Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: The Weapon Of Protest
A DRAMA WITHOUT WORDS?
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.” One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, to not settle for mediocrity, to criticise their government by exploiting their freedom of expression and their right to protest. The duty of the youth is to challenge corruption and to even vindicate their liberty if worse comes to worse. Because if you don't stand up for the things you don't like, when they come for the things you do like, you've already lost. And since you can't pick and choose which types of freedom you want to defend, you must defend all of it or be against all of …show more content…
Protest is an efficient tool, but nothing can be more emancipating than believing in yourself, your values and speaking the same. It’s rightly been taught to us, a pen is mightier than a sword. Words, or for that matter any form of articulation, captivate and capture, every waking moment of a human mind and dictate every thought ever imagined. They motivate the conscience and more importantly, move the soul to a do-over and to bring about that change...that wind of revolution...that era of metamorphosis...that sweet, sweet taste of release. Rebellion could be a nice virtue, but the revelation made by one’s mind against the entire system could be much greater. Revolt can be an eye opener, but altering people’s conscience is a much bigger phenomenon. History has been the ultimate evidence of the fact that all the magnanimous and great revolutions which have changed the course of actions have not happened because of some huge protest but due to the works of great philosophers and revolutionaries who lent their mind a strong voice e.g. Aristotle, Plato, Nelson Mandela, and Voltaire to note a few. They had rugged means to their exposure, they could’ve gone to the deeper ends to get across their point, but they knew better. They knew that outcries would only go so far to realise the bigger dream of deliverance. And they …show more content…
It is the abundant duty of the State to aid the exercise of right to freedom of speech as understood in its comprehensive sense and not to throttle or frustrate exercise of such rights by exercising its executive or legislative powers and passing orders or taking action in that direction in the name of reasonable restrictions. The right to peacefully protest subject to just restrictions is rather an essential part of free speech and the right to assemble. Hence, to say that right to protest is superior to right to freedom of speech and expression or vice versa would be gross and rhetorical. Freedom of expression is like the profound quite which precedes the first stir of dawn, the dawn of declaration. It’s like that flat calm, the one that’s seen before a tide of extremism rises. For there comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.” One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, to not settle for mediocrity, to criticise their government by exploiting their freedom of expression and their right to protest. The duty of the youth is to challenge corruption and to even vindicate their liberty if worse comes to worse. Because if you don't stand up for the things you don't like, when they come for the things you do like, you've already lost. And since you can't pick and choose which types of freedom you want to defend, you must defend all of it or be against all of …show more content…
Protest is an efficient tool, but nothing can be more emancipating than believing in yourself, your values and speaking the same. It’s rightly been taught to us, a pen is mightier than a sword. Words, or for that matter any form of articulation, captivate and capture, every waking moment of a human mind and dictate every thought ever imagined. They motivate the conscience and more importantly, move the soul to a do-over and to bring about that change...that wind of revolution...that era of metamorphosis...that sweet, sweet taste of release. Rebellion could be a nice virtue, but the revelation made by one’s mind against the entire system could be much greater. Revolt can be an eye opener, but altering people’s conscience is a much bigger phenomenon. History has been the ultimate evidence of the fact that all the magnanimous and great revolutions which have changed the course of actions have not happened because of some huge protest but due to the works of great philosophers and revolutionaries who lent their mind a strong voice e.g. Aristotle, Plato, Nelson Mandela, and Voltaire to note a few. They had rugged means to their exposure, they could’ve gone to the deeper ends to get across their point, but they knew better. They knew that outcries would only go so far to realise the bigger dream of deliverance. And they …show more content…
It is the abundant duty of the State to aid the exercise of right to freedom of speech as understood in its comprehensive sense and not to throttle or frustrate exercise of such rights by exercising its executive or legislative powers and passing orders or taking action in that direction in the name of reasonable restrictions. The right to peacefully protest subject to just restrictions is rather an essential part of free speech and the right to assemble. Hence, to say that right to protest is superior to right to freedom of speech and expression or vice versa would be gross and rhetorical. Freedom of expression is like the profound quite which precedes the first stir of dawn, the dawn of declaration. It’s like that flat calm, the one that’s seen before a tide of extremism rises. For there comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has