The “Intolerable Acts” Edition
Trump's actions against the District of Columbia look a lot like what the British did to Boston in 1774. It’s up to us to make it as big a mistake.
Count on Sultan al-Trump to put my hometown under martial law while I’m on vacation. Fortunately, I’m in Massachusetts, which means I’m in the perfect atmosphere to ponder what to do about it. I have a few more weeks up here to wait and see whether I’ll need to show my papers at a checkpoint to access the I-495 beltway coming home.
In 1774, Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with passage of what they called the “Coercive Acts,” which is a pretty hostile title right up front. When they were published in America, they became widely known as the Intolerable Acts. Designed to make an example of Boston to cow the rest of America, they instead created a huge rally effect and led directly to the formation of the First Continental Congress. This was a massive own-goal for Parliament given that many Americans thought Boston had gone way overboard with the Tea Party—see what I did there? Yes, many Americans disliked Boston long before Tom Brady or even Bill Belichick were born.
The Acts embargoed the Port of Boston, immediately impoverishing the town: placed the colony under martial law with a military governor (Thomas Gage, who meant well); abolished the colonial assembly and restricted local town meetings to only once per year, only on topics approved by Gage; said British officials charged with crimes in Massachusetts could be tried in Britain, which was de facto legal impunity; and permitted quartering British troops with the population rather than spending money on building additional barracks.
How does this compare with Trump? He hasn’t closed off the City (yet!), but he did steal $1 billion of DC tax revenue, which is pretty fucking impoverishing; he is taking sole control of our police, adding more federal police, and calling out the National Guard. On that, DC has a tiny Guard, so expect him to ask for Guard deployments from other states—something he can do in DC. So some dudes from Ohio will have to be Hessians in DC. Oh, and pour one out for the guys who joined the FBI or DEA to catch narco-traffickers, spies, and serial killers, but instead are doing beat cop patrols.
His rambling press conference threw out a few other morsels. He plans to “clear out” the homeless, “end the slums,” and use DC as an example for other cities (I believe he specifically mentioned New York and Chicago). Now, communities all over America have a nasty habit of shunting their homeless from place to place for urban prettification, but DC has a challenge; New Haven can bus the homeless to Hartford or Bridgeport, but no one’s ever expelled them from Connecticut! DC’s homeless still are DC residents, with a right to be there somewhere.
As for “slums,” you won’t find any near the White House, or indeed anywhere near government buildings. DC is pretty gentrified—a lot of residents think that’s the bigger problem than “slums!” But the image of Trump personally deciding what neighborhoods he wants to eminent domain, and doubtless whom he’ll take bribes from for the subsequent development, has powerful Hitler-Albert Speer Berlin vibes:
As for quartering troops? Bear with me, I’ll get to that.
What makes it all worse is that at least Boston committed the Tea Party. DC has done nothing! Crime rates are at historic lows! Unless you count conspiracy, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to sex trafficking, and bribery, in which case crime’s at an all-time high, and it’s all concentrated at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, in case any law enforcement professionals are reading this. Go get a warrant! But as for violent crime, there hasn’t been a wave of it in DC since… January 6, 2021.
Also, Parliament didn’t pass the Intolerable Acts to cover up for George III being a serial child molester—by all accounts George was happily married (15 kids with the same Queen!) and never even took a mistress. Our Sultan, however, is doing this, like he does everything these days, to make you forget he’s a serial child molester.
So what do we do? I already was stewing over a lot of this at the national level and trying to figure out how to say it in a more structured form, later, but sometimes events overtake us. For now, I’m going to organize this (roughly, and a bit clumsily) as how we respond nationally for non-DC residents, and legislatively, executively, judicially, and financially for DC residents—all based on ways the Colonists responded to the Intolerable Acts. For a deeper read on that, I’d commend to you T.H. Breen’s American Insurgents, American Patriots, about how New England de facto seceded from Britain almost a year before shots were fired on Lexington Green.
