Set Off Fireworks With Nonviolent History
Bring up nonviolence at the Fourth of July barbecue and you’re bound to set off a few fireworks. After all, most people learn that the United States won its liberty with “the shot heard around the world.” We’re led to believe that independence began on July 4th and was gained through the bloody war that followed. But like so many of the stories we’re told in the culture of violence, it’s not the whole truth.
For ten years prior to the Declaration of Independence (1765-1776), there was a determined nonviolent struggle to throw off the yoke of British colonial power. The colonists used boycotts, strikes, mass civil disobedience of unjust laws, and built alternative institutions and governments. Resistance was so widespread that on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was not an aspirational statement. It was a statement of fact. The colonies were functionally independent. The revolution had already been waged—and won—by nonviolent struggle.
As John Adams said, “A history of military operations is not a history of the American Revolution. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and in the union of the colonies; both of which were substantially effected before hostilities commenced.” What we call the Revolutionary War was actually a “War of Reclamation” as the British scrambled to reclaim what they’d lost.
Mention this over corn-on-the-cob and you’ll inevitably get pushback. Popular belief maintains that the Minutemen grabbed their muskets and the Yankee Doodle Dandies rode to town, and we fought our way to freedom. This is the culture of violence at work. This is how it perpetuates itself through myth and skewed history. Not only are our relatives and neighbors unaware of the role of nonviolence in the independence movement, they may even vehemently object if you challenge the official narrative of war.
For many reasons (some of which relate to the concentration of power through the war), the achievement of US independence was not a victory for all people. Women were denied political power. Only propertied men could vote or hold office. Liberty did not apply to enslaved Africans and African-Americans. The newly-emerging United States stood on stolen land and relied upon a genocide against Indigenous Peoples that continues to this day.
So, why should we think about the “nonviolent history” of a movement whose revolution only applied to six percent of the living population? Because when we deconstruct the mythologies of violence, we push back against the militarization of everything from our police to schools. We intervene in the glorification of violence. We correct the narrative on how revolutions and independence are achieved.
More than ever before, it’s important to dethrone guns and war from our cultural mythologies. For example, the Revolutionary War prompted the inclusion of the Second Amendment in the Constitution (which was then used to violently enforce slavery, among its many others harms). But if it was nonviolent action that won independence—rather than guns, militias, and war—maybe we should be more interested in protecting the rights to protest, assemble, speak, boycott, strike, organize, and engage in civil disobedience.
As the sparklers light up, here are three interesting facts to bring up about the US Independence Movement:
They organized the world’s most successful boycotts to date. The non-importation and non-consumption of British goods (including the infamous tea) had 90-98% participation rates.
They used spinning wheels and homespun cloth as part of our independence struggle 150 years before Mohandas Gandhi would famously make white cloth khadi to oust the British from India.
They had 8,000 active organizers and even set up a spy network inside the British colonial government to foil plans to stop the resistance.
Telling friends and neighbors about the nonviolent history behind this week’s fireworks is how we can hold a small rebellion against the culture of violence. It’s a chance to make a declaration that another way—another world—is possible.