022.
“Civil Disobedience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2 June 2021, plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience.
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.].” African Studies Center – University of Pennsylvania, www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html. Accessed 15 Mar. 2022.
Solnit, Rebecca. “Grounds For Hope | Tikkun | Duke University Press.” Duke University Press, 1 Jan. 2017, read.dukeupress.edu/tikkun/article/32/1/30/30634/Grounds-For-Hope.
TeachingAmericanHistory.org. “Letter to Martin Luther King.” Teaching American History, 10 Sept. 2021, teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-martin-Luther-king.

PAPER 2:

19 March 2022
Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience is the act of choosing to disobey the rules or commands of the government in a nonviolent, peaceful way. The purpose of civil disobedience is to take a stand against a source of power, in order to make a difference. In the article “Grounds for Hope” by Rebecca Solnit, she defines how hope and defiance co-exist but shouldn’t rely on each other. Solnit states that “And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons” (Solnit). Most people often defy due to the fact that they believe what they are doing is good and life-changing. Hoping and wishing for something better for the world and yourself can oftentimes be seen as challenging society. Solnit showcases that “Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities. It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the twenty-first century has brought, including the movements, heroes, and shifts in consciousness that address these things now. Among them: Occupy Wall Street; Black Lives Matter; Idle No More; the Dreamers addressing the Dream Act” (Solnit). Although the act of disobedience provides a reclaiming of power and a slight glimpse of what could be, it shouldn’t be the motivator for hope. Disobeying and going against the rules, although most times effective, shouldn’t be the thing that provides a stronger sense of reassurance and hope. Hope should come from motivation for a better future and not simply from the act of disobeying.
Although civil disobedience is effective, it is not the most desired method. The most ideal approach is to have a non-violent protest, which isn’t always guaranteed to work out. Martin Luthor King Jr. states “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: a collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.” (King). For Birmingham, serious action was required since no one was being cooperative enough. King states that “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refusing to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored” (King). Nonviolence is the most ideal approach to conflict however it is not the most effective, which is where civil disobedience comes in.
Works Cited
King, Martin Luther. “Letter to Martin Luther King.” Teaching American History, 10 Sept. 2021, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-martin-luther-king/.
Solnit, Rebecca. “Grounds For Hope.” Read.dukeupress.edu, https://read.dukeupress.edu/tikkun/article/32/1/30/30634/Grounds-For-Hope.

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