Good Morning.
I alluded to it yesterday,
maybe a look into the rear-view mirror over 250 years back is in order.
October of 1768. Regular British army troops unloaded at the foot of Long Wharf, and marched up to Boston Common past the Old State House in an "insolent parade". There, they established an encampment and proceeded to "protect" decent, law-abiding British subjects from the alleged crimes of the rabble-rousing Patriots opposed to the Townshend Acts.
Regulars of the British army occupied Boston in 1768 ostensibly to enforce the Townshend Acts, passed the previous year by Parliament, and to protect those Royal officials tasked with the collection of revenue. The occupation presented a multi-faceted set of threats to the order of Bostonians’ lives: the occupiers threatened economic livelihoods, physical safety, social order, and political rights. Their presence caused massive disruption beyond what their already considerable number (in relation to Boston’s population) could have achieved. Whether some of these threats to Bostonians were necessarily real or not, the population believed them to be, and thus they became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of these threats, the one posed to the economic wellbeing of the working classes of Boston was probably the most forward in many Bostonians’ minds. The physical violence meted out to rich and poor alike, the undermining of the social cohesion of Boston, and the infringement of rights and liberties were equally important. All of them contributed to a growing sense of separation between the colonists and Great Britain, which would only increase, even after the troops left, until the outbreak of the war in 1775.
There are so many parallels going on with the National Guard occupation of Washington, DC this week.
Some local Washington residents, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, have begun to demonstrate against the federal takeover.
While the administration is celebrating the efforts of the law enforcement members, some locals are growing frustrated.
Various agencies held a traffic stop on a busy main street in a residential neighborhood in Washington, arresting people. Neighbors came out of their houses and apartments to yell at officers and warn other drivers to turn left and not head down the street to be stopped. Videos shared online showed the demonstrators on the street at night demonstrating against the officers, telling them to leave the city.
Last weekend, ahead of Trump’s announcement and amid an increased law enforcement presence, a D.C. resident, Sean Charles Dunn, grew frustrated with an ICE officer, cursing at him and throwing a sandwich at him before running away. He was fired from the Department of Justice and charged with a felony, which the judge later deemed too aggressive. Dunn and his sandwich went viral in a video online and has become a symbol for those opposed and a target of derision from those in favor of the increased law enforcement presence in the city.
Over the weekend, hundreds of people gathered peacefully and marched from the DuPont Circle neighborhood to the White House to protest the Trump administration’s efforts.
But back to Boston - things escalated quickly once the Army arrived. Despite allegedly coming to "maintain order", their arrival had the opposite effect, and the city became a powderkeg. A little less than a year and a half after those soldiers arrived came
the night of March 5, 1770.There was no going back after that.