Category: Civil Disobedience

August 29, 1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

8/29/2021

Daniel and Abigail Shays' Pelham, MA farmhouse, c. 1898

Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. American Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels (called Shaysites) in a protest against economic and civil rights injustices. Shays was a farmhand from Massachusetts at the beginning of the Revolutionary War; he joined the Continental Army, saw action at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and Battles of Saratoga, and was eventually wounded in action.

In 1787, Shays' rebels marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The confederal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion, and it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State militia and a privately funded local militia. The widely held view was that the Articles of Confederation needed to be reformed as the country's governing document, and the events of the rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the new government. There is still debate among scholars concerning the rebellion's influence on the Constitution and its ratification.

July 24, 1487 - The Leeuwarden Beer Strike Begins

7/24/2021

A strike (or more properly, a riot) over beer at first blush may not seem to have much to do with the history of the Rule of Law. However, the Leeuwarden Beer Strike of 1487 was about more than beer. To understand the Beer Strike, one has to understand the contentious politics of the Netherlands in the Late Middle Ages.

The first record description of the region known as the Netherlands is from the Greek geographer Pytheas, who noted c. 325 BC that in these regions, "more people died in the struggle against water than in the struggle against men." That observation is something of an exaggeration, as the inhospitable geography, while sometimes deadly, was also much contested over by the Celtic tribes that inhabited the region.

While today we recognize the Netherlands as a unified country, through much of its history this region as been more often divided than not, and even when unified under one rule, it was generally that of a foreign prince who took little interest in the internal struggles of the local populace.

The Romans were the first to conquer the region and place it under their nominal rule. However, the official Roman border was set at the Rhine River during the reign of Augustus Caesar, effective dividing the "low countries" into two regions of an area inside the the Empire and under its direct control and an area beyond the border subject to Roman influence, but nominally independent. In modern terms, the nations of Luxembourg and Belgium and the two western most provinces of the Netherlands, the historical region known as Holland were within the Empire and the remainder of the Netherlands was not.

This a distinction that was repeated in future eras. For example when the region was ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy, whose territory included much of the former Roman region, the territory was referred to as les pays de par deçà ("the lands over here") for the Low Countries, as opposed to les pays de par delà ("the lands over there") for their original homeland. Under Habsburg rule, les pays de par deçà developed into the pays d'embas ("lands down-here"), an expression in relation to other Habsburg possessions like Hungary and Austria. This was translated as Neder-landen in contemporary Dutch official documents, thus "Netherlands".

In keeping with the divided nature between their external rulers and their internal governance, the provinces of the Netherlands developed from traditional tribal areas, maintaining their own customs and often their own languages. Even today, the Netherlands recognizes Dutch, West Frisian, Low Saxon and Limburgish as official and distinct languages.

And this brings us to beer. Beer has throughout history been the beverage of the common man (and not infrequently the entire population), preferred not only for its intoxicating effect, but for its nutritional value and the fact that it was often safer to drink than potentially contaminated sources of water. It is sometimes observed that that the distinction between and village and town and a city was that the village had a bakery, the town a bakery and a brewery, and the city a bakery and two breweries.

In the Late Middle Ages, the City of Haarlem, in "North Holland," one of the provinces traditionally "inside" the civilized world, was particularly renowned for its strong, dark and flavorful beer produced in over 100 breweries. The brew of Leeuwarden, by contrast, was considered inferior both in taste and fortifying properties. The rivalry between the two cities was not limited to their competing beverages. Leeuwarden was the capital of Friesland, an "outside" province, and had had various times been the focal point of the resistance to external rule in the Friso-Hollandic Wars of the 13th to 15th centuries. The two cities were also competitors for the burgeoning international trade that in the coming centuries would turn the Netherlands into a world power.

Thus it came to pass in the early summer of 1487 that the town leaders of Leewarden determined that to protect the business interest of the local brewers (and the city's tax revenue from brewing), it would be necessary to ban the importation of all beers not brewed within the city. They further banned the selling of any existing stocks of foreign beers -- a move that did not sit well with the local tavern owners.

Matters came to a head (pun fully intended) on July 24, a market day, when a large number of farmers were in the city to sell their produce who desired to quench their thirst before heading home, prevailed upon a local tavernkeeper to open his stock of Haarlem Beer. When the incident was reported to the authorities, an attempt was made to arrest the tavernkeeper and expel his patrons, who were now well fortified with the strong brew. A general donnybrook ensued, and in the following days citizens from neighboring towns, estimated to number more than 8,000, besieged the city hall demanding that the ban on imported beer end. The city eventually capitulated.

