Resistance is Freedom

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

-Henry David Thoreau

Some months ago, when the Town Board decided that it's just authority extended to the attempted devastation of the reputation of one of our good neighbors, I stood at a Town board Meeting and declared that "The Tea Party starts tonight." Since that time, I have heard the supporters of the Board ridicule that statement, asking "Where's your Tea Party?" Trying to explain the love of freedom to these people is like trying to describe Mozart to one who has been denied the sense of hearing. They have no frame of reference by which to judge its beauty, its value, its immeasurable import to the souls of men.

They don't understand. They cannot understand.

The ideal of civil disobedience is one of the most important institutions of democracy. It is the basic statement made by the people that they consent to be governed, not to be ruled. It is a declaration that all who are given the authority to make the rules by which we live can be denied that authority at a moment's notice. Just laws are not obeyed because they are laws, but because the people agree with them. Laws which must be enforced through brute force because the majority of their subjects reject them are, by definition, unjust. They are not, in fact, laws at all, but decrees made by those in power whose authority has been withdrawn by the people.

Elected officials are given a term of office by the people who elect them, but being in office and having authority are two very different things. Being in office means having the power to enforce your will. Having authority means justifying your every action, day in and day out, to the people from whom your authority comes. Government has authority through the trust of the people. Once they lose that trust or intentionally trample it underfoot, they cease to be a Government and become instead a band of thugs.

It is at such times that the people of all democracies have the moral right and obligation to resist the decrees set above them. They have the ethical means to shout out loud to the charlatans who still consider themselves to be a Government that such decrees are illegitimate and will not be obeyed. They have the ability to turn thugs into lame ducks until such time as the next election allows them to say "You're fired."

Civil disobedience has a long, proud history in this country. From the Boston Tea Party where by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty cast British Tea into Boston Harbor to the Underground Railroad which gave human beings their freedom from the blight on our past called slavery. Suffragettes and civil rights protesters all practiced civil disobedience and brought about change. More importantly, each one of those changes broadened the personal liberties enjoyed by Americans.

Around the world, civil disobedience has been practiced far and wide to bring freedom to those who, although they had never experienced it, hungered and thirsted for it. From Gandhi's India to Stephen Biko's South Africa, refusal to submit brought about the changes the people both needed and demanded. At this very moment, it is being practiced in nations such as Burma, where those who refuse to give up power are assaulting their own people, inuring them, maiming them, killing them.

We can thank people like Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for showing us that, with courage and conviction, power can be defeated. It is immaterial if the reason one's freedoms are restricted is because of skin color, ethnicity, gender or simply because certain people in a Town want to drive their fellow Townsfolk out. When an official body wants to take freedom from us (and they always say that it's for our own good or that of the community), they must be shown that we will never acquiesce. Their laws will be thrown on the rubbish heap and allowed to rot from disuse as we will not obey. There can be no question, no room for doubt.

Laws forced on us will never govern us, not if we decide otherwise.

Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay entitled Civil Disobedience in 1848, in which he tells us:

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

Where is the Tea Party? Just look at the last two Public Hearings. The Tea Party is alive and well in the Town of Rochester and we are ready to cast all they have done to us into the sea. As for the Town Board, they will be removed from office shortly. Never again will we allow anyone to interfere in our homes and our freedoms. Our civil rights will be preserved and those who hate them will be marginalized.

Would you like some sugar with your Tea?