Victoria Sheridan Friendswood Pages 31-62: When Is It Okay to Dissent?

When is it okay to dissent?  This question has answers varying far and wide.  There’s really no concrete guidelines that will mark what dictates when it’s okay to go against the grain and when it’s okay to just go with the flow.  With this in mind, the answer to this question is open to fluctuation as attempts are made to make some tangibility out of such an abstract topic. 

Based on the readings, there is one glaringly obvious reason that stands at the forefront when it comes to pinpointing when it is acceptable to dissent.  Dissent is warranted in any situation in which a person or group does unjustifiable harm that hurts a collective group or individual.  In fact, not only is it warranted, but the dissent should be inflamed to the point where a back seat is not taken and a vocal stance parades its ideas until the people have no choice but to listen.  Ignorant fools who are too cowardly to admit their wrongs should not walk away from the mess they made unscathed.  They sit in denial, as if somehow the toxic fall-out of their slimy course of actions was some surprise twist in fate.  The consequences of their actions are not accidents, they should not come as shocks.  Dissent must be exercised loud when vile people paint themselves as victims when they know they are the culprits who knowingly committed unforgivable harm to others. 

The ongoing environmental issues in Friendswood that keep being labeled as “safe” is indeed a very culpable cause for dissent.  Take Rue Banes, a culprit of chemical waste disposal in Rosemont, for example.  In what appeared to be an interrogation, Rue Banes said, “I had my man dig a pit, and we poured the waste in there.  Every year, the agencies came out and tested the soil, and except for one or two times, the levels came out clean…Once or twice the smell got bad, and when I told Garbit, they sent out a small plane that sprayed a perfuming agent to cover it…I had no idea” (Steinke 33).  It’s incredibly hard to believe that companies had no idea what their actions were doing to the environment.  Red flags could be mounted almost everywhere.  The few tests that didn’t come out clean and the odd smell should have been huge warning bells that demanded immediate investigation.  And how could all these companies continue to validate the safety of their clearly toxic actions when people all around were being fatally harmed?  Was Michelle Small’s stillborn baby some strange fluke of events?  Was the permanent brain damage inflicted on the teenager who dumped the chemical waste for Rue Banes in no way related to the exposure to deadly toxins?  How many times did oil have to seep through the cracks in residential driveways before people stopped thinking about their pockets?  Were the deaths of vibrant souls like Jess really dismissed to have absolutely no correlation to the alarming levels of chemicals?  Lee and other activists should be dissenting, and not only is it okay to in this situation, but it is necessary.  It is necessary to dissent because if there is no one to testify against the officials who are comfy on their high thrones, there will never be a change in the way society is run. 

Likewise, the many citizens in East Chicago experience a similar situation that deems dissent to be okay.  When “hundreds of children suffer from excessive levels of lead in their blood,” there is clearly a jarring problem in the governing system that will dictate much dissent to solve the problem (Goodnough 4).  If no one were ever to dissent and voice out, there would be no restraints that force organizations like the EPA and businesses to perform their jobs in a way that guarantees the safety of others. 

A slightly differing situation arises in the form of the Stanford rape case.  Although this deviates from the environmental themes, a similar structure occurs that shows when it’s okay to dissent.  In the former two scenarios, dissent was deemed okay because without it, the culprits receive no repercussions and could continue to harm others.  In a similar way, if the poor victim of sexual assault never voiced her justifiable disgust with the results of the Brock Turner case, a precedent would be established that made sexual assault excusable if intoxication was involved during the time of the crime.  With that kind of precedent in place, people like Brock Turner could get away with serious felonies that should never have occurred in the first place.  The victim executed perfectly justifiable dissent when she spoke out and said, “Alcohol was not the one who stripped me, fingered me, had my head dragging against the ground, with me almost naked” (Baker 9).  Such dissent could escalate to the creation of a better legal system that does not tolerate sexual assault under any circumstances. 

So when is dissent okay?  There really is no one clear answer that can cover all the bases.  But if there is anything that can be determined, when you feel a passion that stirs in your heart and you know deep down that there must be a change, dissent will most certainly be okay. 

The following video clearly captures how speaking your mind is never a crime, and that it can be a powerful tool that incites momentous change.  

Work Cited:

Baker, Katie. "Here's The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker News."BuzzFeed. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Sept. 2016.

Goodnough, Abby. "Their Soil Toxic, 1,100 Indiana Residents Scramble to Find New Homes - The New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Sept. 2016.

Steinke, Rene. Friendswood. New York: Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA, 2014. Print.