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  1. TopTop #1
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Calling All Rebels

    ______________
    Published on Monday, March 8, 2010 by TruthDig.com
    Calling All Rebels
    by Chris Hedges
    There are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.

    Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as "liberals." They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for our decline. The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hatemongers on these hapless scapegoats. And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy. The corporate forces that destroyed the country will use the information systems they control to mask their culpability. The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country.

    "We are going to be poorer," David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill," a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. "Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America."

    "If we see the end of this country it will come from the right and our failure to provide people with the basic necessities of life," said Johnston. "Revolutions occur when young men see the present as worse than the unknown future. We are not there. But it will not take a lot to get there. The politicians running for office who are denigrating the government, who are saying there are traitors in Congress, who say we do not need the IRS, this when no government in the history of the world has existed without a tax enforcement agency, are sowing the seeds for the destruction of the country. A lot of the people on the right hate the United States of America. They would say they hate the people they are arrayed against. But the whole idea of the United States is that we criticize the government. We remake it to serve our interests. They do not want that kind of society. They reject, as Aristotle said, the idea that democracy is to rule and to be ruled in turns. They see a world where they are right and that is it. If we do not want to do it their way we should be vanquished. This is not the idea on which the United States was founded."

    It is hard to see how this can be prevented. The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs. Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform. We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

    "If we end up with violence in the streets on a large scale, not random riots, but insurrection and things break down, there will be a coup d'état from the right," Johnston said. "We have already had an economic coup d'état. It will not take much to go further."

    How do we resist? How, if this descent is inevitable, as I believe it is, do we fight back? Why should we resist at all? Why not give in to cynicism and despair? Why not carve out as comfortable a niche as possible within the embrace of the corporate state and spend our lives attempting to satiate our private needs? The power elite, including most of those who graduate from our top universities and our liberal and intellectual classes, have sold out for personal comfort. Why not us?

    The French moral philosopher Albert Camus argued that we are separated from each other. Our lives are meaningless. We cannot influence fate. We will all die and our individual being will be obliterated. And yet Camus wrote that "one of the only coherent philosophical positions is revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it."

    "A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object," Camus warned. "But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object."

    The rebel, for Camus, stands with the oppressed-the unemployed workers being thrust into impoverishment and misery by the corporate state, the Palestinians in Gaza, the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disappeared who are held in our global black sites, the poor in our inner cities and depressed rural communities, immigrants and those locked away in our prison system. And to stand with them does not mean to collaborate with parties, such as the Democrats, who can mouth the words of justice while carrying out acts of oppression. It means open and direct defiance.

    The power structure and its liberal apologists dismiss the rebel as impractical and see the rebel's outsider stance as counterproductive. They condemn the rebel for expressing anger at injustice. The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to stand with the power elite. The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments or empty rhetoric. The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage-anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. The rebel is aware that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion defines itself.

    "You do not become a ‘dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career," Vaclav Havel said when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. "You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. ... The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin-and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost."

    Those in power have disarmed the liberal class. They do not argue that the current system is just or good, because they cannot, but they have convinced liberals that there is no alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate. Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority. "There is beauty and there are the humiliated," Camus wrote. "Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I should like never to be unfaithful either to the second or the first."

    "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop," Mario Savio said in 1964. "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

    The capacity to exercise moral autonomy, the capacity to refuse to cooperate, offers us the only route left to personal freedom and a life with meaning. Rebellion is its own justification. Those of us who come out of the religious left have no quarrel with Camus. Camus is right about the absurdity of existence, right about finding worth in the act of rebellion rather than some bizarre dream of an afterlife or Sunday School fantasy that God rewards the just and the good. "Oh my soul," the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, "do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible." We differ with Camus only in that we have faith that rebellion is not ultimately meaningless. Rebellion allows us to be free and independent human beings, but rebellion also chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim flames of hope and love. And in moments of profound human despair these flames are never insignificant. They keep alive the capacity to be human. We must become, as Camus said, so absolutely free that "existence is an act of rebellion." Those who do not rebel in our age of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement. They commit spiritual and moral suicide.

