Occupy Chicago guards first aid tent.

[A]t 11 o’clock white shirt Chicago police officers came up and told us that there’s an ordinance that says you have to leave the park at 11 p.m., and if you do not leave or move your tent, you will be arrested. And then they were like “Are you sure you don’t want to move your tent, or do you want us to move your tent?” And we told the officers we believe that Chicago occupiers have a right to protest, a right to assemble and freedom of speech, and we believe that this ordinance is violating that right. And as long as the protesters are here, we will be here. … [F]inally at 1 o’clock they put this big light, like a ball park light, and put it on the tent. And then they moved in on us. And so all the protesters surrounded the tent to prevent them from taking the tent down, and to prevent them from arresting us. So they surrounded the protesters and us, and then maybe like an hour later they moved in. They arrested the back people first and then they went to the right side, the front. And then once they arrested everybody, … they took the tent down and we were just standing there, and there was people watching us get arrested. We were the last two to get arrested.

Martese Chism (AP/M. Spencer Green)

Birdia Keglar

My grandmother, her name was Birdia Keglar. And in the 1960’s … she marched with Dr. King, and made the effort trying to get the black people in Mississippi to register to vote. So in January 1966, when I was five years old, she went to Jackson, Mississippi, to give testimony there – with a group, this was like three cars. She went to Jackson, Mississippi, to Senator Robert Kennedy’s hearing to give a testimony on them being denied their right to vote. And on her way back, she was pulled over and it was maybe six people, but her and another woman, they were murdered … And at the time — I mean cause they let us know that you could die, but to keep the dream alive and keep moving forward. And so at six years old, that’s when I made up my mind that when everybody else was crying at the funeral, as a child I didn’t cry. I said, “I will continue your dream, continue your fight.” And so I went on to college, and did everything. And until now, it looks like the things that the civil rights people fought for, that the American dream is in trouble. And I feel that it’s my time, the nurses’ time to fight to save this dream … And on her way back in that car, you know when they tell the story … My grandmother dealt with a lot of college kids, white college kids, coming down there to help them. She would hide them in her home, and I was too young to remember. So when I see these kids, it brings back memory … when she did it. And that’s why I’m like, they’re standing up for their rights, this is not the first time young kids have stood up for other people’s rights. … [A]nd our nurses union, we believe that’s the right thing to do so we’re standing with them.

Chism said she would go back to Grant Park:

… As long as they’re out there, we’re going to be out there with them.

Malloy asked, “Is there anything you need listeners of this program to do — just support the movement I guess.”

… They need to call their legislature. Because, what our union is trying to do, is to get Congress to tax Wall Street. Because we believe that this economic crisis, it was caused by Wall Street. And so we’re trying to get Congress to pass a financial transaction tax. … [T]he only way we can heal Main Street, we have to deal with Wall Street. And I know it’s not going to be an easy fight, because I can see what the president is going through now. But if people put the pressure, like they did with the civil rights movement. And even with freeing the slaves, it’s the people. So the people need to start moving. Join the nurses, doing the Occupy Wall Street. And we have a movement to move Washington into the people’s direction.

Sources

(1) ‘Interview of Martese Chism by Mike Malloy 2011-10-24’ From The Mike Malloy Show, Monday, October 24th, 2011 – audio and transcript

(2) ‘Police again arrest Occupy Chicago protesters in Grant Park’ By Peter Nickeas and Jim Jaworski, Chicago Tribune, October 23, 2011

(3) ‘Jailed Occupy Chicago Protesters Describe Harsh Treatment By Police, Plan To Picket Rahm Emanuel’s Office’ The Huffington Post/AP

The nursing group said two volunteer nurses were arrested along with the protestors. The women were finally released at about 1:30 a.m. Monday after spending about 23 hours in police custody.

“It was a terrible experience,” said longtime Stroger Hospital nurse Martese Chism, who said she didn’t expect to spend an entire day in jail. Despite spending a night in a cold cell and having her mattress taken from her, Chism said she’d return for protests next weekend, if asked.

Other Occupiers took to Facebook and Twitter to complain about conditions in the jail. Occupiers accused 1st District officers of hanging up on callers checking to see if their friends or family members were still in custody, and claimed that 30 men were held in one room with no toilet paper for 30 hours.

The arrestees also claimed they were unable to make their one phone call for more than 16 hours.

(4) ‘Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy’ by Bruce Watson – CSPAN Book/TV – CLICK HERE to buy the book at Powell’s.

(5) ‘FREEDOM SUMMER AND THE FREEDOM SCHOOLS’ By Kathy Emery, Sylvia Braselmann and Linda Reid Gold, EducationAndDemocracy.org

In the summer of l964, forty-one Freedom Schools opened in the churches, on the back porches, and under the trees of Mississippi. The students were native Mississippians, averaging fifteen years of age, but often including small children who had not yet begun school to the elderly who had spent their lives laboring in the fields. Their teachers were volunteers, for the most part still students themselves. The task of this small group of students and teachers was daunting. They set out to replace the fear of nearly two hundred years of violent control with hope and organized action. Both students and teachers faced the possibility, and in some cases, the reality, of brutal retaliation from local whites. They had little money and few supplies. Yet the Freedom Schools set out to alter forever the state of Mississippi, the stronghold of the Southern way of life.

(6) ‘Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay’ By Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.

In Mississippi, the method of controlling black votes and regulating their economic and public lives by full-scale and openly brutal violence was known as the First Mississippi Plan of 1875. Whites openly resorted to violence and fraud to control the black vote, shooting down black voters “just like birds.” …

When Mississippi began formally and legally to segregate and disfranchise blacks by changing its state constitution and passing supportive legislation in the 1890s, knowing observers referred to these legal moves as the Second Mississippi Plan. …

(7) ‘Dying To Vote In Mississippi, Part II’ By Susan Klopfer

In the early evening hours of January 12, 1966, as they returned home from a special meeting with Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Jackson, the two civil rights activists from Tallahatchie County were killed and four other passengers injured, two seriously, after their car left the road near the small town of Sidon, south of Greenwood in Leflore County.

Birdia Keglar, 56, was found decapitated and both of Adeline Hamlet’s arms had been “cleanly” severed from her body, confirm two Keglar family members, a close friend, and a Tallahatchie County minister. …

Months earlier, both women were hanged in effigy by local Klansmen and warned not to participate in further voting rights activities. Each had testified before a congressional hearing in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Keglar and the others were coming back home this time from a subcommittee meeting on discrimination and poverty in the Delta headed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Several times before, Klansmen had tried to force [the driver] Grafton Gray off the road; Klansmen running blacks off the road was not an unusual event to take place in the Delta. Stories abound of such incidents, Chism and others confirmed.

Gray’s surviving second wife said that she was married after the accident “… and he would not tell me anything about it, nothing at all. I could tell that he was still afraid to talk. He had told me about other times Klansmen tried to run him off the road, but he would say nothing about this accident. It affected him greatly.”

…

(8) ‘FBI says end near in civil rights-era prosecutions’ by Allen G. Breed, Associated Press, Nov 05, 2011

Hamlett, 78, was a retired schoolteacher and one of the first blacks to register to vote in Tallahatchie County, Miss. Keglar, 57, was an organizer for the NAACP who had sued the local sheriff after she was prevented from paying her poll tax. Each had testified before a congressional commission in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The women died on Jan. 11, 1966, as they were returning home from a secret meeting in Jackson with then-U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. For years, relatives and certain researchers have insisted that the car was run off the road by the Klan.

…

Zachery was told that the driver of the car, Grafton Gray, supposedly played dead and could hear the women being tortured. “When my family members would try to talk to him, he would not,” she recently told the AP.

The FBI tracked down the wreck’s lone survivor, backseat passenger Richard Simpson, a white activist from Massachusetts, who confirmed the basic details contained in a Mississippi Highway Patrol report, the bureau’s letter said. The accident report said a car on the wrong side of the road struck the activists’ car head-on.

“The impact caused the hood of (the) car to break loose and move through the windshield, fatally injuring” Hamlett and Keglar, the FBI determined.

On a gloriously sunny spring day this year, two FBI agents appeared at 79-year-old Lila Hamlett’s door in Kansas City, Mo., to deliver their letter.