While it did not lead to significant changes in the local government beyond repeal of the beer importation ban, the Leeuwarden Beer Strike can perhaps be viewed as an antecedent of a later act of civil disobedience concerning a popular beverage - the Boston Tea Party. Major beer riots would occur again in Bavaria and Chicago in the 19th century, and, in the late 20th Century on the campus of Illinois State University.

June 28, 1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the traditional start of the Gay Rights Movement.

6/28/2021

The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising or the Stonewall rebellion) were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered a watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.

As was common for gay bars at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia. While police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn on June 28. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents organized into activist groups demanding the right to live openly regarding their sexual orientation, and without fear of being arrested. The new activist organizations concentrated on confrontational tactics, and within months three newspapers were established to promote rights for gay men and lesbians.

A year after the uprising, to mark the anniversary on June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.[8] Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. Today, LGBT Pride events are held annually in June in honor of the Stonewall riots.

The Stonewall National Monument was established at the site in 2016. An estimated 5 million participants commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, and on June 6, 2019, New York City Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill rendered a formal apology on for the actions of officers at Stonewall in 1969.

June 9, 1772 – The British schooner Gaspee is burned in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

6/9/2021

The Gaspee Affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a British customs schooner that had been enforcing the Navigation Acts in and around Newport, Rhode Island in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet ship Hannah on June 9 near Gaspee Point in Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown attacked, boarded, and torched the ship.

British officials in Rhode Island wanted to increase their control over trade—legitimate trade as well as smuggling—in order to increase their revenue from the small colony. But Rhode Islanders increasingly protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and other British impositions that had clashed with the colony's history of rum manufacturing, maritime trade, and slave trading.

On June 9, Gaspee gave chase to the packet ship Hannah, but Gaspee ran aground in shallow water on the northwestern side of the bay on what is now Gaspee Point. Her crew were unable to free her and Dudingston decided to wait for high tide, which would possibly set the vessel afloat. Before that could happen, however, a band of Providence men led by John Brown decided to act on the "opportunity offered of putting an end to the trouble and vexation she daily caused." They rowed out to the ship and boarded her at the break of dawn on June 10. The crew put up a feeble resistance in which they were attacked with handspikes and Lieutenant Dudingston was shot and wounded in the groin. The boarding party casually read through the ships papers, before forcing the crew off the ship and lighting it aflame. Most of the men involved were also members of the Sons of Liberty.

This event and others in Narragansett Bay marked the first acts of violent uprising against the British crown's authority in America, preceding the Boston Tea Party by more than a year and moving the Thirteen Colonies as a whole toward the war for independence.

May 30, 1381 – Beginning of the Peasants' Revolt in England.

5/30/2021

Richard II meets the rebels on 14 June 1381 in a miniature from a 1470s copy of Jean Froissart's Chronicles.

The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death pandemic in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years' War, and instability within the local leadership of London. The final trigger for the revolt was the intervention of a royal official, John Bampton, in Essex on 30 May 1381. His attempts to collect unpaid poll taxes in Brentwood ended in a violent confrontation, which rapidly spread across the south-east of the country. A wide spectrum of rural society, including many local artisans and village officials, rose up in protest, burning court records and opening the local gaols. The rebels sought a reduction in taxation, an end to the system of unfree labour known as serfdom, and the removal of the King's senior officials and law courts.

Inspired by the sermons of the radical cleric John Ball and led by Wat Tyler, a contingent of Kentish rebels advanced on London. They were met at Blackheath by representatives of the royal government, who unsuccessfully attempted to persuade them to return home. King Richard II, then aged 14, retreated to the safety of the Tower of London, but most of the royal forces were abroad or in northern England. On 13 June, the rebels entered London and, joined by many local townsfolk, attacked the gaols, destroyed the Savoy Palace, set fire to law books and buildings in the Temple, and killed anyone associated with the royal government. The following day, Richard met the rebels at Mile End and acceded to most of their demands, including the abolition of serfdom. Meanwhile, rebels entered the Tower of London, killing the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, whom they found inside.