    © 2010 TruthDig.com



    Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
    ________________________________________
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  3. TopTop #2
    theindependenteye's Avatar
    theindependenteye
     

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    Hedges' analysis and prophecies, however extremely stated, may be quite true. And so I'm left at the end of his article wondering exactly what he said. I interpret him as saying that the sole option is radical civil disobedience and revolt - "put your bodies upon the gears and ... make it stop."

    But as for serving an actual, practical purpose, he seems to refute himself with the vehemence of his first paragraph. If the control is so absolute that no act, however radical, can be reported, can have an effect on decisions, can get past the Gestapo, alter the march toward doom, then we're left with futile gestures of self-immolation, savoring the virtue of our rebellion for the few moments before the truncheon comes down and the lights go out. Is he proposing a remake of the Weather Underground?

    In posting here, I'm not set on refuting him. I'm more interested in hearing from those who have any idea how to translate what strikes me as desperate arm-waving into viable and meaningful action as to what I'm missing. I believe very strongly in the power of "witness," even as futile as it may be in the larger picture of things, but for me that doesn't preclude washing the dishes and voting for the lesser of the evils. But I'd truly like to understand what's in his mind other than what leads to suicidal depression.

    Peace & joy--
    Conrad
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  5. TopTop #3
    Moon's Avatar
    Moon
     

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    Quote And so I'm left at the end of his article wondering exactly what he said.

    Is he proposing a remake of the Weather Underground?

    I believe very strongly in the power of "witness," even as futile as it may be in the larger picture of things, but for me that doesn't preclude washing the dishes and voting for the lesser of the evils.

    Peace & joy--
    Conrad
    I can't be certain what Hedges had in mind, & i have a lot of the same puzzlement, for the same reasons, you have; but where i've started is by getting together with other people who have the same level of commitment to socialism i have -- the Peace and Freedom Party. The members of the Weather Underground, though i greatly admire their dedication and courage, might have done well to read the anarchist essay "You can't Blow Up a Social Relationship." I don't think voting for the lesser of two evils has worked well; and, no, i don't believe voting for Nader gave us Bush--rigged voting machines gave us Bush. Here's a question for fellow wacco's: How many vote Democrat only because you think it's hopeless to vote Peace & Freedom or Green (though the Greens don't propose anything that would make basic changes)? For those of you who take that position: What would it take for you to feel it's not hopeless to vote for a second party candidate? ("Third party"? You feel the US has two mainstream parties?) What if someone with good socialist credentials were to vet a certain number of people as willing to vote for whatever second party we could agree on, if we could get that agreement from that certain number of others? What if the Greens and P&F merged campaigns to the extent of splitting the candidate list, so all left-of-center second-party voters were giving our votes to the same candidates?

    Of course, voting isn't really what's going to do it. It seems to me what's in the offing is the collapse of the economy, at which time we'll have the choice between a) empowering a "strong man" type to promise us food and safety in exchange for unquestioning obedience and b) setting up a rational economic system--socialism, unless someone has a better idea. If we choose b), whatever's left of the mega-capitalists' military and militarized police will come down on us, and our choice will be between fighting back and surrendering.
    Last edited by Barry; 10-02-2011 at 12:44 PM.
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  7. TopTop #4
    Butterfly's Avatar
    Butterfly
     

    Calling All Rebels

    A Comment to Chris Hedges: in response to, “ The Best Among Us “ — Truth-Out.org — Sept. 30, 2011

    "Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you...."

    At my writing forty-nine people have written a comment in response to your call to action, Chris Hedges. I notice that you are a twenty year veteran, professional journalist. Your call to action points to the so-called "Wall Street Occupation" and I'm sure you do not intend that action as exemplary or even a more or less worthy example. Neither do I, except I ask for a note of wisdom, for we are not fools. Working people would sooner go to work than go to war, even on their own streets and to fight in their own interests. There's bread to put on the table, rent to pay, etc.