Dated May 27, it said there was “insufficient evidence to indicate that a racially motivated homicide occurred.”

(9) ‘After Over Four Decades, Justice Still Eludes Family of 3 Civil Rights Workers Slain in Mississippi Burning Killings’ – Democracy Now!, 2010-08-13

As the Justice Department announces it has closed nearly half of its investigations into unresolved killings from the civil rights era, we look back at the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the subject of the new documentary Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. Although dozens of white men are believed to have been involved in the murders and cover-up, only one man, a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen, is behind bars today. Four suspects are still alive in the case. We play excerpts of Neshoba and speak with its co-director, Micki Dickoff. We’re also joined by the brothers of two of the victims, Ben Chaney and David Goodman. And we speak with award-winning Mississippi-based journalist Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger, who’s spent the past twenty years investigating unresolved civil rights murder cases, as well as Bruce Watson, author of the new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.

By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright 2011

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones fought to bring a decent life to American workers’ families. In this pursuit she traveled the country, North and South, East and West. In 1903, the United Mine Workers’ (UMW) executive board asked her to check on the conditions of coal miners in Colorado. In her autobiography, Mother Jones told how she went undercover:¹

I … got myself an old calico dress, a sunbonnet, some pins and needles, elastic and tape and such sundries, and went down to the southern coal fields of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a peddler, I went through the various coal camps, eating in the homes of the miners, staying all night with their families. I found the conditions under which they lived deplorable. They were in practical slavery to the company, who owned their houses, owned all the land, so that if a miner did own a house he must vacate whenever it pleased the land owners. They were paid in scrip instead of money so that they could not go away if dissatisfied. They must buy at company stores and at company prices. The coal they mined was weighed by an agent of the company and the miners could not have a check weighman to see that full credit was given them. The schools, the churches, the roads belonged to the Company. I felt, after listening to their stories, after witnessing their long patience that the time was ripe for revolt against such brutal conditions.

In November 1903, many hard metal miners in Colorado were already on strike.² And the mining companies’ man, the Republican James Peabody, had won the governorship in the last election, when the Democratic and Populist candidates split the progressive vote. Gov. Peabody promised to make Colorado “safe for investments”, and backed a corporate vigilante campaign to wipe out the hard metal miners’ union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). That campaign marked what came to be known as the “Colorado Labor Wars.” In this atmosphere, on November 9th, the Colorado coal miners struck. But a few weeks later the mine operators of the northern coal fields yielded, and UMW headquarters called a convention in Louisville to end the strike in those northern fields. Mother Jones went to Louisville to stop that action, and the miners called on her to speak:

“Brothers,” I said, “You English speaking miners of the northern fields promised your southern brothers, seventy per cent of whom do not speak English, that you would support them to the end. Now you are asked to betray them, to make a separate settlement. You have a common enemy and it is your duty to fight to a finish. The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions between North and South, between American and foreign. You are all miners, fighting a common cause, a common master. The iron heel feels the same to all flesh. Hunger and suffering and the cause of your children bind more closely than a common tongue. I am accused of helping the Western Federation of Miners, as if that were a crime, by one of the National board members. I plead guilty. I know no East or West, North nor South when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”

The delegates rose en masse to cheer. The vote was taken. The majority decided to stand by the southern miners, refusing to obey the national President.

UMW president John Mitchell kept trying to get the miners of the northern fields to go back to work, and succeeded at last, when he threatened to cut off their support. Though she felt that the strike in the southern fields would now be lost, Mother Jones stayed there to fight for it. But Gov. Peabody wrote an order banishing her from the state, and sent members of the militia to take her to La Junta to take the next train out of Colorado. But Mother Jones, with thanks to a sympathetic railroad engineer, instead took the next train in to Denver:

In Denver I got a room and rested a while. I sat down and wrote a letter to the governor, the obedient little boy of the coal companies.

“Mr. Governor, you notified your dogs of war to put me out of the state. They complied with your instructions. I hold in my hand a letter that was handed to me by one of them, which says ‘under no circumstances return to this state.’ I wish to notify you, governor, that you don’t own the state. When it was admitted to the sisterhood of states, my fathers gave me a share of stock in it; and that is all they gave to you. The civil courts are open. If I break a law of state or nation it is the duty of the civil courts to deal with me. That is why my forefathers established those courts to keep dictators and tyrants such as you from interfering with civilians. I am right here in the capital, after being out nine or ten hours, four or five blocks from your office. I want to ask you, governor, what in Hell are you going to do about it?”

I called a messenger and sent it up to the governor’s office. He read it and a reporter. who was present in the office at the time told me his face grew red.

“What shall I do?” he said to the reporter. He was used to acting under orders. “Leave her alone,” counseled the reporter. “There is no more patriotic citizen in America.”

Cripple Creek circa 1900

Mother Jones described the scene around Cripple Creek, Colorado, the center of the hard metal strike:

All civil law had broken down in the Cripple Creek strike. The militia under Colonel Verdeckberg said, “We are under orders only from God and Governor Peabody.” Judge Advocate McClelland when accused of violating the constitution said, “To hell with the constitution!” There was a complete breakdown of all civil law. Habeas corpus proceedings were suspended. Free speech and assembly were forbidden. People spoke in whispers as in the days of the inquisition. Soldiers committed outrages. Strikers were arrested for vagrancy and worked in chain gangs on the street under brutal soldiers. Men, women and tiny children were packed in the Bullpen at Cripple Creek. Miners were shot dead as they slept. They were ridden from the country, their families knowing not where they had gone, or whether they lived.

When the strike started in Cripple Creek, the civil law was operating, but the governor, a banker, and in complete sympathy with the Rockefeller interests, sent the militia. They threw the officers out of office. Sheriff Robinison had a rope thrown at his feet and [was] told that if he did not resign, the rope would be about his neck.

Three men were brought into Judge Seeds’ court — miners. There was no charge lodged against them. He ordered them released but the soldiers who with drawn bayonets had attended the hearing, immediately rearrested them and took them back to jail.

Four hundred men were taken from their homes. Seventy-six of these were placed on a train, escorted to Kansas, dumped out on a prairie and told never to come back, except to meet death.

In the heat of June, in Victor, 1600 men were arrested and put in the Armory Hall. Bullpens were established and anyone be he miner, or a woman or a child that incurred the displeasure of the great coal interests, or the militia, were thrown into these horrible stockades.

Shop keepers were forbidden to sell to miners. Priests and ministers were intimidated, fearing to give them consolation. The miners opened their own stores to feed the women and children. The soldiers and hoodlums broke into the stores, looted them, broke open the safes, destroyed the scales, ripped open the sacks of flour and sugar, dumped them on the floor and poured kerosene oil over everything. The beef and meat was poisoned by the militia. Goods were stolen. The miners were without redress, for the militia was immune.

And why were these things done? Because a group of men had demanded an eight hour day, a check weighman and the abolition of the scrip system that kept them in serfdom to the mighty coal barons. That was all. Just that miners had refused to labor under these conditions. Just because miners wanted a better chance for their children, more of the sunlight, more freedom. And for this they suffered one whole year and for this they died.

Coal miners in Carbon County in Utah had also joined the strike, and Mother Jones went there to cheer them.³ There too the state militia came for Mother Jones, and quarantined her inside a tiny room on the pretense that she had been exposed to smallpox. But people would still come to talk with her:

One Saturday night I got tipped off by the postoffice master that the militia were going to raid the little tent colony in the early morning. I called the miners to me and asked them if they had guns. Sure, they had guns. They were western men, men of the mountains. I told them to go bury them between the boulders; deputies were coming to take them away from them. I did not tell them that there was to be a raid for I did not want any bloodshed. Better to submit to arrest.

Between 4:30 and 5 o’clock in the morning I heard the tramp of feet on the road. I looked out of my smallpox window and saw about forty-five deputies. They descended upon the sleeping tent colony, dragged the miners out of their beds. They did not allow them to put on their clothing. The miners begged to be allowed to put on their clothes, for at that early hour the mountain range is the coldest. Shaking with cold, followed by the shrieks and wails of their wives and children, beaten along the road by guns, they were driven like cattle to Helper. In the evening they were packed in a box car and run down to Price, the county seat and put in jail.

