How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter. David S. Meyer

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      3  3 Peta Australia, “Nearly Naked Peta Members to Take On Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival for Refusing to Renounce Fur.” https://www.peta.org.au/media/nearly-naked-peta-members-to-take-on-mercedes-benz-fashion-festival-for-refusing-to-renounce-fur/ (accessed November 13, 2020).

      4  4 Greenpeace International, “Actress Lucy Lawless joins climate change survivor in protest against Arctic exploitation for Norwegian oil.” July 21, 2017. https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/7449/actress-lucy-lawless-joins-climate-change-survivor-in-protest-against-arctic-exploitation-for-norwegian-oil/ (accessed November 13, 2020).

      5  5 Marc Santora and Anna Schaverien, “Anti-Brexit Protesters Descend on London as Parliament Debates.” The New York Times, October 19, 2019.

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CHAPTER 1 Why Movements Emerge and How They Work

      Contemporary visitors to Boston can tour the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and follow a guided tour of “the event that started a Revolution”¹ through a museum of the revolution, educated and entertained by actors who recreate heroic figures from America’s War of Independence. The tour ends with visitors mounting the deck of a replica of a colonial-era ship, throwing crates of tea over the side. Because the tour is pedagogical, rather than political, the crates, secured by ropes, don’t quite reach the waters of Boston Harbor. The boxes can be quickly retrieved so that the next visitor can enjoy the revolutionary experience.

      The event holds an iconic place in American history. In the winter of 1773, colonists opposed to a selectively administered tax on tea – and British rule more generally – assembled by the harbor to stage a political protest. In the midst of his rally speech, rebel organizer Sam Adams signaled his supporters to act. Perhaps a hundred men who came prepared, costumed as Indians, screamed as they boarded the ships and began to throw tea over the side; they were joined by another hundred or so volunteers who had come to watch, but were inspired by the moment. More than 1,000 others watched, cheering the protesters on. Even in the drama of the moment, protesters were careful not to hurt anyone, nor to damage the ships (Griswold 1972).

The Boston Tea Party affected more than the next morning’s breakfast. Outraged and threatened, local police arrested and punished a few of the vandals they could find. And in London, Parliament instituted a series of “Coercive Acts,” intended to punish the colonists, particularly in Massachusetts. Among other insults, Parliament shut down the Boston Harbor, until the colony could pay for the tea in the sea, imposed direct British rule on the colony, and provided for the quartering of British soldiers in Massachusetts. Patriots called the response “The Intolerable Acts.”

      In the short run, the Tea Party looked like a bad idea. Colonists had long opposed taxes on tea, and had found a way around them, buying untaxed smuggled tea, some of it shipped by John Hancock, who was already a major political figure in Massachusetts. The tea that ended up in the harbor, which was to be sold by the East India Company, would actually have been sold at discount, even cheaper than the smuggled tea. The tax break offered by the Crown represented Britain’s attempt to boost the company’s failing fortunes. The protest, which destroyed their goods, didn’t help. Meanwhile, tea smugglers, whose businesses were threatened by the cheaper official tea, were among those supporting the Tea Party.

Over a slightly extended time frame, however, the Tea Party further polarized politics in the colonies, increasing pressure on people to take sides. Opposition to the Intolerable Acts created additional protests over the next year, and resistance led to the first Continental Congress, held in Philadelphia the following year. That Congress petitioned King George III to end the Intolerable Acts, declared a boycott of British goods, and scheduled a second Constitutional Congress – just in case the Crown didn’t respond to the petition. It didn’t. Resistance grew in the colonies, and armed conflict between the British military erupted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the Spring of 1775. Shortly thereafter, the second Constitutional Congress convened, and that Congress eventually endorsed the Declaration of Independence and began to muster an armed resistance. Meanwhile, Thomas Paine (2019) published Common Sense in 1776, a series of pamphlets codifying and justifying the case for an independence movement. In this frame, the Tea Party was critical in setting into motion the events that culminated in American independence (Maier 1972).

      So, we can tell a relatively coherent story in which the Tea Party was a catalyst for all that followed, including increased repression and provocation from the British, intensified organizing among the colonists both politically and militarily, and the cultivation of a liberal democratic ideology that supported an independence movement. But history didn’t begin on that December night in Boston Harbor. The circumstances that give rise to dramatic protest events, and to social movements more generally, also contribute to the broader process of social change.

      We might start by acknowledging that European colonization of the United States began more than 150 years before the Boston Tea Party, and the immigrants were mostly people who were unhappy with their lives under British rule. Generations grew up in America, with British governance only a distant force in the background most of the time. The colonists built local governments and businesses, and conducted their own commerce and conflicts with each other and with the Indigenous people already occupying the continent.

The conflicts that led to the Tea Party can be traced back nearly a decade before that dramatic confrontation. In seeking to finance both current wars and debt from previous wars, King George and Parliament sought to extract as much value from their colonies as possible, imposing taxes on virtually anything that might generate revenue, starting with sugar, then adding glass, lead, paints, and paper. Britain imposed taxes on printed materials and imports generally. It also sought to exercise greater control over governance in the colonies, and maintained a large military presence in the New World. Parliament demanded that the colonists build barracks for the British soldiers and, failing that, to house them in stables, inns, and ale houses and, ultimately, in any vacant space. Parliament also held the colonists responsible for providing the funds to feed and support the British troops.

      An organized resistance preceded the Tea Party. Virtually every provocation from Parliament generated a response. Political activists like Samuel Adams produced pamphlets and letters arguing that Parliament could not impose taxes on the colonies without their input. The arguments and letters circulated around the colonies, deepening the ties among the colonists, while building sympathy for the cause of independence. Britain responded with increased force; its efforts to squeeze the colonies all met with resistance, leading to the revocation of some laws, but also intensified conflict. In 1770, protest against the quartering of troops in Boston led to armed confrontation in the streets. In response to the colonists’ harassment of soldiers, British soldiers opened fire on a crowd, resulting in the death of five colonists. There was a level of conflict, often violent and disruptive, that preceded and followed the more theatrical Tea Party, but the better choreographed event has an iconic place in narratives of American history that often edit out more violent events (Schiff 2020).

The point is that a decade of disruption preceded the Tea Party and the Revolution; speeches and pamphlets, intensified by long discussions in parliaments and taverns, occupied a far larger part of the process of building support than the drama of a costumed attack on commerce