While historical accounts of the United States typically focus on the nation's military past, a rich and vibrant counterpoint remains basically unknown to most Americans. This alternate story of the formation of our nation-and its character-is one in which courageous individuals and movements have wielded the weapons of nonviolence to resist policies and practices they considered to be unjust, unfair, and immoral. We the Resistance gives curious citizens and current resistors unfiltered access to the hearts and minds-the rational and passionate voices-of their activist predecessors. Beginning with the pre-Revolutionary era and continuing through the present day, readers will directly encounter the voices of protesters sharing instructive stories about their methods (from sit-ins to tree-sitting) and opponents (from Puritans to Wall Street bankers), as well as inspirational stories about their failures (from slave petitions to the fight for the ERA) and successes (from enfranchisement for women to today's reform of police practices). Instruction and inspiration run throughout this captivating reader, generously illustrated with historic graphics and photographs of nonviolent protests throughout U.S. history.
Table of Contents:
DRAFT TOC
We the Resistance:
Documenting Our History of Nonviolent Protest
Introduced and Edited
by Michael G. Long
Introduction: Making America Resistant
ONE
The Roots of Resistance
Religious Oppression
We Cannot Condemn Quakers (1657)
Edward Hart
Redeemed of Wars (1672)
John Tilton and Others
I Felt a Scruple (1756)
Joshua Evans
Unjustly Taxed (1774)
Isaac Backus
Slavery
Buy Slaves to Free Them (1693)
George Keith
I am but a poor SLave (1723)
Anonymous Slave
Indian Removal and Extermination
I Have No King (1727)
Loron Sauguaarum
Not One Single Inch (1752)
Atiwaneto
Taxation Without Representation
The People Are the Proper Judge (1750)
Jonathan Mayhew
Tea Overboard (1773)
George Hewes
No Money for the Revolutionary War (1776, 1797)
Job Scott
Grant Us Relief from Taxation (1780)
John Cuffe and Others
TWO
Abolishing Slavery
Black Resistance
Like Sheep for Slaughter (1788)
Elizabeth Freeman and Prince Hall
They Do Not Consider Us as Men (1813)
John Fortren
Are We Men? (1829)
David Walker
The Fifth of July (1832)
Peter Osbourne
I Won’t Obey It! (1850)
Jermaine Wesley Loguen
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Frederick Douglass
He Took Hold of Me and I Took Hold of the Window Sash (1854)
Elizabeth Jennings
The Next Thing to Hell (1856)
Harriet Tubman
White Resistance
Women Overthrowing Slavery (1836)
Angelina Grimke
Escape on the Pearl (1848)
Donald Drayton
Resistance to Civil Government (1849)
Henry David Thoreau
Was John Brown Justified? (1859)
William Lloyd Garrison
THREE
Protesting Early Wars
The War of 1812 and the Civil War
A Manifestly Unjust War (1812)
Boston Committee
The Slavery of the Sword (1861)
Alfred Love
Indian Removal and White Man’s Wars
The Audacious Practices of Unprincipled Men (1836)
Chief John Ross
Kiss the Foot That Crushes Us? (1842)
Colored People’s Press
The Negro Will Be Exterminated Soon Enough (1898)
Henry McNeal Turner
Hypocrisy of the Most Sickening Kind (1899)
Lewis H. Douglass
FOUR
Striking Against Industrialists
Petition for a Ten-Hour Workday (1845)
Sarah Bagley
Petition Against Terrorism (1871)
Colored National Labor Union
Will You Organize? (1877)
Albert Parsons
We Have 4,000 Men (1891)
Black Waterfront Workers of Savannah
A Petition in Boots (1894)
James Coxey
George Pullman, Ulcer on the Body Politic (1894)