Not one law had these miners broken. The pitiful screams of the women and children would have penetrated Heaven. Their tears melted the heart of the Mother of Sorrows. Their crime was that they had struck against the power of gold.

Mother Jones in 1902, age 65, Library of Congress

Two days after the raid, a company-hired goon burst in on Mother Jones:

[T]he stone that held my door was suddenly pushed in. A fellow jumped into the room, stuck a gun under my jaw and told me to tell him where he could get $3,000 of the miners’ money or he would blow out my brains.

“Don’t waste your powder,” I said. “You write the miners up in Indianapolis. Write Mitchell. He’s got money now.”

“I don’t want any of your damn talk,” he replied, then asked: “Hasn’t the president got money?”

“You got him in jail.”

“Haven’t you got any money?”

“Sure “ I put my hand in my pocket, took out fifty cents and turned the pocket inside out.

“Is that all you got?”

“Sure, and I’m not going to give it to you, for I want it to get a jag on to boil the Helen Gould smallpox out of my system so I will not inoculate the whole nation when I get out of here.”

“How are you going to get out of here if you haven’t money when they turn you loose?”

“The railway men will take me anywhere.”

There were two other deputies outside. They kept hollering for him to come out. “She ain’t got any money,” they kept insisting. Finally he was convinced that I had nothing.

This man, I afterward found out, had been a bank robber, but had been sworn in as deputy to crush the miners’ union. He was later killed while robbing the post office in Price. Yet he was the sort of man who was hired by the moneyed interests to crush the hopes and aspirations of the fathers and mothers and even the children of the workers.

From these strikes, Mother Jones drew lessons about unity among workers, and lawlessness among corporate and government elders:

The strike in the southern fields dragged on and on. But from the moment the southern miners had been deserted by their northern brothers, I felt their strike was doomed. Bravely did those miners fight before giving in to the old peonage. The military had no regard for human life. They were sanctified cannibals. Is it any wonder that we have murders and holdups when the youth of the land is trained by the great industrialists to a belief in force; when they see that the possession of money puts one above law?

Sources

1. ‘The Autobiography of Mother Jones’ Chapter XIII

2. ‘Colorado Labor Wars’ — Wikipedia’

3. ‘The United Mine Wokers of America’ by Allan Kent Powell

A strike began in Colorado began in September 1903, and within a matter of days coal miners in Utah’s Carbon County joined the strike when they were recruited by UMWA organizers sent from Colorado.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Mother Jones (1837-1930)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mother Jones fought to organize labor unions to bring decent conditions, hours and wages for America’s workers. And she had a keen sense of how to go about it.³ In her autobiography, she wrote:⁴

One night I went with an organizer named Scott to a mining town in the Fairmont (West Virginia) district where the miners had asked me to hold a meeting. When we got off the car I asked Scott where I was to speak and he pointed to a frame building. We walked in. There were lighted candles on an altar. I looked around in the dim light. We were in a church and the benches were filled with miners.

Outside the railing of the altar was a table. At one end sat the priest with the money of the union in his hands. The president of the local union sat at the other end of the table. I marched down the aisle.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Holding a meeting,” said the president.

“What for?”

“For the union, Mother. We rented the church for our meetings.”

I reached over and took the money from priest. Then I turned to the miners.

“Boys,” I said, “this is a praying institution. You should not commercialize it. Get up every one of you and go out in the open fields.”

They got up and went out and sat around a field while I spoke to them. The sheriff was there and he did not allow any traffic to go along the road while I was speaking. In front of us was a schoolhouse. I pointed to it and I said, “Your ancestors fought for you to have a share in that institution over there. It’s yours. See the school board, and every Friday night hold your meetings there. Have your wives clean it up Saturday morning for the children to enter Monday. Your organization is not a praying institution. It’s a fighting institution. It’s an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!“

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

During World War II, Albert Camus fought for the French Resistance, writing for the Resistance newspaper, Combat.⁵ Towards the war’s end, as France at last threw off Nazi rule, Camus fought to bring open, democratic government. He wrote in Combat:⁶

… For what is at stake is indeed man’s salvation. And this is to be achieved not by taking a position outside the world but through history itself. The point is to serve man’s dignity by means that remain dignified in the midst of a history that is not. The difficult and paradoxical nature of such an undertaking is clear.

Indeed, we know that man’s salvation may well be impossible, yet we say that this is no reason to stop trying and, furthermore, that it is not permissible to call it impossible before making a genuine effort to prove that it isn’t.

We have that opportunity today. This country is poor, and we are poor with it. Europe is miserable, and its misery is ours. Lacking wealth and a material heritage, we have perhaps acquired a freedom that allows us to indulge in that folly called truth.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

Howard Zinn also fought during World War II, but in the U.S. military flying bombing runs.⁷ After the war, he became a teacher and historian, and fought against war-making, and for civil rights. And he wrote “A People’s History of the United States”.⁸ He wrote:⁹

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Others

Here are links to stories in The Paragraph about other fighters for democracy, both dead and living:

• Helen Keller in Her Own Words

• JAG Officer Charles Swift Stops Bush’s Kangaroo Court

• Flint Workers Sat Down and U.S. Middle Class Rose Up

• Bunny Greenhouse Faced Halliburton War Profits Express

• Kucinich has Iraq Track Record, Exit Plan

• Constitutionalist Gives Speech, Gets Airport Hassle

• Thomas Jefferson’s Gravestone

• Boston Tea Party Hit Corporate Monopoly

• Citizen with Paddle Stops Bush Wilderness Sale

• Band-Aid Still Stuck on Big Bailout Banks

• Rushmore Wind Carried Warnings for Today

• Feingold Leads Senate Fight against Sneak-and-Peek, Other PATRIOT Act Excess

• Greg Mortenson Builds Schools in War-Ridden Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sources

¹ ‘Winter Solstice 2009: Facts on Shortest Day of the Year’ – National Geographic

Throughout history, humans have celebrated the winter solstice, often with an appreciative eye toward the return of summer sunlight.

Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland’s mysterious Newgrange tomb (video) are aligned to capture the light at the moment of the winter solstice sunrise.

Germanic peoples of Northern Europe honored the winter solstice with Yule festivals—the origin of the still-standing tradition of the long-burning Yule log.

The Roman feast of Saturnalia, honoring the God Saturn, was a weeklong December feast that included the observance of the winter solstice. Romans also celebrated the lengthening of days following the solstice by paying homage to Mithra—an ancient Persian god of light.

² Old Law Could Stop Corporate Dinosaurs

³ ‘Book Review: The Most Dangerous Woman in America’ – Joan Johnson Lewis

⁴ Autobiography of Mother Jones

⁵ ‘Camus called France to resistance, then justice’ – Reviewed by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, February 12, 2006

⁶ Editorial by Albert Camus, Combat, November 4, 1944, collected in ‘Camus at Combat‘, edited by Jacqueline Levi-Valensi, translated to English by Arthur Goldhammer

⁷ ‘You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times’ (autobiography) – Howard Zinn The movie version is available at Netflix.

⁸ ‘A People’s History of the United States’ by Howard Zinn

⁹ ‘You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times’ – Howard Zinn, p.208

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Nikola Tesla was a visionary inventor who devoted his life to making an abundant, clean energy supply for humanity. Among his inventions toward that end were alternating current (AC) power transmission, the AC motor, and the bladeless turbine.¹ He also invented radio, neon & fluorescent lighting, x-ray imaging, robotics, wireless remote control, wireless energy transmission and more. And in 1900, he described his World-System of wireless communications, which has a notable likeness to the Internet.²

Invention, and capacity for work, ran in Tesla’s family. He writes:³

My mother descended from … a line of inventors. … [She] was an inventor of the first order and would, I believe, have achieved great things had she not been so remote from modern life and its multifold opportunities. She invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her. … She worked indefatigably, from break of day till late at night, and most of the wearing apparel and furnishings of the home were the product of her hands. …

Tesla gladly worked much:

… I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy.  I never paid such a price.  On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts. 

