Lee Fang at ThinkProgress is reporting that Occupy Wall Street may have more in common with the Boston Tea Party than today's Tea Party does. The article cites five reasons the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement embodies the real Boston Tea Party.
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Americans, upset with a government that used the colonies to enrich the East India Trading Company, dressed in Native American costumes and boarded the ships belonging to the company and destroyed the company’s tea. For almost three weeks, demonstrators have gathered from New York to Los Angeles to protest corporate domination over American politics, a True Tea Party movement may be brewing:
1) The Original Boston Tea Party Was A Civil Disobedience Action Against A Private Corporation. In 1773, agitators blocked the importation of tea by East India Trading Company ships across the country. In Boston harbor, a band of protesters led by Samuel Adams boarded the corporation’s ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. No East India Trading Company employees were harmed, but the destruction of the company’s tea is estimated to be worth up to $2 million in today’s money. The Occupy Wall Street protests have targeted big banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, as well as multinational corporations like GE with sit-ins and peaceful rallies.
As Fang points out, the Boston Tea Party was a radical movement. Leaders of civil disobedience — from Martin Luther King Jr. to Mahatma Gandhi — have looked to the original Tea Party for inspiration. And like today's Occupy Wall Street movement, those participants faced scorn from elites and conservatives. Many of today's Tea Party members and supporters, on the other hand, are right-wing conservatives who favor powerful corporations and the wealthy.
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