Pullman Workers
The Wail of the Children (1903)
Mother Jones
The Uprising of the 20,000 (1909)
Clara Lemlich
Wage Slavery (1912)
Textile Workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts
FIVE
The Early Fight for Women’s Rights
The Right to Vote
All Men and Women Are Created Equal (1848)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Others
Strong as Any Man (1851)
Sojourner Truth
I Return My Tax Bill (1858)
Lucy Stone
Amend the Constitution (1866)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Others
Robbed of Citizenship (1873)
Susan B. Anthony
Why Women Want to Vote (1913)
Anna Howard Shaw
The Paramount Political Issue (1915)
Women’s Voter Convention
The Lucretia Mott Amendment (1923)
Alice Paul
The Right to Sex and Love
Protest of Marriage (1855)
Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell
I Am a Free Lover (1871)
Victoria C. Woodhull
Sexual Love Is Not Exclusive (1878)
Ezra Heywood
A Rapture So Exquisite (1900)
Ida C. Craddock
Marriage and Love Have Nothing in Common (1910)
Emma Goldman
What Every Woman Needs to Know (1922)
Margaret Sanger
SIX
World War I
I Pledge Myself Against Enlistment (1915)
Tracy Mygatt and the Anti-Enlistment League
I Denounce the Governing Class (1915)
Kate Richards O’Hare
Strike Against War (1916)
Helen Keller
The Darker Races and Avaricious Capitalists (1917)
A.Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen
A Deliberate Violator (1918)
Roger N. Baldwin
The Children’s Crusade for Amnesty (1922)
Kate Richards O’Hare and Frank O’Hare
SEVEN
Battling the Great Depression
A Bolshevik Revolution in Lawrence? (1919)
A.J. Muste
The Usual Policy of Terrorism (1919)
William Z. Foster
Don’t Starve! Organize! (1932)
Ford Hunger Marchers
Camping for the Bonus Check (1932)
Bonus Army Veterans
We Poor Peoples Need You (1935)
Anonymous Sharecropper
Death Watch (1935)
League of the Physically Handicapped
The Flynt Sit-Down Strike (1937)
United Auto Workers
Cracking and Shelling and Striking (1938)
Emma Zepeda Tenayuca and the Texas Pecan Shellers Union
EIGHT
World War II
War Shall Be Illegal (1926)
Women’s Peace Union
Students Strike Against War (1935)
Joseph P. Lash
Jim Crow and National Defense (1941)
A.Philip Randolph
I Cannot Honorably Participate (1943)
Robert Lowell
I Must Resist (1943)
Bayard Rustin
The Internment of Japanese Citizens (1944)
Fred Korematsu and Frank Murphy
A Racist Charge of Mutiny (1944)
Thurgood Marshall
Against Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan (1945)
Leo Szilard
Judgment on Jubilation (1945)
Dorothy Day
NINE
The Civil Rights Movement
Preparing the Way
Human Holocaust Under the Stars and Stripes (1909)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
We March for the Butchered Dead (1917)
Charles Martin and the Negro Silent Protest Parade
We Return Fighting (1919)
- E. B. DuBois
We Demand Complete Control (1920)
Marcus Garvey
Communists for the Scottsboro Boys (1933)
Thomas Stamm
Jim Crow in the Armed Forces (1948)
Bayard Rustin
Another Historic Supreme Court Decision (1952)
Thurgood Marshall and Others
The Lynching of Emmett Till (1955)
Paul Robeson
Dogs, Cats, and Colored People (1955)
George Grant
From Rosa Parks to the Poor People’s Campaign
Don’t Ride the Bus (1955)
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson
We Shall Have to Lead Our People to You (1957)
Southern Negro Leaders Conference
The Racist Policy of Apartheid (1957)
George Houser and the American Committee on Africa
More Than a Hamburger (1960)
Ella Baker
We’re Going to Keep Coming (1961)
Jim Zwerg