… and slept little:⁴

I sleep about one and one-half hours a night. I think that is enough for any man. … There are so many things to do I do not want to spend time sleeping needlessly.  In my family all were poor sleepers.  Time spent in sleep is lost time, we always felt.

Tesla had a photographic memory, which, in his childhood, gave him trouble:³

… In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined. When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety. … Sometimes it would even remain fixt in space tho I pushed my hand thru it.

Tesla learned to control his unbidden photographic visions by concentration and imagination:

Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start on my [mental] journeys—see new places, cities and countries—live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations. 

He later used his skill at concentration and his photographic memory for inventing. He tells how he invented the AC motor, which his professor told him was impossible:⁵

… I started by first picturing in my mind a direct-current machine, running it and following the changing flow of the currents in the armature. Then I would imagine an alternator and investigate the progresses taking place in a similar manner. Next I would visualize systems comprising motors and generators and operate them in various ways.

The images I saw were to me perfectly real and tangible. All my remaining term in Gratz was passed in intense but fruitless efforts of this kind, and I almost came to the conclusion that the problem was insolvable. …

In 1880 I went to Prague, Bohemia, …. It was in that city that I made a decided advance, which consisted in detaching the commutator from the machine and studying the phenomena in this new aspect, but still without result. …

After taking a job in Budapest, Tesla suffered a “complete breakdown of the nerves”:

What I experienced during the period of that illness surpasses all belief.  …

… In Budapest I could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between me and the time-piece.  A fly alighting on a table in the room would cause a dull thud in my ear.  A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body.  The whistle of a locomotive twenty or thirty miles away made the bench or chair on which I sat vibrate so strongly that the pain was unbearable.  The ground under my feet trembled continuously. …

But, after he regained his health, he felt he would succeed:

In attacking the problem again, I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end. I had so much energy to spare. ,,, Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could net yet give it outward expression.

A flash of inspiration gave him the answer:

One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the City Park and reciting poetry. … The sun was just setting and reminded me of the glorious passage [from Goethe’s Faust]:

Sie ruckt und weicht, der Tag ist uberlebt,
Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben.
Oh, dass kein Flugel mich vom Boden hebt
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!

[The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!]¹¹

As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightening and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand, the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.” … A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence..

A year or so passed before Tesla got a chance to build the motor:⁶

… I finally had the satisfaction of seeing the rotation effected by alternating currents of different phase, and without sliding contacts or commutator, as I had conceived a year before. It was an exquisite pleasure but not to compare with the delirium of joy following the first revelation.

Constantly working, and finding a cause for every effect, Tesla came to feel that he was an automaton, and to believe that true of every being:³

… I became aware, to my surprise, that every thought I conceived was suggested by an external impression.  Not only this but all my actions were prompted in a similar way.  In the course of time it became perfectly evident to me that I was merely an automaton endowed with power of movement, responding to the stimuli of the sense organs and thinking and acting accordingly. …

This led Tesla to invent a robot. Though it was remotely controlled, Tesla foresaw a robot that could, on its own, think and react:

… The practical result of this was the art of telautomatics which has been so far carried out only in an imperfect manner.  Its latent possibilities will, however, be eventually shown.  I have been since years planning self-controlled automata and believe that mechanisms can be produced which will act as if possest of reason, to a limited degree, and will create a revolution in many commercial and industrial departments.

Tesla strove for human progress, and pictured it in mechanical terms:⁷

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.  We may definitely say that it is a movement even if we do not fully understand its nature.  Movement implies a body which is being moved and a force which propels it against resistance.  Man, in the large, is a mass urged on by a force.  Hence the general laws governing movement in the realm of mechanics are applicable to humanity.

There are three ways by which the energy which determines human progress can be increased: First, we may increase the mass.  This, in the case of humanity, would mean the improvement of living conditions, health, eugenics, etc.  Second, we may reduce the frictional forces which impede progress, such as ignorance, insanity, and religious fanaticism. Third, we may multiply the energy of the human mass by enchaining the forces of the universe, like those of the sun, the ocean, the winds and tides.

The first method increases food and well-being.  The second tends to bring peace.  The third enhances our ability to work and to achieve. There can be no progress that is not constantly directed toward increasing well-being, peace, and achievement.  Here the mechanistic conception of life is one with the teachings of Buddha and the Sermon on the Mount.

Tesla aimed at the third way of human progress: multiplying the energy supply “by enchaining the forces of the universe” — but without burning fuel:⁸

[W]hatever our resources:of primary energy may be in the future, we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material. Long ago I came to this conclusion, and to arrive at this result only two ways … appeared possible—either to turn to use the energy of the sun stored in the ambient medium, or to transmit, through the medium, the sun’s energy to distant places from some locality where it was obtainable without consumption of material.

Tesla particularly worked on wireless energy transmission, with the idea of beaming energy across the world. He built a tower on Long Island for the purpose, but was not successful before his funding ran out:²

A plant was built on Long Island with a tower 187 feet high, having a spherical terminal about 68 feet in diameter.  These dimensions were adequate for the transmission of virtually any amount of energy.  Originally only from 200 to 300 K.W. were provided but I intended to employ later several thousand horsepower.  The transmitter was to emit a wave complex of special characteristics and I had devised a unique method of telephonic control of any amount of energy.

Tesla warned against an energy supply that would be centrally controlled:⁹

‘If we were to release the energy of atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point on the globe, this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind in giving rise to dissension and anarchy, which would ultimately result in the enthronement of the hated regime of force.

At the turn of the 20th century, Tesla gave a rundown of energy sources and their prospects for the 1900’s. Tesla saw coal, oil and gas as wasteful and limited:⁸

[T]o burn coal, however efficiently … would be ,,, a phase in the evolution toward something much more perfect.  After all, in generating electricity in this manner, we should be destroying material, and this would be a barbarous process.  We ought to be able to obtain the energy we need without consumption of material. … The man who should stop this senseless waste would be a great benefactor of humanity, though the solution he would offer could not be a permanent one, since it would ultimately lead to the exhaustion of the store of material. 

Tesla saw water power as the best:

Evidently all electrical energy obtained from a waterfall … is a net gain to mankind, which is all the more effective as it is secured with little expenditure of human effort …

… and favored use of wind:

… [S]ince time immemorial man has had at his disposal a fairly good machine which has enabled him to utilize the energy of the ambient medium.  This machine is the windmill.  Contrary to popular belief, the power obtainable from wind is very considerable.  …

Tesla saw promise in solar …

A far better way, however, to obtain power would be to avail ourselves of the sun’s rays, which beat the earth incessantly and supply energy at a maximum rate of over four million horsepower per square mile.  … [A]n inexhaustible source of power would be opened up by the discovery of some efficient method of utilizing the energy of the rays. 

… and geothermal:

Another way of getting motive power from the medium without consuming any material would be to utilize the heat contained in the earth, the water, or the air for driving an engine.  It is a well-known fact that the interior portions of the globe are very hot, the temperature rising, as observations show, with the approach to the center at the rate of approximately 1 degree C. for every hundred feet of depth.  The difficulties of sinking shafts and placing boilers at depths of, say, twelve thousand feet, corresponding to an increase in temperature of about 120 degrees C., are not insuperable, and we could certainly avail ourselves in this way of the internal heat of the globe. 

Tesla saw the central task of energy development to be the invention of a way to get more use out of wind, solar and geothermal:

The windmill, the solar engine, the engine driven by terrestrial heat, had their limitations in the amount of power obtainable.  Some new way had to be discovered which would enable us to get more energy.  There was enough heat-energy in the medium, but only a small part of it was available for the operation of an engine in the ways then known.  Besides, the energy was obtainable only at a very slow rate.  Clearly, then, the problem was to discover some new method which would make it possible both to utilize more of the heat-energy of the medium and also to draw it away from the same at a more rapid rate.

Tesla did not live to see a clean primary energy source for humanity — and, as of yet, neither have we. But Tesla kept pushing toward it. In 1931, at the age of 75, he wrote:¹⁰

It was clear to me many years ago that a new and better source of power had to be discovered to meet the ever increasing demands of mankind.  In a lecture delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia University May 20, 1891, I said: “We are whirling through endless space with inconceivable speed, all around us everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere is energy.  There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly.  Then, with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides.”

