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Live The American Revolution

By VVAW

On July 4th, the American people will celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the formation of the United States of America. At that time, 1776, the founders of our country came forward and declared themselves and the 13 colonies to be in open revolt against what they felt was the tyrannical rule of the British Crown. Such people as John Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Tom Paine signed the document that led to violent conflict and revolution. What were these great men trying to do and what meaning do their acts and words have for the American people today?

Back in 1776, the 13 colonies were under the direct rule of the British Crown, whose main interest was in maintaining colonial rule of the colonies to exploit the incredible resources of this rich land. More and more the colonists found their rights, even under English law, being taken from them as large numbers of English troops came to police and enforce new, repressive laws. Governing bodies formed by the colonists were usurped by the British and taxation of commerce reached intolerable heights. The colonists were not inclined to revolt. After all, they felt that they were still English citizens and entitled to all the rights of a free England. In fact, only one third of the colonists actually supported a break with England in 1776. However, the British Crown again and again rebuffed the legal and peaceful efforts of the colonists to make redress of their grievances. Finally, the time came to make a stand against the brutal taxation and intimidation of the British, and on July 4, 1776, the 13 colonies declared their just right to independence and freedom.

So we were taught that America was born through revolution and resistance. That is the great contribution of the Jeffersons and Paines; oppression brings resistance and that resistance is the foundation on which the United States was built.

For many years now, millions of Americans have become aware that their government was not working for the best interest of the common people. Time after time the government showed its true colors and would not respond to the real demands of the American people. The executive branch of government began to involve America in a war undeclared by Congress, totally against the American people's interest, and to this day continues that war through the bombing of Cambodia. Millions of Americans resisted this violation of the United States Constitution, a resistance based on the finest traditions of the founding of the United States. Yet the government called these Americans criminals, and today refuses to even consider amnesty for that resistance. America saw the growth for political repression as resistance grew.

Black, brown, yellow, red and poor white Americans began to fight for those freedoms implicitly given and guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence. Americans began to see racial injustice sanctioned by the government, and even used to help wage genocide in Vietnam. Property became more important tot he government than the rights of the people. The interest of the government clearly is in big business, in more profits; not in feeding the hungry, employment for the poor and health care for the weak.

VVAW/WSO submits that there are gross injustices being committed by the American government every day. The Watergate Affair has finally exposed the real manner in which elections are won today and how corrupt the government has become. VVAW/WSO believes it is the greatest tradition of America, of Hancock-Jefferson-Paine, to resist and change a government that no longer serves the interest of its people. The people give the government its power and sometimes governments abuse that power. When that happens, it is the right of the people and the duty of the people to change that government.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal rights to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the PEOPLE to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient reasons, and accordingly all experience has show that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right those evils by abolishing the forms of government they are accustomed to. But when a long train of abuses and criminal acts, pursing the same ends time after time, evinces a design to reduce the people under absolute corruption, it is the PEOPLE's right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the American people; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to change their former systems of government. The history of the past and present Executive administrations is a history of repeated injuries and corruptions all having indirect object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

That they have vetoed laws, the most wholesome to the public good;

That they have obstructed the administration of justice, by covering up their own criminal acts and lying to the people;

They have erected a multitude of new offices, and sent around swarms of officers to harass the people, and eat out their substance;

He has kept among us, in times of peace, large standing armies without the consent of the people;

They have attempted to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power;

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For turning our own military against us, to slay us;

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the common people;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent, and giving large tax loopholes to the rich;

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury and our peers;

That they have and are transporting large armies of U.S. troops and foreign mercenaries to complete works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with cruelty and horror scarcely paralleled in the in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy for a head of a civilized nation;

For helping giant corporations make profits, while the people are unable to buy food at reasonable cost;

For allowing the decay of our cities and suppressing minority people in their struggle for better living conditions;

For subjecting working people to unsafe work conditions and forcing upon them the brunt of taxation;

For corrupting the electoral process by criminal acts and the influences of the rich.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.