Reference no: EM131842688

"In 2011, huge crowds in the United States and other countries around the world broke the laws of their nations to protest against injustices. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs held illegal demonstrations in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Syria, and Morocco, protesting unjust government regimes. Protestors succeeded in overthrowing the governments of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. In New York, "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators illegally occupied a park near Wall Street to protest the unjust economic inequalities that benefit the richest "1 percent" at the expense of the other "99 percent." Within days, the movement spread to Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Portland, Houston, Dallas, Tampa, New Orleans, Cleveland, Denver, Seattle, Berkeley, and more than a hundred other U.S. cities where demonstrators also illegally took over private property in protest of rising inequality. The movement also spread to dozens of cities in Europe, South America, and Australia where demonstrators used similar illegal tactics to protest the growing gap between the rich and the poor. This was not the first time Americans deliberately broke the law to protest something they felt was morally wrong. During the 1960s, thousands of black people illegally sat in "white-only" sections of restaurants, theaters, buses, and other segregated businesses to protest unjust segregation laws, and thousands of blacks and whites engaged in civil disobedience to protest state laws that kept blacks from exercising their constitutional rights to vote and attend the same public schools as whites. During the 1970s, tens of thousands of people broke the law to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam, occupying government property, refusing to pay taxes that would support the war, and trespassing on the private property of companies that made military weapons. In the 1990's, thousands broke the law to protest the Gulf War, and in 2003, thousands more did so to protest the war in Iraq. And during the past decade numerous groups have illegally occupies power plants, illegally blocked logging operations, illegally prevented construction workers from building new coal plants, and staged illegal sit-ins, all in protest of the ongoing destructions of the environment. When arrested, protesters have inevitably said that their actions are a matter of conscience and that they are obligated to obey their conscience rather than the law."

Format your response into at least three significant paragraphs. 

Is it morally wrong to break the law in the situations just described?

Is it wrong when a demonstrator breaks only those specific laws the demonstrator believes are unjust? 

Explain your answers.