Original author unknown-
Food for thought from a friend:
Years ago in Boston, during a heated verbal dispute, an unarmed teenage boy was forcefully hit in the head with the butt of a rifle by local law enforcement. Word of the incident spread quickly and, in a city already roiled by many recent examples of excessive use of force by the authorities in control, and concerned about reports of bias in the justice system nationwide, and even though it was very cold and there was snow on the ground, a large number of outraged locals gathered in the street where the incident had happened to protest almost immediately.
As the crowd grew, angry protesters shouted slogans and blocked the street; some business owners, fearing property damage, shut their doors. The local authorities called for professional, uniformed backup; backup came, well armed. The assembly was deemed to be “unlawful,” and the crowd was ordered to disperse. The protesters had had enough, and began to throw snowballs in response. (Eyewitness accounts vary as to whether a few of the protesters also hurled hard chunks of ice toward the men in uniform; accounts also vary as to whether some protesters may have been armed with sticks of wood.)
In response, multiple uniformed law enforcers fired on the crowd. By most accounts, the first protester to die was a big black man. (Though he did not have a gun, authorities would later try to justify his shooting to the court by asserting the men who shot him were scared by his large size and “crazy, angry” appearance, which, a lawyer for the men who shot him claimed, was “enough to terrify any person.”)
The year was 1770, the authorities were Redcoat British soldiers, the protest they caused would later be called the Boston Massacre (during which five citizen protesters were killed, and six wounded), and the first protester killed in that conflict was Crispus Attucks, considered by many to be a heroic American patriot and the first casualty of the American Revolution.
If, while reading this story, you found yourself siding with the authorities and thinking that the crowd should not have dared to speak up, or blocked the street, that the protesters should have dispersed when ordered to, and/or that the protesters armed with snowballs and sticks deserved to be met with deadly force and killed by heavily armed professional law enforcement…. be aware that you chose the side of the murderous Tyrant King George III… NOT the side of the brave American patriots.
And ponder that.
ED: We would love to find the original author of this piece. If you have a lead, let us know.
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