English-Mlk and Iron-Jawed Angels Three

English-MLK and Iron-Jawed Angels

Three Types of Resistance to Oppression

Martin Luther King Jr. was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's actions against the British oppression in India. Gandhi developed a method of peaceful protest which King adopted to fight the oppression of negroes in America. King led many peaceful actions and gave many moving speeches which galvanized the American people, including white people of good will, to action. King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 by militant James Earl Ray, because he was succeeding in his mission. Though discrimination is still with us in many ways, Martin Luther King was responsible for instigating change upon which his follower followed though after his death. This method was also used earlier in the century by the Suffragettes to obtain rights for American women, oppressed by the patriarchal system. The film, Iron-Jawed Angles demonstrates how these tenets from King's speech, "Three Types of Resistance to Oppression" are true for every type of oppression, and that his idea that peaceful resistance was the only useful method for change is absolutely true.

In Dr. Martin Luther King's, "Three Types of Resistance to Oppression," he outlines the three ways which oppressed people react to oppression:

Acquiescence: that is, acceptance and adjustment to their state. Oppressed people simply find a way to continue in this state, possibly rationalizing why they cannot escape it.

Violence and hatred: oppressed people often react to oppression with violence. However, it seldom works, because it damages the oppressed as much as the oppressors, and the reality is that the oppressor is strong or the oppressed would not be in that state. "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."

Non-violent resistance, which is a stance which agrees with both the previous groups, that one should not be violent against the oppressor, and with the violent groups that one must resist oppression. In this way, he will avoid the problems of each of the other groups. He will not learn to accept what is wrong, and he will not commit the same sort of acts against which he struggles.

In the film, Iron-Jawed Angels, these tenets are graphically and dramatically documented and the results actually proved King's points. Each of the types of resistance is shown in a dramatically powerful way as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns lead a powerful peaceful resistance to the oppression of women in America, a struggle which was won, in large part, by their actions and those of their followers. Like King's cause, the cause of equality between the genders is not totally accomplished, since men and women are still not treated equally: many women still do the same jobs for less pay than men, both men and women are excluded from certain jobs etc. Many other examples could be cited from sports (equality of spending in schools for male and female sports and the ability to participate in coeducation competitions) to business (the glass ceiling and the higher expectations for female managers).

The women who want to "wait and see" or who simply do not want to take the chance that they will lose what they have: security, allowance and protection, and, in a lesser way, the members of the plodding leadership of NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association, who deplore the more active actions of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. This illustrates King's first point, that people may become accustomed to oppression, or may be afraid to lose whatever they have in order to fight it.

Both men and women in the film, and in real life, were guilty of advocating acceptance of this inequality. Women stated many reasons for acceptance, from brainwashed Attitudes of their inferiority, that is engendered weakness, to fears that they would become dispossessed and alone. Men often spouted the opinion that they only wished to protect their wives and mothers from the evils of this world, saying that they were innately weak and subject to fall prey to sinful ways if they were exposed to the evils of the world. They often cited the story of Genesis as proof of this. Women were often punished for dissent. Some punishments were extreme, such as hanging in some cases in earlier times by religious sects who did not allow dissention, especially by women, who could be executed as witches. A case in point was the execution of Mary Barrett Dyer by the Quakers for disagreeing with the tenets of the church. (Wikipedia 2005).

In this film, the violence is restriced to that on the part of the oppressors and those few women who acted out of fear. Like what happened with Ghani's struggle in India and King's struggle later in America for racial equality, the peaceful resistance of the oppressed prompted violence on the part of the oppressors, winning over more people to the side of the oppressed demonstrators. Whether this was always true is not mentioned, and is not well documented. However, the most publicized, and probably the most committed, violence was perpetrated by the oppressors, partly due to fear of losing their power.

When the parade which the two ladies organized to protest women's suffrage turns into a riot, because hecklers attack the suffragettes, we see the second type of action in living color. The women, themselves, did not become violent, but their oppressors did, and even some of the women who were afraid joined in the fray. The violence on the picket line when Paul and Mrs. Leighton join it is another example of violence on the part of the oppressors. Both of these actually worked in the favor of the Suffragettes. However, the pacifists of NAWSA deplored the actions of their leaders, prompting the women to quite the organization and start their own: National Woman's Party (NWP).