I have thought and worked with this object in view unremittingly and am glad to say that I have sufficient theoretical and experimental evidence to fill me with hope, not to say confidence, that my efforts of years will be rewarded and that we shall have at our disposal a new source of power, superior even to the hydro-electric, which may be obtained by means of simple apparatus everywhere and in almost constant and unlimited amount.

Further Info

‘Nikola Tesla’s Renewable Energy Vision’ By Lisa Pease, Consortiumnews.com, July 10, 2010

Sources

¹ ‘Tesla – Life and Legacy’ – PBS

² ‘My Inventions – The Magnifying Transmitter’ – Nikola Tesla

This [magnifying transmitter] invention was one of a number comprised in my “World-System” of wireless transmission which I undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900.  As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which I quote:

“The ‘World-System’ has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation.  It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment.  By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe.  An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant.  These examples are cited merely to give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire.  One far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated thru one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical dimensions of the Globe.  Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission but the old ones vastly extended. 

The ‘World-System’ is based on the application of the following important inventions and discoveries:

1. The ‘Tesla Transformer.’ This apparatus is in the production of electrical vibrations as revolutionary as gunpowder was in warfare.  Currents many times stronger than any ever generated in the usual ways, and sparks over one hundred feet long, have been produced by the inventor with an instrument of this kind.

2. The ‘Magnifying Transmitter.’ This is Tesla’s best invention, a peculiar transformer specially adapted to excite the Earth, which is in the transmission of electrical energy what the telescope is in astronomical observation.  By the use of this marvelous device he has already set up electrical movements of greater intensity than those of lightning and passed a current, sufficient to light more than two hundred incandescent lamps, around the Globe.

3. The ‘Tesla Wireless System.’ This system comprises a number of improvements and is the only means known for transmitting economically electrical energy to a distance without wires.  Careful tests and measurements in connection with an experimental station of great activity, erected by the inventor in Colorado, have demonstrated that power in any desired amount can be conveyed, clear across the Globe if necessary, with a loss not exceeding a few per cent.

4. The ‘Art of Individualization.’ This invention of Tesla’s is to primitive ‘tuning’ what refined language is to unarticulated expression.  It makes possible the transmission of signals or messages absolutely secret and exclusive both in the active and passive aspect, that is, non-interfering as well as non-interferable.  Each signal is like an individual of unmistakable identity and there is virtually no limit to the number of stations or instruments which can be simultaneously operated without the slightest mutual disturbance.

5. ‘The Terrestrial Stationary Waves.’ This wonderful discovery, popularly explained, means that the Earth is responsive to electrical vibrations of definite pitch just as a tuning fork to certain waves of sound.  These particular electrical vibrations, capable of powerfully exciting the Globe, lend themselves to innumerable uses of great importance commercially and in many other respects.

The first ‘World-System’ power plant can be put in operation in nine months.  With this power plant it will be practicable to attain electrical activities up to ten million horsepower and it is designed to serve for as many technical achievements as are possible without due expense.  Among these the following may be mentioned:

(1) The inter-connection of the existing telegraph exchanges or offices all over the world;

(2) The establishment of a secret and non-interferable government telegraph service;

(3) The inter-connection of all the present telephone exchanges or offices on the Globe;

(4) The universal distribution of general news, by telegraph or telephone, in connection with the Press;

(5) The establishment of such a ‘World-System’ of intelligence transmission for exclusive private use;

(6) The inter-connection and operation of all stock tickers of the world;

(7) The establishment of a ‘World-System’ of musical distribution, etc.;

(8) The universal registration of time by cheap clocks indicating the hour with astronomical precision and requiring no attention whatever;

(9) The world transmission of typed or handwritten characters, letters, checks, etc.;

(10) The establishment of a universal marine service enabling the navigators of all ships to steer perfectly without compass, to determine the exact location, hour and speed, to prevent collisions and disasters, etc.;

(11) The inauguration of a system of world-printing on land and sea;

(12) The world reproduction of photographic pictures and all kinds of drawings or records.”

³ ‘My Inventions – My Early Life’ – Nikola Tesla

⁴ ‘DR. TESLA VISIONS THE END OF AIRCRAFT IN WAR’ By Helen Welshimer

⁵ ‘My Inventions – My Later Endeavors’ – Nikola Tesla

⁶ ‘My Inventions – The Discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer’ – Nikola Tesla

⁷ ‘A MACHINE TO END WAR’ by Nikola Tesla as told to George Sylvester Viereck, Liberty , February 1937

⁸ ‘THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING HUMAN ENERGY – WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO THE HARNESSING OF THE SUN’S ENERGY’ by Nikola Tesla, Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900

⁹ ‘My Inventions – The Art of Telautomatics’ – Nikola Tesla

¹⁰ ‘OUR FUTURE MOTIVE POWER’ by Nikola Tesla, Everyday Science and Mechanics, December 1931

¹¹ ‘Tesla’s Early Years’ – PBS

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

K2 from air, West Face (Guilhem Vellut)

… I walked behind the village, and I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt during their school lessons. There were five girls, 79 boys. What really struck me, though, was that there was no teacher there. And I said, where’s your teacher? And they said, Master Hussein is in the next village because we can’t afford his daily one dollar salary. So that day in ’93 I made a promise to try and get a school built there.

After working at it for three years, Mortenson fulfilled his promise. Since then, his Central Asia Institute (CAI) has built 131 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

CAI’s Pigish High School in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Community Buy-In is Key to Success

The school-building process starts when persons of a village ask Mortenson to meet with them.²³+²⁴ Community members then take part in every stage of planning and building. The CAI provides the teacher training, materials and skilled labor, and the community provides the land, resources, and 2000 to 5000 days of manual labor. So with this community buy-in, in these countries where the Taliban has bombed or otherwise shut down hundreds of girls’ schools, only one CAI school has been attacked. Mortenson tells the story of how that school was closed and soon reopened:²⁶

About 14 Taliban came in at night. They beat up the night watchman and the next day they said if anybody comes to school, we’ll kill you. The headmaster got on his bicycle. He pedaled about 23 miles. He went to the local commander. Now, he’s somewhat of a shady guy, but he also has two daughters in school, and so he rounded up about 120 men. He came in with his militia. He killed two Taliban and then, for lack of better words, he extracted information from the other Taliban.

And he found out they had gotten $3,000 to shut the school down from the local mullah. So today, some of those men are in prison and two days later, the school was reopened. He appointed 12 Askari, which are – Askari is like militia men – to guard the school. And they have orders that if anybody tries to hurt or harm the school or the students, that they should just shoot them.

School under construction in Daltir, Thaile Valley, Baltistan, Pakistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Educating Girls is Powerful

Gultori Girls’ School near
Skardu, Baltistan, Pakistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Well, it’s obvious the boys need education also. But as a child in Africa, I learned a proverb. And it says, “If we educate a boy, we educate an individual. But if we can educate a girl, we educate a community.” And what that means is when girls grow up, become a mother, they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community. The education of girls has very powerful impacts in a society. Number one, the infant mortality’s reduced. Number two, the population is reduced. The third thing is the quality of health improves. … And another compelling reason is when women are educated, they’re not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism. In fact, culturally when someone goes on jihad, they should get permission from their mother first. And if they don’t, it’s very shameful or disgraceful. So when women are educated, as I mentioned, they are less likely to encourage their son to get into violence. And I’ve seen that happen … over the last decade in rural areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan. I mean, I could go on all day about this, but educating girls is very powerful.