    It just is. And yes, we would like for the American people to rise up and do something in response to our dire circumstances. Yes, dire, they are.

    And as a historian and a life long organizer for fundamental change, I have only the school of hard knocks and an average and considered twenty-twenty hindsight, and, I take this moment to point out, perhaps, something remiss in the urgency of your commentary. When a leader issues a call to action, a responsible and successful leader has a following and that following will likely respond in an organized fashion, because they are organized and because they have a plan to which they each and all, to more or less degree, agree upon and participate, more or less, in its success. Yet, when a crowd or a mob have arisen and gone to the streets to protest, historically they have been crushed. With our best foot forward, we "join the good fight" and can reasonably expect a forward step, perhaps, then two steps back, and yet again, more forwards steps, in regards to the former, i.e., some type of organization with a plan.

    Take, for example, Paul Revere in his ride to warn that "the Regulars" were coming; they, our Constitutional forbearers, had a loose organization behind them. They were the Committees of Correspondence. They did galvanize their forces, both legal and armed, to overthrow British rule. They did prevail, as testament to organizational ability and perseverance. "No Taxation Without Representation". The outcry we might hear again today. At least, before I leap, I am looking for these elements of possible success. Wouldn't you? Are you?

    Surely, you advocate no less semblance and assembly from which a call to action would issue? Pray tell, what is it? Otherwise, you are asking us, like lambs, to go to the streets, where we will be slaughtered by the very same vicious and desperate forces written in your article. Those of us, from wise ones to fools and everyone between — if nothing else, identified by our gray hair — noticed this during the 1960s. We owe ourselves something more, than a siren call, so as not to be called, worse than fools, during our own collective life experience. Of bare necessity, history teaches us, once a fool, twice a pervert.
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  8. TopTop #5
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    Butterfly, this is a wise and sensible comment; yet I wonder how many revolutionary actions would ever have been undertaken if those brave souls who acted had been so sensible.


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Butterfly: View Post
    A Comment to Chris Hedges: in response to, “ The Best Among Us “ — Truth-Out.org — Sept. 30, 2011

    "Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you...."

    At my writing forty-nine people have written a comment in response to your call to action, Chris Hedges. I notice that you are a twenty year veteran, professional journalist. Your call to action points to the so-called "Wall Street Occupation" and I'm sure you do not intend that action as exemplary or even a more or less worthy example. Neither do I, except I ask for a note of wisdom, for we are not fools. Working people would sooner go to work than go to war, even on their own streets and to fight in their own interests. There's bread to put on the table, rent to pay, etc.

    It just is. And yes, we would like for the American people to rise up and do something in response to our dire circumstances. Yes, dire, they are.

    And as a historian and a life long organizer for fundamental change, I have only the school of hard knocks and an average and considered twenty-twenty hindsight, and, I take this moment to point out, perhaps, something remiss in the urgency of your commentary. When a leader issues a call to action, a responsible and successful leader has a following and that following will likely respond in an organized fashion, because they are organized and because they have a plan to which they each and all, to more or less degree, agree upon and participate, more or less, in its success. Yet, when a crowd or a mob have arisen and gone to the streets to protest, historically they have been crushed. With our best foot forward, we "join the good fight" and can reasonably expect a forward step, perhaps, then two steps back, and yet again, more forwards steps, in regards to the former, i.e., some type of organization with a plan.

    Take, for example, Paul Revere in his ride to warn that "the Regulars" were coming; they, our Constitutional forbearers, had a loose organization behind them. They were the Committees of Correspondence. They did galvanize their forces, both legal and armed, to overthrow British rule. They did prevail, as testament to organizational ability and perseverance. "No Taxation Without Representation". The outcry we might hear again today. At least, before I leap, I am looking for these elements of possible success. Wouldn't you? Are you?

