Thread by @Shaker_aphra

The founders were not merely a small collection of elite white men in wigs who wrote the laws. They were the women who led boycotts of British products. They were Crispus Attucks and Salem Poor. They were shoemakers, farmers, and poor immigrants. Their dreams matter too.

https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1048321776344846337

The Revolution would have been nothing without the mobilization of a broad swathe of society fighting for their goals--but some of those goals were in conflict with one another. (Even the elite white men writing documents weren't a monolith.) But it needed all of those people.

Historian Alfred Young talked about "multiple radicalisms" in the American Revolution--the many different end goals that different groups of people had, that they thought could follow colonial independence. We're still trying to make some of those come true.

Many of us learn about Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration in 1776 in Philadelphia. We know less about the community rallies voting to overthrow the PA legislature. (Philadelphia's first town meetings, John Adams called them;I suppose Ted Cruz would say mob rule.)

The Declaration reads differently when you know about the energy and activity on the streets, the takeover of the legislature by a coalition of middling and non-elite men, the street actions supporting them. Jefferson was seeing "the course of human events" unfolding around him.

My point, here it is: political ideas do not always (if ever) simply originate from the elites, adoring plebes to absorb and treasure. There has always been a give-and-take in the American tradition between those who hold power and those trying to get a seat at the table.

That tension is inherent in Jefferson's Declaration, which explicitly lays out that when a government is no long a guarantor of rights, then "the people" can alter or abolish it. Who counts as "the people"? Whose rights should be guaranteed? That's the struggle we're still in.

The women telling their #MeToo stories, sitting in Senate offices, marching in the streets--the so-called "mob" that dares challenge the way a small group of rich white men defined a fair "due process" to investigate assault claims --they're part of a long tradition.

Anyone waxing sentimental over what "The Founders" believed or wanted, but sniffing at #MeToo as mob rule, decrying #TakeAKnee as impolite, casting #BlackLivesMatter as Soros-funded villains, has actually forgotten something the elite white men they worship knew quite well.

The Founders knew they needed non-elite support, and they knew the costs if they didn't get it. They nearly lost the South because the British offered enslaved people freedom--and the Revolution became a massive slave rebellion, with "Liberty" on the British side.

The current GOP rely on a shrinking base of angry white men who are desperately clinging to power, fueled by rage and conspiracy-laden propaganda. They wrap themselves in the flag and pretend they don't need the rest of us, that they can trample on our rights with impunity.

The GOP claim to love the Founders, but have convenient amnesia regarding what the Declaration says about the legitimacy of government resting upon the guarantee of rights. In November, we'll remind them. Donate, organize, GOTV, resist--and REMIND. /fin

BTW if this picture of the American Revolution is one you'd like to know more about, a great place to start is Gary Nash's The Unknown American Revolution, which looks at history from the bottom up, from people marginalized by race, class, and/or gender. amazon.com/dp/B001N89KYK/…