Protesting against tyranny, against government abuse, against human rights violations, this is the essence of the nation known as America. What we are seeing today across the nation is a demonstration of what it means to be American. Citizens are protesting police brutality specifically, but with the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the catastrophic unemployment and the divisive leadership under Donald Trump, it feels like more than that.
It’s remarkable to see so many Americans, including many of our political figures, come out harshly and often violently against the protests. Yes, they are tinged with property damage which outrages many, but let’s start with the basics to see how all of this, including the damage to property, is in fact what America is.
This nation was born out of rebellion. A protest against a government the fledgling colonies could no longer abide. The original founders and architects of the nation drew up a specific list of grievances against the government and declared the ultimate protest: they renounced their government and claimed the right to start their own. Whenever a government becomes destructive of a people’s rights to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it! That is some heavy stuff. But that’s what our founders wrote, and then took action to accomplish.
One of the specific grievances the founders expressed was that the government of Britain housed large bodies of armed troops among the populace, and protected them for any murders they committed upon the inhabitants of the colonies. That should sound eerily familiar to us today. They confirmed that they had tried every means of petitioning for a resolution of the issues they complained of, yet to no result. They then proclaimed their independence, and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their honor in its pursuit.
In the founding documents of the new nation, a Bill of Rights was produced and the very first Article is the following:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I have italicized the relevant section. The people have the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Our right to protest is even more American than baseball, apple pie or Chevrolet.
With regards to the destruction of property, I shall point my faithful readers to the Boston Tea Party, where the would be free citizens of a new country took it upon themselves to protest against their British government by destroying 342 chests of tea imported by the British East India Company.
In the 1870’s, protesting against unsafe labor conditions in coal mines, Americans bombed train tracks and destroyed coal mines.
In 1980, Christians took hammers to two Mark 12A warheads and poured their own blood onto the Pennsylvania General Electric Nuclear Missile facility’s papers in protest of war making. They used the Bible’s call for destruction in the name of peace as their rallying cry.
I don’t condone smashing in the glass doors and windows of the Apple Store in a call for an end to police brutality. But one can’t call the destruction of property in protest of an oppressive, murderous government un-American without being ignorant of our history; only perhaps by ignoring it.
As brave citizens put themselves in harm’s way, in fact pledging their lives, their fortunes and their honor to protest the ongoing systemic racism against our black brothers and sisters, the most American thing we can do is join them. We have every right to assemble peaceably and protest our government for a redress of grievances. If these peaceful protests are met with violent oppression by the government, it is a violation of the very essence of our nation, by those we put in power to lead us. Who then is being un-American?
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