A Girls’ School in Taliban Country

Mortenson tells the story of how the CAI came to be building a girls’ high school in the heart of Taliban country:²⁴

[O]ne of our goals … was to put a girls’ high school in Urozgan province in Afghanistan, which is in the south. It’s the home of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban — it’s probably one of the last bastions who are completely opposed to girls going to school. And so last year we kind of set a rough goal that would take us … 20 years to set up a girls’ school there. So this spring, a year later, we got contacted by … the elders of Urozgan province. They wanted to visit one of our schools. And we said sure. And so this summer they came to Char Asiab, where we have a girls’ school. And these are about 14 men. When they got to the school, these are, you know, some of them are, you know, kind of shady guys, black turbans. They’re armed to the teeth, have, you know, big, long beards. And when they got there, they saw the giant playground. So they threw down their weapons. For the next hour and a half, they went on the swings and slides and had a glorious time playing. And I finally kind of had to stop them and say, “You know, let’s get serious. We need to — this is the headmaster. We need to talk to the principal.” And he said, “No, no. We’re totally satisfied. We want a girls’ high school in Urozgan Province. But it has to have a playground. And you have to come and have tea with us.” So I got up the nerve in September to visit Urozgan. And this is an area, there’s no U.S. troops there. I mean, there’s no nothing there. There’s a lot of Taliban. We had a giant jirga. And I was pretty, you know, pale faced and kind of fearful. But it was a beautiful meeting. When they got done, they said, “We want to start this school. Of course we want the playground built first.” And so in October 2009 we started breaking ground on the school, and this year, in 2010, the school will be finished this summer.

Greg Mortenson, second from right, with tribal leaders in Tarin Khot, Urozgan Province, Afghanistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Advice for U.S. Officials

From his many years of working with the people of Afghanistan, Mortenson gives two strong points of advice to officials of the United States, which has 100,000 of its soldiers in that country, along with 130,000 persons under contract.²⁵ One point is to talk with the elders:²⁴

Every province has three to five dozen shura. And these are elders. They’re poets. They’re warriors. They’re businessmen, a few women. And they’re not elected, but they’ve kind of risen up through the ranks. And these to me are the real people with integrity and power in Afghanistan. … And it’s not that difficult. You can do it at a district level, or local level, or at a national level. It’s, you know, I think half of diplomacy is just showing up. You know, we’ve got to actually just show up and start to talk and then maybe we could get somewhere.

And the other point is to not bomb people:²⁴

[O]f all things that the elders say is, please, do not bomb and kill civilians. That is the number one way to antagonize people.

Update 2011-06-24: A 60 Minutes investigation aired in April casts doubt on Mortenson’s stories.

Further Information

Video: Bill Moyers interviews Greg Mortenson — video and transcript

Book: Three Cubs of Tea – One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, 2007

Book: Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan By Greg Mortenson and Mike Bryan, 2009

Sources

²⁰ ‘Greg Mortenson – bio’ – gregmortenson.com – pdf

²¹ ‘Three Cups of Tea’ (excerpt) by Greg Mortenson & David O. Relin, 2006, Viking Press

²² ‘K2: The Story of the Savage Mountain’ by Jim Curran (1995). Hodder & Stoughton. p. 25. ISBN 978-0340660072

²³ ‘Teach a Girl, Change the World’ By Judith Stone, Good Housekeeping, May 2009

²⁴ Greg Mortenson interview, video and transcript, Bill Moyers Journal, 2010-01-15

²⁵ ‘DOD: Obama’s Afghan Surge Will Rely Heavily On Private Contractors’ by Justin Elliott, TPM Muckraker, December 15, 2009

²⁶ ‘Greg Mortenson: ‘Ordinary Oprah’ – NPR, March 12, 2009’

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

I hope to work with [Chairman Leahy] and other members of this committee to make further improvements as this bill goes forward. In the end, however, Democrats have to decide if they are going to stand up for the rights of the American people or allow the FBI to write our laws. For me, that’s not a difficult choice.⁸⁸

Feingold: “We’re not the Prosecutor Committee”

JUSTICE Act Senators

The senators sponsoring the JUSTICE Act are:

• Russ Feingold (D-WI)
• Daniel Akaka [D-HI]
• Jeff Bingaman [D-NM]
• Richard Durbin [D-IL]
• Robert Menendez [D-NJ]
• Jeff Merkley [D-OR]
• Bernard Sanders [I-VT]
• Jon Tester [D-MT]
• Tom Udall [D-NM]
• Ron Wyden [D-OR]

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sources

⁸⁰ ‘WATCH: DoJ Official Blows Cover Off PATRIOT Act’ by Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post, 2009-09-23

⁸¹ ‘Dems Block PATRIOT Act Excesses – Your cousin may breathe easier’ The Paragraph, 2005-12-23

⁸² ‘USA PATRIOT Act of 2001’ U.S. Government Printing Office Short Title: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

⁸³ ‘Myths and Realities About the Patriot Act’ – ACLU

The government attributes convictions it says are terrorism-related that have nothing to do with the Patriot Act. The “400 convictions” claim overstates actual number of convictions and omits a number of key facts related to these numbers. Only 39 of these individuals were convicted of crimes related to terrorism. The median sentence for these crimes was 11 months, which indicates the crime the government equated with terrorism was not serious.

⁸⁴ ‘Patriot Act – Eight Years Later’ – ACLU

National Security Letters (NSLs). The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year.

⁸⁵ Sneak-and-Peek Report for 2008 – Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 2009-07-02 – pdf

⁸⁶ JUSTICE Act Overview 2009-09-17

⁸⁷ JUSTICE Act text – pdf See SEC. 201. LIMITATION ON AUTHORITY TO DELAY NOTICE OF SEARCH WARRANTS.

⁸⁸ ‘It’s Not the Prosecutors’ Committee, it’s the Judiciary Committee’ by Senator Russ Feingold, Daily Kos, 2009-10-08

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

For a terse telling of the Flint sit-down strike story, click this link: Flint Workers Sat Down and U.S. Middle Class Rose Up.

Sources

⁶⁰ Flint Workers Sat Down and U.S. Middle Class Rose Up

⁶¹ ‘Union Membership Trends in the U.S. Private Sector’ – Political Calculations, 2006-03-20

Sources: Union Sourcebook 1947-1983; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compiled by Labor Research Association.

⁶² ‘The American Dream died in February 1973’ Realitybase 2009-03-10

The income line since 1973 is roughly flat, but should actually be going down, because the Consumer Price Index has understated inflation since the early 1980’s. (See the next note.) — QH

Update: The Bureau of Labor Statistics answers the claims from the next note that it has understated inflation.

⁶³ ‘Consumer Price Index’ – John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics, 2006-10-01

The CPI was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust their financial planning and considerations for the impact of inflation. The CPI worked reasonably well for those purposes into the early-1980s. In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval.

In particular, changes made in CPI methodology during the Clinton Administration understated inflation significantly, and, through a cumulative effect with earlier changes that began in the late-Carter and early Reagan Administrations have reduced current social security payments by roughly half from where they would have been otherwise. …

…

In the early 1990s, press reports began surfacing as to how the CPI really was significantly overstating inflation. If only the CPI inflation rate could be reduced, it was argued, then entitlements, such as social security, would not increase as much each year, and that would help to bring the budget deficit under control. Behind this movement were financial luminaries Michael Boskin, then chief economist to the first Bush Administration, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

…

Up until the Boskin/Greenspan agendum surfaced, the CPI was measured using the costs of a fixed basket of goods, a fairly simple and straightforward concept. The identical basket of goods would be priced at prevailing market costs for each period, and the period-to-period change in the cost of that market basket represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a constant standard of living.

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak

…

Aside from the changed weighting, the average person also tends to sense higher inflation than is reported by the BLS, because of hedonics, as in hedonism. Hedonics adjusts the prices of goods for the increased pleasure the consumer derives from them. That new washing machine you bought did not cost you 20% more than it would have cost you last year, because you got an offsetting 20% increase in the pleasure you derive from pushing its new electronic control buttons instead of turning that old noisy dial, according to the BLS.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

George Washington warned against internal enemies who would try to separate one group of citizens from another, and the people from their government:

The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, … is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But … it is easy to foresee, that … much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed …x⁸⁵

Thomas Jefferson foresaw fraudulent banking:

[L]iable as [a bank’s] cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.x⁸⁶

Abraham Lincoln believed that government “for the people” should include protecting workers’ wages:

[I]t has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government. x⁸⁷

Theodore Roosevelt warned of corporate bosses undermining government for the people:

The big trust magnates …, the big politicians of the old boss type …, stand against the people. They object to the government, to government being used primarily in the interest of the people themselves. Naturally, they will do all they can to breakdown the only real enemies that they have and the only real champions, the only real and efficient champions of popular right, and economic, social, and industrial justice.x⁸⁸

Now there is liberal talk — though not nearly on every radio dial. But where it exists, it serves to beat back the right-wing barrage, and to broadcast words like those from the Rushmore wind.