A Living Petition (1963)
Bayard Rustin
I Call Now for an Uprising (1963)
Bayard Rustin
I Didn’t Try to Register for You (1964)
Fannie Lou Hamer
Alabama Negroes Are “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired” (No Date)
No Name
The Right to Throw Off Such Government (1966)
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
Economic and Social Bill of Rights (1968)
Bayard Rustin
TEN
Atomic Bombs and the Vietnam War
ICBMs and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Statement on Omaha Action (1955)
Marjorie Swann
An Appeal by Government Scientists (1958)
Linus Pauling
Openly Against Civil Defense (TBA)
Women Strike for Peace
President Kennedy, Be Careful (TBA)
Women Strike for Peace
Ring Around the Pentagon (1972)
Women Strike for Peace
Hell No, We Won’t Go
March on Washington to End the Vietnam War (1965)
Students for a Democratic Society
A Draft for the Freedom Fight in the US (1965)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority (1967)
Marcus Raskin and Arthur Waskow
Our Apologies, Good Friends (1968)
Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine
Stop Dow and Napalm (1969)
University of Michigan Students
For the People (1970)
National Chicano Moratorium Committee
If the Government Doesn’t Stop the War, We Will Stop the Government (1971)
Mayday Tribe
ELEVEN
The Expanding Civil Rights Movement
Red Power
Fish-Ins (1964)
Janet McCloud
The Occupation of Alcatraz (1969)
Indians of All Tribes
The Occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1972)
American Indian Movement
The Occupation of Wounded Knee (1973)
Red Tide Students
The Longest Walk (1978)
American Indian Movement
Chicano Power
La Huelga and La Causa Is Our Cry (1966)
Dolores Huerta
BLOWOUTS—BABY—BLOWOUTS!! (1968)
Chicano Students in East Los Angeles
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (1969)
First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference
To Resist with Every Ounce (1969)
Cesar Chavez
Hasta Le Victoria Siempre! (1970)
Young Lords
Le Marcha de la Reconquista (1971)
Rosalio Munoz and the Chicano Moratorium Committee
Yellow Power
The Yellow Power Movement (1969)
Amy Uyematsu
The Right to Assert Our Yellow Identity (1969)
Asian American Political Alliance
From Colonies to Communities (1969)
Asian Community Center
Gay Power
Ejected from Dewey’s (1965)
Janus Society
Homosexuals March on the White House (1965)
Frank Kameny
Young Homos Picket Compton’s (1966)
Vanguard
Christopher Street Liberation Day (1970)
Gay Liberation Front
Women Power
Underground Abortion (1969)
Jane
We Call on All Our Sisters (1969)
Redstockings
Women Power (1970)
Bella Abzug and the Third World Alliance
Welfare Is a Women’s Issue (1972)
Johnnie Tilmon
Speak-Out Against Sexual Harassment (1975)
Working Women United and Others
Disability Power
Sitting Against Nixon (1972)
Judy Heumann
The Vegetables Are Rising (1977)
Ed Roberts
Deaf President Now (1988)
Gallaudet Students
TWELVE
Environmental Justice and Animal Liberation
Saving Earth
Earth Day (1970)
Gaylord Nelson
I Can Find No Natural Balance with a Nuclear Plant (1975)
Sam Lovejoy
Oppose, Resist, Subvert (1981)
Edward Abbey
Occupy the Forest (1985)
Earth Firsters
Nuclear Waste on Our Homeland (1995)
Lower Colorado River Tribes
Freeing the Animals
Rescuing the Monkeys (1981)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
A Necessary Fuss (1984)
Animal Liberation Front
Don’t Call Avon (1989)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
The Hegins Pigeon Shoot (1996)
Fund for Animals
THIRTEEN
