Oppression means cruel or unjust treatment that is prolonged, like how white people enslaved the black people for a long period of time. When people are oppressed there is always going to be resistance and there are two types. Violent resistance is resistance that is violent and they resist by doing things like flipping cars over, lighting things on fire, and even go as far as killing people. Nonviolent resistance is resistance without violence like peaceful protests or boycotting, things that are legal. Oppressed people fight for agency and the term agency means to have the ability to determine that outcome of one’s life. I think that oppressed people should use whatever type of oppression that they faced, weather it being violent or nonviolent, to resist against their oppressors. Examples of this are how the two black men were arrested in Starbucks, probably because of their race, and that was nonviolent oppression, so people resisted that nonviolent oppression with nonviolence, as shown in my research project. Another example is the SeeClickFix document because we were being oppressed nonviolently by getting issues in our community ignored by our city and we resisted nonviolently by bring those issues to light. One last example that can be debatable is the Soweto Uprising. At first they were oppressed with nonviolence so they used nonviolence to resist but in doing so the oppressors use violence to stop their resistance. So the resisters fought fire with fire and used violence.
First of all my research document about the Starbucks boycott supports my claim because it shows how the oppressed people, being the men who got arrested and people of color in general, used nonviolent resistance to gain agency because that’s the oppression that they were faced with. This document is about two men getting arrested because they were hanging out inside of Starbucks without making a purchase. That sparked people to boycott Starbucks because people hang out all the time at Starbucks, some being white people, and when two black guys do it they get arrested. That seems fishy and that’s why that pushed people to boycott Starbucks because of racism. This document is an article written by Hallie Detrick on April 16, 2018 and posted on the website called “Fortune.com”. I think this information is trustworthy because the information is recent, being this was written within a few months of the incident and Hallie Detrick is a white lady and should not be bias because it’s not her race being oppressed. Although it is secondary source because she wasn’t there, it is the same story as many people are giving and has evidence in the form of an apology from the ceo of Starbucks that acknowledges what happened and the stories match up. A quote from this article that shows how they got agency through nonviolence is “ The incident resulted in the two men being arrested, which drew an apology from Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson…”. This supports my claim because they could have used violence but it was not necessary since they were oppressed without violence so they saw it most fit to use nonviolence. It’s better without any violence because if the oppressed people had used violence it would have resulted in the oppressors using violence and it would’ve been an endless cycle of violence.
Another document that supports my claim is the SeeClickFIx Posters article because it shows how we the people used nonviolence to a nonviolent oppression to gain agency. This document was a picture of a poster that was class project at Fremont High School in Oakland lead by Jason Muniz. In this project we were supposed to report issues we find in our city that have not been fixed to SeeClickFix. This document shows a poster that we made regarding the statuses or our issues which could be open, acknowledged, or closed. This document shows posters and data created by Fremont High School student work on “The SeeClickFix Project.” The image was created by Jason Muniz, an Ethnic Studies teacher on April 27, 2018. This document is trustworthy because its a primary source since it was taken at the location of the poster by the teacher who helped create it. It was new and accurate information at the time of when picture was taken. Although some may argue that now that information is old but it is still trustworthy. A quote from this picture that supports my quote is how on April 13th, 2018 there was a lot of open issues and very few acknowledged. Then on April 27th, 2018 there was way more acknowledged and closed issues with way less open issues. This supports my claim because it shows how using nonviolent resistance against nonviolent oppression, in our situation reporting issues that our city is not aware of or ignoring to have something done about them. We were able to make change in our city nonviolently.
One last document that supports my claim is the Soweto Uprising because they used whatever their oppressors used, referring to violence or nonviolence to gain agency. This article is about students protesting a law that make it mandatory to learn the language Afrikaans which South African blacks saw as the language of their oppressors. The oppressed people had organized a big protest and the were going to use nonviolence to fight their nonviolent oppression. To their surprise their protest was interrupted with violence by their oppressors, and they weren’t going to stand there to get mauled by dogs or breath in the tear gas thrown, so they fought back with violence. This document is an article from the website called www.findingdulcinea.com titled “Soweto Uprising Begins With Violence During Student Protest.” and was written by Denis Cummings on June 16, 2011. Think this information is trustworthy because the information is pretty recent, like a few years ago, and he would have no reason to be bias because he wasn’t there. A quote from this article that supports my claim is “Police attempted to stop the peaceful march by firing tear gas into the crowd; some students responded by tossing back the teargas canisters or throwing stones at the police. Police released dogs into the crowd, but many of the dogs were killed with rocks and knives”. This supports my claim because it shows that at first the oppressed people used nonviolence to fight their nonviolent oppression but then when the oppressors struck back with violence, the oppressed people did too. This shows what oppressed people should use whatever type of oppression, whether it being violent or nonviolent, resistance because who is going to bring a knife to a gunfight or in this case use nonviolent resistance to counter violent resistance.