Liberal Talk Radio Links

XM 167 – America Left

Sirius 146 – Sirius Left

Ohio Majority Radio Listen (online only).

WCPT 820AM Chicago Listen.

WDTW 1310AM Detroit Listen.

KPOJ 620AM Portland Listen.

WWRL 1600AM New York City – Listen

KTLK 1150AM Los Angeles Listen.

Air America – Listen

Democracy Now! Listen and watch. (Hard news.)

LTR Has many more liberal talk radio links.

Sources

⁷⁰ ‘The US Media & Democracy in Crisis’ by Robert Parry, February 19, 2009

In the latter part of the 1970s, angry Republicans and right-wing ideologues began to team up under the leadership of Nixon’s former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon, who used his control of the Olin Foundation to pull together like-minded foundations (Smith-Richardson, Scaife, etc.) to inject money into a right-wing media infrastructure and anti-journalism attack groups.

This initiative gained momentum with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, a former actor and ad man who surrounded himself with media savvy advisers. They, in turn, began collaborating with CIA propaganda experts in devising “perception management” tactics that could be directed against the American people as well as at troublesome mainstream journalists.

To get around legal prohibitions on the CIA influencing U.S. politics, CIA Director William Casey transferred Walter Raymond Jr., one of the CIA’s top propagandists, to Reagan’s National Security Council where Raymond headed up a government-wide task force on “public diplomacy.” [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

The right-wing media infrastructure continued to grow with the influx of mysterious money from the likes of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean theocrat who launched the Washington Times in 1982. Later, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch got into the act with purchases of U.S. newspapers and eventually the founding of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and right-wing Fox News.

By the late years of the Reagan-Bush-41 era, right-wing talk radio was taking off with Rush Limbaugh and other angry white men filling the AM dial with venomous attacks on liberals. When Bill Clinton managed to eke out a victory in 1992, he immediately came under sustained attack from this potent right-wing media machine.

Meanwhile, in the mainstream press, generally conservative (or neoconservative) owners began cracking down on independent-minded journalists as early as the mid-1970s. But that trend grew stronger in the 1980s when journalists found it harder and harder to challenge the propaganda and cover-ups of the Reagan administration.

As journalists with integrity were weeded out – and as the American Left largely stayed disengaged and silent – the MSM survivors came to understand that their livelihoods required them to tilt their stories right-ward. By the Clinton years, it made perfect sense to join the Right’s media in piling on regarding the trivial “Clinton scandals.”

After years of getting pounded as “liberal,” the MSM was determined to shed the liberal label by being tougher on a Democrat than on any Republican. That tilt contributed to the Republican Revolution of 1994 and eventually to Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 (though he managed to survive a Senate trial)

⁷¹ ‘Limbaugh wrong on minimum wage — again’ – Media Matters, 2004-08-13

LIMBAUGH: The minimum wage has gotten so high that it’s paying people that are not skilled to do anything. … It’s — whatever it is, six and a quarter, seven bucks an hour, an hour, going to be there soon. … No, thank you. I don’t want to be imprisoned by minimum wage. … Here, take the minimum wage. Vote for us, we’ll raise it in a couple years, as long as the rascally Republicans don’t stand in our way. They hate you. But we love you. Now go ahead, eat your rice.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the value of the $5.15 minimum wage in real dollars was lower in 2003 than in all but three years since 1960 …

… Limbaugh claimed that “75 percent of the people earning minimum wage” are teenagers; in reality, only 32 percent are.

⁷² ‘Obama Plans to Implement FDR’s Socialist Second Bill of Rights’ – Rush Limbaugh Show transcript, October 29, 2008

How many are happy with your Social Security? How many of you think it’s what you thought it was going to be? Where is that second home down in the Bahamas that Social Security and FDR was going to get for you? Where is all this plentiful retirement and security? Where is all this freedom from economic insecurity that FDR promised you with Social Security? Every time I talk to a Social Security recipient and that’s all they’ve got, they don’t have any security about anything. They’re worried to hell it’s going to be cut. (Limbaugh is mocking Social Security, but to me it sounds like an argument for boosting benefits. – QH)

⁷³ ‘McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer’ – The Paragraph 2008-08-23 Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) pushed through the “Enron loophole”, and the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act” creating “the shadow banking system”.

⁷⁴ ‘The 2000 Campaign’ – Consortiumnews.com

⁷⁵ ‘Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says’ By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, The New York Times, January 8, 2007 “Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional [Budget Office] study.”

⁷⁶ ‘Let’s Have a Hanging Party’ by Jesse Eisinger, Slate.com, March 2, 2009

There were two kinds of governmental failure in the past several decades: One was active financial deregulation; the other was the purposeful malignant neglect of government’s regulatory role in overseeing the markets. Regulators were defanged.

I’ll mention just two examples. The first is when Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, blocked Fed Gov. Ed Gramlich’s efforts to have the chief banking regulatory arm of the country take a more active role in subprime lending. The second is the SEC’s decision, which Obama’s new chairman, Mary Schapiro, is repealing, to require enforcement lawyers to get the OK from commissioners before moving on cases: This was an intentional roadblock to securities enforcement erected by ideologues and cronies in the Bush administration. After all, the first SEC chairman appointed by Bush was Harvey Pitt, a lawyer who had a long career defending companies from accusations by the SEC.

⁷⁷ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ – The Paragraph, 2008-12-26

⁸⁵ ‘Washington’s Farewell Address’ – George Washington, 1796

⁸⁶ Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813

⁸⁷ ‘Fragments of a Tariff Discussion’ – 1846 or 1847, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

⁸⁸ ‘Why The Trusts And Bosses Oppose The Progressive Party’ – Theodore Roosevelt, Emporia, Kansas, September 22, 1912

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.x⁴⁴

DeChristopher went inside, and when someone asked him if he was there to bid, he said “yes”. He showed his driver’s license, signed a form and got an bidder’s paddle for the auction:

[O]nce I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could.

Eventually, the authorities caught on to DeChristopher’s game, and ushered him out:

The federal officials who took me into custody said that I cost the oil companies in the room hundreds of thousands of dollars and prevented 22,500 acres of land from being sold for fossil fuel development. I had a very open conversation with the federal agents about my motivations and values. They were friendly, respectful, and somewhat sympathetic.x⁴⁵

The form DeChristopher had signed held a notice of the penalty for fraudulent bidding — up to five years prison.

I knew that as bad as this could possibly turn out, if I ended up going to prison, then I could live with that. But if I saw an opportunity to protect the land of southern Utah and I saw an opportunity to keep some oil in the ground and give us a better chance for a livable future and I passed up that opportunity, then I wouldn’t be able to live with that.

News of DeChristopher’s action brought him much support from across the country. Patrick Shea, the BLM chief under President Clinton, became DeChristopher’s lawyer pro-bono, and via Bidder70.org, people sent in $45,000 for a down payment on the $1.7 million that DeChristopher owes.

I see that, you know, for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and, you know, the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.

Three days ago, the Bush wilderness sale hit another stumbling block in a federal court case brought by several environmental groups.x⁴⁶ The judge ordered the administration not to cash any of the auction checks on the grounds that “development of domestic energy resources … is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment”. Shea commented on that news:

The Temporary Restraining Order will be good evidence for Tim’s case, but he still has a separate criminal process to go through. … We are getting good cooperation from the Federal government in trying to resolve Tim’s case, we expect after Tuesday [inauguration day] the cooperation will increase.x⁴⁶

Sources

⁴⁰ ‘America Puts Brakes on Drive for More War, note 103’ – The Paragraph, 2006-11-30

⁴¹ ‘Papers Detail Industry’s Role in Cheney’s Energy Report’ By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post, Page A01, July 18, 2007

⁴² ‘What Am I Bid for the American Wild?’ By Michael Winship, ConsortiumNews.com, January 10, 2009

⁴³ ‘Bogus BLM oil bidder: I’ve got the lease money’ by Patty Henetz, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2009-01-10

⁴⁴ ‘Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling’ – Democracy Now, 2008-12-22

⁴⁵ ‘Why I Disrupted A Fraudulent Auction’ by Tim DeChristopher, Bidder70.org, 2008-12-21

⁴⁶ ‘Court Orders Government to Stop Land Leasing in Utah’ – The National Resources Defense Council, 2009-01-18

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action against a corporate monopoly that led to the birth of the United States. The raiders of the Tea Party pledged silence for 50 years. One of them, George R. T. Hewes, lived that long and got his story published. He tells how the British government tried to give the East India Company, the biggest corporation of the day, a monopoly on tea, the biggest drug of the day:x⁷⁰

The [East India] Company … received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America … Hence it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity, which by the aid of the public authority, might, as they supposed, easily be landed, and amassed in suitable magazines.

