Thursday, January 1, 2015

Protests in 2014 vs 1775

A writer writes!

In the latter part of the 17th century, colonists in what was to become these United States of America, angrily marched and protested.  Was the subject of their protest the shooting of a colonist by the British army?  No, the issue involved new taxes being established on a variety of goods the colonists used.  At some of these protests,  colonists were shot and killed by British soldiers. Soldiers who presumably feared for their lives.  More and more protests occurred against the unilateral taxation policies imposed upon the colonists.

Some 250 years later, world wide protests are occurring over the choke hold murder in New York City, and the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this past August.  In both cases the "authority" of the police was found to support the actions that resulted in the death of African American men.

Those who don't understand why people are protesting need to just look back through history and ask the question why were the protests by the colonists so valid?  Those protests helped to launch the American Revolution and paved the way for your existence today.  It was a time when the colonists became tired of being taken advantage of by a ruling authority far away.  The colonists were tired of not being represented and their voice heard.

Now in the year 2015, people are tired of hearing about unarmed people being killed just because police feared for their lives or because the police have the authority to use deadly force against other people.  People are rebelling against the view that authority has the right to do whatever it wants without any consequences.  Protests are part of the history of these United States of America.   Just as outrage over being taxed mattered to the colonists, so too does it matter that African American men are being killed and no one held accountable for those acts.  Let the protests continue.

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