quote:

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations picking up momentum across the country better embody the values of the original Boston Tea Party [than the 2011 Tea Party]. In the late 18th century, the British government became deeply entwined with the interests of the East India Trading Company, a massive conglomerate that counted British aristocracy as shareholders. Americans, upset with a government that used the colonies to enrich the East India Trading Company, donned Native American costumes and boarded the ships belonging to the company and destroyed the company’s tea. In the last two weeks, as protesters 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.

2.) THE ORIGINAL BOSTON TEA PARTY FEARED THAT CORPORATE GREED WOULD DESTROY AMERICA.

As Professor Benjamin Carp has argued, colonists perceived the East India Trading Company as a “fearsome monopolistic company that was going to rob them blind and pave the way maybe for their enslavement.”

3.) THE ORIGINAL BOSTON TEA PARTY BELIEVED GOVERNMENT NECESSARY TO PROTECT AGAINST CORPORATE EXCESS.

Smithsonian historian Barbara Smith has noted that Samuel Adams believed that oppression could occur when national governments are too weak…Patriots behind the Tea Party revolt believed “rough economic equality was necessary to maintaining liberty,” says Smith

4.) THE ORIGINAL BOSTON TEA PARTY WAS SPARKED BY A CORPORATE TAX CUT FOR A BRITISH CORPORATION.

The Tea Act, a law by the British Parliament exempting tea imported by the East India Trading Company from taxes and allowing the corporation to directly ship its tea to the colonies for sale, is credited with setting off the Boston Tea Party. The law was perceived as an effort by the British to bailout the East India Trading Company by shutting off competition from American shippers…Occupy Wall Street has been demanding the end of corporate tax loopholes as well as the enactment of higher taxes on billionaires and millionaires.

5.) THE ORIGINAL BOSTON TEA PARTY WANTED A STRONGER DEMOCRACY.

There is a common misconception that the Boston Tea Party was simply a revolt against taxation. The truth is much more nuanced, and there were many factors behind the opposition to the East India Company and the British government…According to historian Benjamin Carp, the protesters in Boston perceived that the British government’s actions were set by the East India Trading Company. “As Americans learned more about the provisions of the new East India Company laws, they realized that Parliament would sooner lend a hand to the Company than the colonies,” wrote Carp.

The very first Boston Tea Party was truly radical and faced scorn from elites and conservatives of the era just as elites and conservatives of today disparage the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Mitt Romney on Wall Street Protests

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney does not approve of the protests. “I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” said Romney when asked about the protest.

Bill O'Reilly on OccupyWall Street protests

"They're jobless because they don't want to work...all these people, if they took a shower, they can get a job."

After Relentlessly Promoting Tea Party Protests, Fox Attacks Wall Street Protesters

"I would think these folks are deluded in a lot of ways" - Fox Legal Analyst Peter Johnson Jr. Fox & Friends October 3rd;

"They're people with absolutely no purpose or focus in life. No wonder, they have nothing but free time to be down there. They make up a slogan or a cause as they go along. And they are just looking to go out there and dirty the streets. And they really don't have any idea about what they are doing there" - Hannity September 30, over a graphic: "Lunatics of the left wing"

CollarChat

The usual infantile nativity of youth and the disenfranchised…This pipedream of a protest will go nowhere because it does not have the support of the level headed citizenry....me. - kdsub

CollarChat

Get a job you fucking bums.... - gman992