The Nuclear Arms Race, Central America, and the Gulf War
Anti-Nuclear Campaigns
Declaration of Nuclear Resistance (1976)
Clamshell Alliance
Making the World Truly Safe (1979)
Randall Forsberg
Unity Statement (1980)
Grace Paley
The Wars in Central America
We Join in Covenant to Provide Sanctuary (1982)
Bay Area Sanctuary Movement
Against the War in Central America (1983)
David Cortright
The Illegal Invasion of Panama (1989)
Matthew Rothschild
The Gulf War
An Attack Against People of Color (1990)
Azania Howse
I Will Resist (1990)
Jeff Paterson
Unjustifiable Destruction (1991)
Ramsey Clark
FOURTEEN
The Expanding Movement
for Gay Rights and Women’s Rights
Lesbian and Gay Rights
I Am Proud to Raise My Voice Today (1979)
Audre Lorde
The Right to Lesbian and Gay Sex (1987)
The March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
We Take That Fire and Make It Our Own (1993)
The Lesbian Avengers
The AIDS Crisis
You Could Be Dead in Five Years (1987)
ACT UP
Why We Fight (1988)
Vito Russo
Sexual Harassment, Abortion, and Black Women
Clarence Thomas, Sexual Harasser (1991)
Anita Hill
March for Women’s Lives (1992)
Patricia Ireland and Faye Wattleton
The Million Woman March (1997)
Phile Chionesu and Asia Coney
FIFTEEN
Defending Labor and Immigrants
You Are Not Alone (1981)
Lane Kirkland
Boycotting Shell (1986)
United Mineworkers of America
Globalization Without Representation (1999)
People for Fair Trade
No Sweatshops (1999)
SOLE
Latino March on Washington (1996)
Coordinadora 96
SIXTEEN
The War on Terror
Isn’t This Really About Oil? (2002)
Medea Benjamin
Calling All Americans to Resist War and Repression (2002)
Not in Our Name
Let the Virtual March Begin (2003)
Win Without War
Bring Our Troops Home (2005)
Cindy Sheehan
Shut Down Creech (2016)
Anti-Drone Activists
SEVENTEEN
Making the New Century Resistant
Mining, Pipelines, and Climate Warming
End Mountaintop Removal (2010)
Appalachia Rising
The Biggest Carbon Bomb in North America (2011)
Tar Sands Action
Together, We Rise (2017)
Dave Archambault
And So We Resist Climate Warming (2017)
Bill McKibben
LGBT Rights to Serve and Marry
Chained to Serve Openly (2010)
Get EQUAL
A Rogue Clerk and the Failed Defense of Marriage (2013)
- Bruce Hanes and Anthony Kennedy
Shaking Booties for Mike Pence (2017)
WERK for Peace
Targeting Transgender Troops (2017)
Human Rights Campaign
Reasserting the Power of Women
Every Feminist Is an Organizer (2004)
Dolores Huerta
Our Pussies Ain’t for Grabbin’ (2017)
The Women’s March and America Ferrera
Fearless Girl (2017)
Susan Cox
Occupying Wall Street and Washington
Killing Big Insurance (2009)
Mobilization for Health Care for All
Occupy, I Love You (2011)
Naomi Klein
Moral Mondays (2013)
William Barber II
Time to Withdraw Big Money from Politics (2016)
Democracy Spring and Democracy Uprising
Freeing Slaves in Prison (2016)
Support Prisoner Resistance
Not Our President (2017)
John Lewis and Others
Dying for Health Care (2017)
ADAPT
Legalizing Immigrants
We Want a Legalization Process (2006)
Luis Gutierrez, Gloria Romero, and Others
DREAMers Stop Deportation Bus (2013)
United We Dream
Protect the Rights of Immigrants (2017)
American Civil Liberties Union
We Pledge to Resist for Immigrants (2017)
Alison Harrington
Trump Seems to Have Made Me an Alien (2017)
Mo Farah
Black Lives Matter
Our Son Is Your Son (2012)
Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fountain
Riding to Ferguson (2014)
Black Lives Matter
Murder in Charlottesville (2017)
TBA
March on Washington for Racial Justice (2017)
TBA
Conclusion: Where to Resist from Here?
