Oppression is when something has received cruelty or unjust treatment and it has been prolonged. People can resist oppression in 2 ways, and they are violent and nonviolent resistance. The difference between those two is that violent is when you resist using threat of physical pain or even death to stop the oppressors but on the other hand nonviolent resistance is when you resist using peaceful means which are not harmful and oppressor are often shamed in into changing. You either do violent or nonviolent resistance so you can gain agency which is when you have the ability too determine the outcome of your life. I believe people should use nonviolent resistance to gain agency because it’s safe and it can make a much bigger difference by creating organizations that spread awareness about immigrant rights, sites that help the community get taken care of and people who fight too get education to girls.
Firstly, people should resist oppression using non violence because no one gets hurt and one way that has happened is that there are immigrants who created an organized way to spread awareness of their rights when faced with ICE agents. This article is about how people were in fear because of ICE and they didn’t know if they should continue using help resources that was provided to them. But then activist started spreading awareness about immigrant rights so that they wouldn’t be in fear. Now activists have many ways they have have counterattacked the fear by not hurting anyone.The document is an article from the website calhealthreport.org and its titled “Amidst Threat of Deportation, California Immigrants Are Mobilizing to Resist ICE”. It was written by Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil on April 13th, 2018. This article is reliable because it was created very recently and in the article there are primary resources. One quote from the article states that “Now, in the face of escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies since the 2016 election, immigrant rights groups across the state have been developing innovative strategies, such as cell-phone warning systems and know-your-rights-workshops to protect their own communities from federal immigration authorities—a move organizers say can not only prevent deportations and detentions, but also combat the fear encompassing immigrant communities today.” This reveals that all the nonviolence work that the immigrant have done is working because their their fear for ICE has dwindled down. If they had done a violent act to spread awareness then ICE would probably have an even better excuse to arrest these immigrants who just wanted to help others. But since that wasn’t the case here they are combating these injustices against them by being aware of how to protect themselves and others who are dear to them.
Secondly, people should be using nonviolent resistance to fight oppression because it creates a safer way people can resist and one of the ways that has been happening is by reporting problems in the community and actually getting them solved. In class my classmates and I reported problems that we saw in our community and some of our problems got acknowledged and solved. So we collected our data in posters that show open, acknowledged, closed and how many of them were in each category. The document is posters that the 9th graders’ data of the reported problem in SEECLICKFIX is shown and it was done at Fremont High School. The image in the document was created by Jason Muniz, an Ethnic Studies teacher on April 27th, 2018. This source is reliable because the data was recent and it’s a primary source as well. There were many problems that were reported by the students and one of them was trash dumping.The data for trash duoing is as followed, 16 people reported that problem and 3 out of 16 were open, 8 out of 16 were acknowledged and 6 out 16 had been closed. This shows us that the 6 problems reported were taken care and that is an act of nonviolence because no one is being hurt here and they are helping the community be a better place for the people. The people in the community can be happier with how their street looks like and the people who reported the problem can feel good about themselves because their voice was heard. In Oakland there are many communities which have trash dumping that is unpleasant to pass by and this website is helpful because people report a problem and it will actually get solved. The people reporting those problems are fighting for a better lifestyle and they are doing in a way that isn’t damaging but peaceful.
Lastly, people should be using non violence to gain agency just like Malala because she is being the voice of all those children who want an education and she is doing it in a way that is not harmful. Malala did a speech in which she talks about how she was shot by the terrorist group named the Taliban, and she says that they thought they would silence her but instead they created a person that was even more confident in what she believed in. She no longer has that fear in her so she hopes for an education for every child even the children of the Taliban. She does not carry revenge because the people there are people who taught her how to be a person who forgives and a person who fighted for her believes in a peaceful manner. The document I read was only an excerpt from 16 year old Malala Yousafzai’s speech which she gave to the United Nations General Assembly on July 12, 2013. The information in the document is reliable because it is a primary source and it was done recently. One quote from her speech says, “I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists.” This demonstrates that Malala is fighting for the children’s education by making her speech in order to change the oppressors way of thinking and she is doing it in non harmful way. This speech motivates others to fight alongside her for a change that will impact their family for the better. That is good because they will doing an act that doesn’t cause any harm to the people which makes it something that more people would want to do due to the fact that they will be safe.