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Independence Day

The Terrible Origins of July 4th

July 3, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” -- Declaration of Independence

The Economy Of Sharing Is Alive during Nicaragua’s Independence Celebration

September 17, 2020 Jorge Capelán, Alliance for Global Justice. , , ,
This week is very important in Central America, especially in Nicaragua. On September 15, the region celebrates the signing of its declaration of Independence from Spain in 1821. On September 14, another historic milestone is celebrated: The defeat of US filibuster William Walker and his troops by Nicaraguan forces in 1856. Walker had repealed laws prohibiting slavery in an attempt to get the support of US southern states. US President Franklin Pierce recognized Walker’s as the legitimate government of Nicaragua an endeavor to bring Nicaragua under US control that failed over and over again with the Nicaraguan people throughout history.

Anti-IMF Protests Take Place On Argentina’s Independence Day

July 14, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , , ,
Thousands of Argentine demonstrators filled the streets of Buenos Aires telling President Mauricio Marci and the IMF: "INDEPENDENCE CAN'T BE NEGOTIATED." Thousands of Argentines took to the streets on the nation’s independence day - July 9 - to protest the government’s extreme austerity measures and recent IMF loan. Marchers yelled, "The homeland will not give up" and carried signs that read: "INDEPENDENCE CAN'T BE NEGOTIATED" and "NO TO THE IMF" as they symbolically marched along Buenos Aires’ main avenue - 9 de Julio - which bears the country’s date of independence. The former governor of the Buenos Aires province, Felipe Sola told the multitudes that President Mauricio Macri’s economic plan is "creating hunger, misery, discontent in all classes, including in the middle class, where everything has been adjusted. No one can do anything anymore."

Remembering Guantánamo On Independence Day

July 6, 2017 Andy Worthington, www.witnessagainsttorture.com , ,
By Andy Worthington for Witness Against Torture - Today, as a British citizen, I’m acutely aware that, 241 years ago, the United States of America issued a Declaration of Independence from the UK, noting that King George III had sought “the establishment of an absolute TyranA system of checks and balances introduced by the Founding Fathers was supposed to prevent tyranny from arising in the liberated United States of America, and yet, at various times in its history, these safeguards have been discarded — during the Civil War, for example, and during the Second World War, in the shameful internment of Japanese Americans. Another example is still taking place now — at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, where the U.S. runs a naval base, and where, since January 11, 2002, it has been holding prisoners seized in the “war on terror” that George W. Bush declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Under the laws and treaties we rely on to protect ourselves from executive tyranny, people can only be deprived of their liberty if they are accused of a crime, when they must speedily be put on trial in a court with a judge and a jury, or if they are seized on a battlefield during wartime, when they can be held until the end of hostilities, unmolested and with the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Philadelphia’s Forgotten Spirit Of 1776

July 4, 2016 Sam Pizzigati, www.ourfuture.org , ,
By Sam Pizzigati for Campaign for America's Future - Later this summer, just a few weeks after this year’s Fourth of July celebrations, Democrats will be gathering in Philadelphia to make some presidential nomination history. Democrats — small-d variety — gathered in Philadelphia soon after the original Fourth of July, too. Those democrats, all Pennsylvanians, also had some history to make. In September 1776, they would go on to adopt their new nation’s most egalitarian state constitution.

The Founding Myth Of The United States Of America

July 3, 2016 Benjamin Naimark-Rowse, www.politicalviolenceataglance.org , ,
By Benjamin Naimark-Rowse for Political Violence @ A Glance. John Adams wrote that, “A history of military operations…is not a history of the American Revolution.” American Revolutionaries led not one, but three nonviolent resistance campaigns in the decade before the Revolutionary War. These campaigns were coordinated. They were primarily nonviolent. They helped politicize American society. And they allowed colonists to replace colonial political institutions with parallel institutions of self-government that help form the foundation of the democracy that we rely on today. During the decade leading up to the war, colonists articulated and debated political decisions in public assemblies. In so doing, they politicized society and strengthened their sense of a new political identity free from the British. They legislated policy, enforced rights, and even collected taxes. In so doing, they practiced self-governance outside of wartime. And they experienced the power of nonviolent political action across the broad stretches of land that were to become the United States of America. So on future Independence Days, let us celebrate our forefathers’ and mothers’ nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule.
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