July 15, 2025: Revolution

Today on Voices of Reason and Resistance, in honor of the 236th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 7/14/1789, host Barbara Humphrey discussed a number of significant revolutions since and including the USA revolution in 1776, with a twist.   She suggested that, unlike revolutions such as the French, Russian, Haitian, Mexican and most of other Latin American countries, the Chinese, Spanish, and Cuban, the USA revolution was not an uprising of a countries' indigenous peasants, lower wage workers, the poor or enslaved peoples, but was a rebellion of the colonists and their descendants, led by wealthy, land-owning, many slave owning, white men (aka the Founding Fathers) to throw off rule by a monarchy to rule by the upper class.  While the language tells one story (that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights), the reality of the 1776 revolution and the government that was created tell a very different story.  The grievances in the Declaration are not about abuse of the indigenous or the working class colonists imposed by King George III, but rather on taxation and westward settlement (and an unstated grievance to maintain slavery as England was considering abolition).  The Constitution granted certain liberties as an afterthought, but no guarantees of necessities, such as housing, food, healthcare, or education.  This is in contrast to the other revolutions discussed, where it was the peasants, the enslaved, the poor who rose up and rebelled and demanded (and got) not just liberty, but equality and fraternity.  

Listeners were asked to think about what this means to us today, and the path taken to 2025--the USA imperialism abroad that led to Manifest Destiny and then land-acquisition and/or control by war and regime change coups for exploitation of resources; and the USA at home, where there are millions of people in poverty, without housing, healthcare, or adequate food working for minimum wages that have not been increased since 2009.