The East India Company sent big loads of tea to American cities:

Accordingly the Company sent its agents at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, six hundred chests of tea, and a proportionate number to Charleston, and other maritime cities of the American continent. The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye, and determine their course …

Philadelphia and New York sent the tea back:

At Philadelphia, those to whom the teas of the [East India] Company were intended to be consigned, were induced by persuasion, or constrained by menaces, to promise, on no terms, to accept the proffered consignment.

At New-York, Captain Sears and McDougal, daring and enterprising men, effected a concert of will between the smugglers, the merchants, and the sons of liberty. Pamphlets suited to the conjecture, were daily distributed, and nothing was left unattempted by popular leaders, to obtain their purpose.

Among the pamphlets circulating was The Alarm by Rusticus, which warned that the American colonies could meet a fate like that of Bengal, which underwent famine while the East India Company had a monopoly on grain trade:x⁷¹

Are we in like Manner to be given up to the Disposal of the East India Company, who have now the Assurance, to step forth in Aid of the Minister, to execute his Plan, of enslaving America? Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. … Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate that the poor could not purchase them.

The public felt the moment of truth was near:

In Boston the general voice declared the time was come to face the storm. Why do we wait? they exclaimed; soon or late we must engage in conflict with England. Hundreds of years may roll away before the ministers can have perpetrated as many violations of our rights, as they have committed within a few years. The opposition is formed; it is general; it remains for us to seize the occasion. The more we delay the more strength is acquired by the ministers. Now is the time to prove our courage, or be disgraced with our brethren of the other colonies, who have their eyes fixed upon us, and will be prompt in their succor if we show ourselves faithful and firm.

On November 28th, 1773, the first of the tea-bearing ships docked in Boston Harbor, and the morning after, as Hewes recounts, a notice was published:

Friends, Brethren, Countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detested TEA, has arrived in this harbour. The hour of destruction, a manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny, stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and to posterity, is now called upon to meet in Faneuil Hall, at nine o’clock, this day, at which time the bells will ring, to make a united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration.”

Unlike in Philadelphia and New York, the governor and receiving agents in Boston would not send the tea back. So the Bostonians placed guards to watch the ships, and send an alarm should they start to unload.

The factors who were to be the consignees of the tea, were urged to renounce their agency, but they refused and took refuge in the fortress. A guard was placed on Griffin’s wharf, near where the tea ships were moored. It was agreed that a strict watch should be kept; that if any insult should be offered, the bell should be immediately rung; and some persons always ready to bear intelligence of what might happen, to the neighbouring towns, and to call in the assistance of the country people.”

After some days, the ship commanders declared that on December 17th they would unload the tea by force if needed:x⁷²

The tea … was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin’s wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon’s mouth.

On the day before the threatened day, a throng gathered — riled and ready to dump tea:

Things thus appeared to be hastening to a disastrous issue. The people of the country arrived in great numbers, the inhabitants of the town assembled. This assembly … was the most numerous ever known, there being more than 2000 from the country present.

… the public mind [was] already wrought up to a degree of desperation, and ready to break out into acts of violence, on every trivial occasion of offence….

Finding no measures were likely to be taken, either by the governor, or the commanders, or owners of the ships, to return their cargoes or prevent the landing of them, at 5 o’clock a vote was called for the dissolution of the meeting and obtained.

But cooler members got the crowd to stay and further consider the gravity of such action. One of them, Josiah Quiney, gave this warning:

… Greatly will he deceive himself, who shall think, that with cries, with exclamations, with popular resolutions, we can hope to triumph in the conflict, and vanquish our inveterate foes. Their malignity is implacable, their thirst for vengeance insatiable. They have their allies, their accomplices, even in the midst of us – even in the bosom of this innocent country; and who is ignorant of the power of those who have conspired our ruin? Who knows not their artifices? Imagine not therefore, that you can bring this controversy to a happy conclusion without the most strenuous, the most arduous, the most terrible conflict; consider attentively the difficulty of the enterprise, and the uncertainty of the issue. Reflict [sic] and ponder, even ponder well, before you embrace the measures, which are to involve this country in the most perilous enterprise the world has witnessed.

The crowd gave the governor one more chance, then ended the meeting and headed for the docks:

The question was then immediately put whether the landing of the tea should be opposed and carried in the affirmative unanimously. Rotch [a local tea seller], to whom the cargo of tea had been consigned, was then requested to demand of the governor to permit to pass the castle [return the ships to England]. The latter answered haughtily, that for the honor of the laws, and from duty towards the king, he could not grant the permit, until the vessel was regularly cleared. A violent commotion immediately ensued; and … a person disguised after the manner of the Indians, who was in the gallery, shouted at this juncture, the cry of war; and … the meeting dissolved in the twinkling of an eye, and the multitude rushed in a mass to Griffin’s wharf.

The raiders went in disguise:

It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin’s wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination.

The boarding parties acted deliberately, and did no damage except to the cargo:

We were immediately ordered by the respective commanders to board all the ships at the same time, which we promptly obeyed. The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging.

We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.

In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

The raiders resolved that all of the tea be destroyed, and none be used:

… there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of [tea] for their family use. …

One … came on board for that purpose, and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat. But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward, by a rapid effort he made his escape. He had, however, to run a gauntlet through the crowd upon the wharf nine each one, as he passed, giving him a kick or a stroke.

The raiders kept their identities secret, even among themselves:

We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates; nor do I recollect of our having had the knowledge of the name of a single individual concerned in that affair, except … the commander of my division … There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself. No disorder took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.

The Boston Tea Party led to the British blockade of Boston Harbor, the battles of Lexington & Concord, the American Revolutionary War, and the U.S. Constitution.x⁷³ Shortly after the Constitution was adopted in 1787, Thomas Jefferson tried to amend it to add a declaration of rights:x⁷⁴

By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies.

Jefferson got all but two of those into the Bill of Rights. One of the missing rights was the “freedom of commerce against monopolies” — the one that could today dampen the need for further “tea parties”.

(Boston Tea Party Historical Society)

Sources

⁷⁰ ‘America’s First Anti-Globalization Protest – The Boston Tea Party’ excerpt from Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann

⁷¹ ‘Bengal famine of 1770’ – Wikipedia

About 10 million people, approximately one third of the population of the affected area, are estimated to have died in the famine. …

Fault for the famine is now often ascribed to the British East India Company policies in Bengal. According to others, however, the famine was not a direct fault of the British regime, but was only exacerbated by its policies. …

As lands came under company control, the land tax was typically raised by 5 times what it had been – from 10% to up to 50% of the value of the agricultural produce. … As the famine approached its height, in April of 1770, the Company announced that land tax for the following year was to be increased by a further 10%.

The company is also criticised for forbidding the “hoarding” of rice. This prevented traders and dealers from laying in reserves that in other times would have tided the population over lean periods, as well as ordering the farmers to plant indigo instead of rice.

By the time of the famine, monopolies in grain trading had been established by the Company and its agents. The Company had no plan for dealing with the grain shortage, and actions were only taken insofar as they affected the mercantile and trading classes. …

⁷² ‘Eyewitness Account by George Hewes’ – Boston Tea Party Historical Society

⁷³ ‘Timeline of Events Preceeding the Boston Tea Party’ – Boston Tea Party Historical Society

⁷⁴ ‘Jefferson’s Dream: The Bill of Rights’ – excerpt from Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com