Response To The Boston Tea Party

We are a nation born of by an act of civil disobedience. On December 17, 1763 a group calling themselves “The Sons of Liberty” boarded three British tea ships and dumped the economic equivalent of $1.7million of tea into Boston Harbor. The “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the Tea Act of 1773, a bill many colonists viewed as taxation tyranny. Consequently, Parliament closed Boston to merchant shipping and established military rule in Massachusetts. When our forebearers responded by calling the first Continental Congress, our fledgling nation was born.

When an individual believes a law to be unjust, the act of nonviolent disobedience of that law is a means of overturning it. The First Amendment assures our right to do so. The accident of fate that placed our birth into this nation of privilege makes it our moral obligation. The physical and intellectual energy of countless dissenters before us has ensured our bubble of advantage. Strategic, peaceful
resistance has given women the right to vote, to own property and to have autonomy over their own healthcare choices. Fair and equitable employment practices and the overthrow of Jim Crow laws are a direct result of the actions of the people of the United States, individually and collectively refusing to accept less.

In times such as this, resistance is our most powerful weapon. In the past two weeks, our new administration has created a crisis state. America has withdrawn from a strategic trade agreement that guaranteed a market for the corn the farmers in my state depend upon for their livelihood. President Trump has ordered the construction of a wall along our southern border, eliminated federal funding for U.S. cities with progressive immigration policies, removed the permanent military presence from our National Security Council and instituted a four month moratorium on immigration from seven specific nations. A country founded by immigrants has closed its borders in the midst of a refugee calamity the likes of which have only been seen once before.

At this moment in history, millions are ensnared in the process of fleeing from their homes, their extended families, their careers and all that is familiar and dear to them. They are teachers, doctors, writers, children and grandparents whose only crime is being ethnically or religiously different from the forces currently vying for control of the nation of Syria. They have survived the brutal violence that has befallen so many of their fellows and have turned to the nations of Europe and the Americas for safe haven. Unfortunately, the United States, in the wake of 9/11 and the attacks in Paris, Beirut and San Bernardino, is involved in our own internal conflict. A nation built by the blood and energy of refugees from every corner of the world, is torn between humanitarian constructs and our own native fear. Born into the advantages of life in America and all the opportunity that that offers each of us, we are divided between our inclination to warmly welcome the less fortunate to the shores of freedom and democracy while dreading any threat to our own comfortable security.

The history lessons of our nation, if not our own moral compass, must guide us.
As the German people found themselves almost a century ago we will be defined by our actions, or lack thereof, in the coming months. Sitting in the breach of a crisis that will only be exacerbated by the latest edict, the similarities are striking. A voting majority of Americans turned personal anger and economic dissatisfaction into the election of a pseudo-conservative nationalist. However, as immigrants who have fully complied with years of vetting are refused entry, our free press is threatened and gag orders enacted upon the very agencies created to protect us, we are no longer able to afford the luxury of inaction. Fear is the haven of the coward. Harriet Tubman knew she was risking her own life each time she aided another traveler on the Underground Railroad. Rosa Parks knew she would go to jail if she refused to relinquish her seat. Martin Luther King and Ghandi showed us both what is necessary and that success is
possible.

It is our responsibility to use the means democracy affords us. Peaceful, active protest through social media, boycotts, marches and sit ins must continue. In the words of JFK, we are the watchers on the walls of world freedom. Not by choice, but by destiny. Civil disobedience campaigns are the purview of the governed when the protection of liberty becomes necessary. Our founders believed that the checks and balances of our government were absolutely necessary to democracy. This is just as imperative between the government and its citizens. Benjamin Franklin understood that, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”