The Litmus Test
At the national level, supporting DC has to be a litmus test for anti-Trump politicians. If you don’t support DC and its response—whatever that response may be—you just aren’t up to the moment. The slightest justification for Trump’s actions should call down a primary challenge. Even if DC responds with riots, which we shouldn’t, any politician who criticizes the rioters before blaming Trump should be primaried. Many Colonial political leaders had condemned the Boston Tea Party, but the Intolerable Acts were their litmus test—if you didn’t condemn the Acts, you were a Tory, full stop. Previous statements and actions no longer counted.
https://x.com/cmbrookepinto/status/1954978493432991866?s=43&t=NIUPY-sIyvWgWpXkaDrduw
If you want an example of a shitty response, here’s my own City Councilmember, Brooke Pinto, being totally inadequate on X—she’s framing this as a dispute over effective law enforcement approaches! The Council’s statement is mildly better in that it starts with “This is a manufactured intrusion on local authority,” which is totally true, but it also mostly devolves into speaking as if this is a good-faith dispute about crime. The best response from the city would have been: “A serial child molester has asserted dictatorial control over 700,000 American citizens who lack full constitutional protections to try to make you forget that he’s a serial child molester.”
“But MSU, they have to work with him! They can’t afford to alienate him!” Look, there certainly are moments for “tactical retreat” or “keeping your powder dry,” but stealing your tax money and taking control of your police force is way past those moments. Fight, or submit, but if you’re going to submit, save us time and be frank about it.
Shut It All Down
What we DC residents should demand is that our government shut down. They utterly lack the guts to do this, of course, but we should aim as close to it as we can.
Not far from where I’m writing, on September 27, 1774, the “King’s Court” of Barnstable County, Massachusetts was supposed to convene for its annual session of hearing civil and criminal cases. Several hundred Cape Codders assembled in Sandwich and marched the 12 miles, unarmed, to the courthouse, where they peacefully blocked the royal judges from entering the building and starting session. The judges retreated to the local tavern, where after a hurried discussion they declared they would respect and enforce only the existing laws of Massachusetts, not new or subsequent laws from London. Across the colony, royal officials like militia officers, judges, and town clerks resigned their offices and in many cases resumed them under colonial rather than royal authority. General Gage’s control of the colony collapsed completely, as the Provincial Assembly resumed operations outside Boston.
In an ideal world, the mayor and city council would disband, and every public employee union from cops to teachers would go on strike. Schools would close, garbage would pile up. Things will get worse for us, but they’ll get worse for Trump and his regime faster, and that’s what matters.
Non-Intercourse
The Colonists’ strongest weapon in their rejection of royal authority was “non-intercourse.” To be a royal official, friendly to one, or to speak well of parliamentary policies was to invite organized social ostracism, a horrible experience in small farming communities.
For DC purposes, this starts with you. Your only words to use with armed personnel of the state, whatever their type or attire, should be:
“No;”
“I didn’t see anything;”
“Am I being detained, and what is your probable cause?”
“I want my lawyer;”
“I do not consent;”
“Fuck You For Your Service;”
“Great job guarding the Epstein Files!”
“Redcoat;”
“Stormtrooper;”
“Occupier;”
“Black and Tan”
It’s a great song! Also, a lot of cops love the faux-Irish bagpipe stuff, so singing this to them can be fun.
Most of these guys don’t want to be doing this. Tough shit. We want them doing it even less! If we’re not happy, they don’t get to be happy.
Non-intercourse should be practiced commercially, too. Businesses should refuse service to armed or uniformed personnel or officials of the Trump regime. You as a consumer should boycott businesses who won’t refuse service, and people who interact on friendly terms with the troops.
One particularly cool tool to add to your repertoire is the ICEBlock App. Tied to your GPS, with one button you can notify everyone with the app in a five-mile radius that ICE (or other occupiers) is operating at your location. People can use that knowledge to head in another direction, or take their phones and head towards them to let them know how unwelcome they are—modern non-violent Minutemen, if you will.
DC is a tourist-friendly town, but these occupiers are no more tourists than were the Redcoats camped on Boston Common. Make sure they feel that, and the future Ken Burns documentary is full of their sad texts and Tiktoks home to their loved ones about how miserable they are.
