Matt Damon on Civil Disobedience

In the video of Matt Damon it is unclear to me what type of setting his is giving his speech about civil disobedience in because an introduction is never given.  I think that his speech shares a true insight of the freedom of speech which is without action words do very little.  He explains that civil disobedience is not the problem but the solution.  To me I feel like his speech could have been more successful if he did not rely so heavily on reading off his paper and if he did not maintain a monotoned voice throughout almost the entire speech.  He is using his first amendment freedom to speak about a political phenomenon but to me it does not feel like he is actually advocating for change because he does not seem very excited or enthusiastic about the topic.  When speaking about a political issue one should be very engaging to the audience to get them railed up and influence they to take action.  In Matt Damon’s speech I do not feel like he would have this effect on the audience and therefore I believe his speech was not as successful as it could be.

1 comment

  1. Thanks Ashley — sometimes you can find out a few contextual details by looking at the YouTube page. In this case, Damon was reading the writing of Howard Zinn, who is a well-known historian and activist. Zinn is the author of the book “A People’s History of the United States.”

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