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Thom's blog
Who's on your side - Elizabeth Warren or Jamie Dimon?
The history of America is the history of “We the People” confronting corporate power and winning. In fact, the whole reason we started this country was because individuals and small businesses wanted to fight back against the dominant corporation of the day, the British East India Company.
Here’s a little history lesson you won’t see on Fox So-Called News…
By the 1770s, the British East India Company, despite being the most powerful corporation in the world, was essentially bankrupt and faced fierce competition from small-business owners who were cutting into its tea trade with North America. And so it lobbied the Parliament of Great Britain to pass the Tea Act of 1773.
This act gave the British East India Company total control over the North American tea trade, exempted it from having to pay taxes on exported tea, and gave it a refund on any tea it was unable to sell. It was the largest corporate tax cut in the history of the world, and set up the East India Company to pull a Wal-Mart and put all the small, local tea shops across America out of business.
Not surprisingly, this really angered the American colonists. They were furious at seeing their business undercut to help out a big corporation, and so a group of them in Boston known as the Sons of Liberty decided to take action. On the night of December 16, 1773 they dressed themselves up as Native Americans, stormed a group of ships docked in Boston Harbor, and tossed chest upon chest of East India tea into the freezing winter water.
The events of that night, now known as the Boston Tea Party, set off another chain of events that eventually led to the Declaration of Independence and the creation of our republic. That’s right, conservatives - the American Revolution started with an act of corporate vandalism by the good citizens of Boston!
The Boston Tea Party is just one example, though, of a much larger trend in American history. And that trend is the trend of “We the People” taking action, both through movement politics and through our democratic government, against entrenched corporate power.
-Thom
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