On 15 June, Richard left the city to meet Tyler and the rebels at Smithfield. Violence broke out, and Richard's party killed Tyler. Richard defused the tense situation long enough for London's mayor, William Walworth, to gather a militia from the city and disperse the rebel forces. Richard immediately began to re-establish order in London and rescinded his previous grants to the rebels. The revolt had also spread into East Anglia, where the University of Cambridge was attacked and many royal officials were killed. Unrest continued until the intervention of Henry Despenser, who defeated a rebel army at the Battle of North Walsham on 25 or 26 June. Troubles extended north to York, Beverley and Scarborough, and as far west as Bridgwater in Somerset. Richard mobilised 4,000 soldiers to restore order. Most of the rebel leaders were tracked down and executed; by November, at least 1,500 rebels had been killed.

The Peasants' Revolt has been widely studied by academics. Late 19th-century historians used a range of sources from contemporary chroniclers to assemble an account of the uprising, and these were supplemented in the 20th century by research using court records and local archives. Interpretations of the revolt have shifted over the years. It was once seen as a defining moment in English history, but modern academics are less certain of its impact on subsequent social and economic history. The revolt heavily influenced the course of the Hundred Years' War, by deterring later Parliaments from raising additional taxes to pay for military campaigns in France. The revolt has been widely used in socialist literature, including by the author William Morris, and remains a potent political symbol for the political left, informing the arguments surrounding the introduction of the Community Charge in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.

May 29, 1932 – World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.

5/29/2021

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – made up of 17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, together with their families and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the "Bonus Expeditionary Force", to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.

May 10, 1773 -- The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act.

5/10/2021

W.D. Cooper. "Boston Tea Party.", The History of North America. London: E. Newbury, 1789. in book: The History of North America. London: E. Newberry, 1789. Engraving. Plate opposite p. 58. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (Public Domian)

The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo 3 c 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. A related objective was to undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation. Smuggled tea was a large issue for Britain and the East India company, since approximately 86% of all the tea in America at the time was smuggled Dutch tea. Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies recognized the implications of the Act's provisions, and a coalition of merchants, smugglers, and artisans similar to that which had opposed the Stamp Act 1765 mobilized opposition to delivery and distribution of the tea. The company's authorised consignees were harassed, and in many colonies successful efforts were made to prevent the tea from being landed. In Boston, this resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists (some disguised as Native Americans, since they identified themselves as “Americans” and no longer considered themselves British subjects[2]) boarded tea ships anchored in the harbour and dumped their tea cargo overboard.

May 8, 1973 -- End of the Wounded Knee Occupation

5/9/2021

The Wounded Knee Occupation began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota (sometimes referred to as Oglala Sioux) and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Friar

Paul Manhart S.J. and ten other residents of the area were apprehended at gunpoint and taken hostage. The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to impeach tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. Additionally, protesters criticized the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Native American people and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations to hopefully arrive at fair and equitable treatment of Native Americans.

Oglala and AIM activists controlled the town for 71 days while the United States Marshals Service, FBI agents, and other law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area. The activists chose the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre for its symbolic value. In March, a U.S. Marshal was shot by gunfire coming from the town, which ultimately resulted in paralysis. A member of the Cherokee tribe and a member of the Oglala were both killed by shootings in April 1973. Ray Robinson, a civil rights activist who joined the protesters, disappeared during the events and is believed to have been murdered. Due to damage to the houses, the small community was not reoccupied until the 1990s.

The occupation attracted wide media coverage, especially after the press accompanied the two U.S. senators from South Dakota to Wounded Knee. The events electrified Native Americans, and many Native American supporters traveled to Wounded Knee to join the protest. At the time there was widespread public sympathy for the goals of the occupation, as Americans were becoming more aware of longstanding issues of injustice related to Natives. Afterward AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted on charges related to the events, but their 1974 case was dismissed by the federal court for prosecutorial misconduct, a decision upheld on appeal.

August 29, 1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

July 24, 1487 - The Leeuwarden Beer Strike Begins

June 28, 1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the traditional start of the Gay Rights Movement.

June 9, 1772 – The British schooner Gaspee is burned in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

May 30, 1381 – Beginning of the Peasants' Revolt in England.

May 29, 1932 – World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.

May 10, 1773 -- The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act.

May 8, 1973 -- End of the Wounded Knee Occupation

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