    Surely, you advocate no less semblance and assembly from which a call to action would issue? Pray tell, what is it? Otherwise, you are asking us, like lambs, to go to the streets, where we will be slaughtered by the very same vicious and desperate forces written in your article. Those of us, from wise ones to fools and everyone between — if nothing else, identified by our gray hair — noticed this during the 1960s. We owe ourselves something more, than a siren call, so as not to be called, worse than fools, during our own collective life experience. Of bare necessity, history teaches us, once a fool, twice a pervert.
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  9. TopTop #6
    Butterfly's Avatar
    Butterfly
     

    Calling All Rebels

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Sara S: View Post
    Butterfly, this is a wise and sensible comment; yet I wonder how many revolutionary actions would ever have been undertaken if those brave souls who acted had been so sensible.
    You probably know this, I don't mean to demean your commentary, yet, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, brave soul with sense; Gandhi, brave soul with sense; Martin Luther King, brave soul with sense; Ida B. Wells, brave soul with sense; Rosa Parks, brave with sense; ( to be clear, here, she organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader MLK helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement ... she did not act alone).

    Brave fools usually are not remembered for having been on the winning side. I'm asking Chris Hedges to acknowledge historical contexts of winning fights, while he calls on us to "choose a side," "in a hurry" and preaching to the choir, us, who read Truth-Out.org articles and might have been through the travesty and lessons of the '60s errors.

    Out of the Chicago "Days of Rage," the Weather Underground broke away from SDS. Hundreds of thousands were out in the streets in protest of the Vietnam War. Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, leaders of Weather Underground, ended up underground, serving time in jail, and now are professors in university. We try to avoid going out on the streets only to go down under flailing batons, a hail of pepper spray, or worse. No bravery in that; no sense in that. The good fight is not just that; it's got to be more than that. Remember, the 1999 "Battle In Seattle", well, "Battle In Seattle" was a rising too. Thousands of people chose a side, there was "hurry up," and what else? The history of Irish rebellions is a trail of tears, to this day, not successful yet. And I don't intend to teach, preach, or hold forth almighty solutions to our trials, tribulations and failings. My beef is simple - it's with Chris Hedges' article in Truth-Out.org.

    Even the hundreds of thousands in Tariq Square, Egypt, are to this day, some of them, working hard to accomplish the hard work it takes to wrest control of their government away from the Mubarak friends and ruling elite, who are in charge there, now.

    Revolutionary action is a lot more hard work than occupying streets, parks and plazas. And there's bravery in that hard work too. And it is brave to be sticking it out, for weeks, in a plaza, park or streets in one of these "Occupy" this or that places. Chris Hedges owes us, who've been through what we've been through, to contextualize what it means to "choose a side" and "in a hurry". Even though Chris Hedges showed up at "Occupy Wall Street", he has not stuck around there. He's not of the four hundred who have been arrested. And I don't necessarily criticize him for being absent from mass arrests. Of course. But where is he? What does he propose to do after we wake up, choose a side, in a hurry? Well, you know, there was the tens of thousands 1932 Bonus Marchers, WWI veterans who marched on Washington DC for soldiers' benefits. And they got their benefits. If Chris Hedges had some commentary, a framework, to illustrate a way forward, then, we'd have more than just his hysterical outburst.

    Maybe, if he was in Wisconsin the rest of the days of his work week, helping ensure that those thousands of protesters actually do get what they went out in protest for in opposing Governor Walker's cowboy antics (he's another brave fool - we have them, they got 'em too), I would understand the good fight context that Chris Hedges' heavy-handed rhetoric is meant to kick-start and where it's headed. And this is just one example of what he might say, or do.

    Hey, and just to be fair and real too, I understand revolutionary action is a lot of chaotic activity too; not all neat and nice, like I might be misunderstood to imply in these short-hand writings.
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  11. TopTop #7
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    I don't have time to research it, but my memory is that Rosa Parks DID act alone when she refused to move to the back of that bus; I thought her affiliation and support came after the fact, but I could be wrong...

