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
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