    Sara
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  12. TopTop #8
    Moon's Avatar
    Moon
     

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Sara S: View Post
    I don't have time to research it, but my memory is that Rosa Parks DID act alone when she refused to move to the back of that bus; I thought her affiliation and support came after the fact, but I could be wrong...

    Sara
    As i understand it, she'd been active in the Civil Rights movement for years and knew where to get the support
    her action would need in order to make a difference. What i think the problem is with the way so many people
    have depicted her as a brave loner is that they make it sound as if only super-brave people can take direct action
    to increase a targeted group's options.
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  14. TopTop #9
    "Mad" Miles
     

    Re: Calling All Rebels


    Rosa Parks was an active member of a movement and a leader in a Civil Right organization prior to her famous action. (Or inaction?) Refusing to move was a strategy that had already been used a year before.

    She wasn't some lone, tired seamstress on her way home from work who was just fed up with discrimination and spontaneously decided to refuse to move to the back of the bus, as many elementary school students are taught.

    She was carrying out a strategy for change that was part of an ongoing campaign, and she was an active member in that campaign.

    This wiki leaves out some important details, like the fact that one of the prior refuseniks was seen as unfit for a publicity campaign because she was a young unwed mother.

    The truth here is far more interesting, and useful, than the myth. As is often the case.

    It's just not as easy to convey in a simple inspiring story of abused innocence. Which is also often the case.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

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  16. TopTop #10
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Calling All Rebels

    Thanks to Moon and Miles; another example of my faulty memory.......

    Sara


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Mad" Miles;141753][SIZE=3][FONT=Times New Roman]
    [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks:
    Rosa Parks[/URL] was an active member of a movement and a leader in a Civil Right organization prior to her famous action. (Or inaction?) Refusing to move was a strategy that had already been used a year before.

    She wasn't some lone, tired seamstress on her way home from work who was just fed up with discrimination and spontaneously decided to refuse to move to the back of the bus, as many elementary school students are taught.

    She was carrying out a strategy for change that was part of an ongoing campaign, and she was an active member in that campaign.

    This wiki leaves out some important details, like the fact that one of the prior refuseniks was seen as unfit for a publicity campaign because she was a young unwed mother.

    The truth here is far more interesting, and useful, than the myth. As is often the case.

    It's just not as easy to convey in a simple inspiring story of abused innocence. Which is also often the case.[/FONT][/SIZE]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

    Last edited by Barry; 10-05-2011 at 10:54 AM.
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  17. TopTop #11
    Butterfly's Avatar
    Butterfly
     

    Calling All Rebels

    I like this (below) because our WACCO thread is "Political Action Alerts." And I am reminded, "we" once, long ago, had this dialogue and took these fundamental steps for " ... liberty and justice, for all."

    " ... There is a common misconception that the Boston Tea Party was simply a revolt against taxation. The truth is much more nuanced, and there were many factors behind the opposition to the East India Company and the British government. Although the colonists resented taxes levied by a distant British Parliament, in the years preceding the Tea Party, the Massachusetts colony had levied taxes several times to pay for local services. The issue at hand was representation and government accountable to the needs of the American people. Patrick Henry and other patriots organized the revolutionary effort by claiming that legitimate laws and taxes could only be passed by legislatures elected by Americans. According to historian Benjamin Carp, the protesters in Boston perceived that the British government’s actions were set by the East India Trading Company. “As Americans learned more about the provisions of the new East India Company laws, they realized that Parliament would sooner lend a hand to the Company than the colonies,” wrote Carp.

    Progressive political movements, from Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, have drawn on the original American Boston Tea Party for inspiring civil disobedience against oppression. Indeed, the very first Boston Tea Party was truly radical and faced scorn from elites and conservatives of the era. "

    Top Five Reasons Why the Occupy Wall Street Protests Embody Values of the Real Boston Tea Party
    Tuesday 4 October 2011
    by: Lee Fang [ reprint from Truth-Out.org ]
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