Nullification
At least for now, locking people up for any time still requires courts, and courts still require grand juries and petit juries. So let’s take a moment to talk about our new friend, jury nullification! But even though I’m talking about it, please don’t you talk about it!
Judges and lawyers hate jury nullification. They’ll tell you it’s a jury’s job solely to determine questions of fact, like “did the person do it?” while leaving to the judge and lawyers questions like, “is this a stupid law?” or “is the prosecutor railroading this person?” They’ll never tell you about it, they’ll strike you from a jury if they think you’ve thought of it, and some even will threaten you with contempt if they think you employed it on a jury.
But they can’t kill it, because it’s central to common law that juries’ judgments cannot be questioned, and defendants have double jeopardy. Like with the O.J. Simpson case, they may think you nullified a verdict, but there’s nothing they can do about it if you didn’t announce it beforehand.
So if you’re called for a DC grand or petit jury, show up, and do your real duty: be ready to nullify. I’m not saying acquit someone you think bludgeoned their grandma to death, but if you don’t like what the prosecutor submitted, or you saw Trump on TV say this person should be convicted, or the key witness is ICE Agent Dean Cain, put your conscience ahead of your instructions. A nice thing about DC is that, being so small, there’s only so many potential jurors. Know your power and use it, if you get the opportunity.
Money Talks
Support DC businesses! Spend your money in DC! The savage cuts to the Federal workforce already have hurt the city badly; Trump’s martial law, and my recommendations, will hurt tourism, the city’s second-largest economic engine. But that’s no reason for you not to visit! The least we can do is inject what money we can into the community.
In 1774, communities all across the colonies gathered materials to ship overland to Boston to alleviate their suffering. Breen’s book describes communities as far south as the Carolinas gathering some sheep, or a supply of tobacco, and sending it northwards to help their suffering fellow-colonists. Meanwhile, Boston established a committee to receive those goods, sell them, and distribute the funds for job-creating public projects so no one was receiving a mere handout. They then publicized that information back to the contributing communities. It was an astonishing program of continent-wide organization for its time.
If we get to April and this insanity continues, the next thing for DC should be a tax revolt: no one files their taxes. Honestly, for a place that keeps printing “Taxation Without Representation” license plates, you’d think we’d have thought of this by now. The IRS has been so badly slashed they couldn’t go after 700,000 tax evaders if they tried anyway. Another idea, if you can, would be to cancel your withholding from your paycheck now: you always can pay your taxes in April if the government changes its behavior, but you’re not surrendering anything to them in advance.
The Cost—and The Payoff
Everything I’m proposing will make life harder for DC residents. That’s the idea, because if we care about our liberty, we have to be willing to take this pain if it inflicts more on the enemy. That’s the entire idea behind civil resistance—out-enduring and outlasting your opponent. It will hurt them more than it hurts us.
Going back to the British quartering troops in Boston: that one law led to the Third Amendment of the Bill of Rights, forever banning the practice in the U.S. This attack by Trump needs to be the last time anyone attempts to dominate 700,000 American citizens this way. DC statehood must be a top campaign issue of Trump’s opposition. It’s not that other communities won’t suffer, it’s that DC’s status makes it uniquely vulnerable, and uniquely important. The American colonies responded to Britain’s attack on Boston with a massive show of political, economic, and moral support. DC will deserve no less. If a new administration replaces Trump and doesn’t act to ensure DC statehood, DC should continue the same resistance against it, as perhaps they should have done to the Biden Administration when Democrats betrayed their sacrifices at Lafayette Square and on January 6.
Flashbacks
I wrote a lot of my favorite work, some of which is still relevant, back when my subscriber base was in the few dozen rather than the few thousand. So I’m inaugurating a new “flashback” section to raise up stuff that merits a second (or first!) look.
On August 15, 2020, I pointed out that Trump was mistaken to act as if an uncertain election outcome in 2020 meant he got to go on being President after January 20, 2021. In fact, the presidency would have devolved to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Had people listened to me on that and messaged accordingly, I hazard to say January 6 might have been avoided, with a lot of those participants realizing that causing chaos on that day wasn’t going to preserve Trump in power.
Coming up next
I don’t usually promise what’s next, because events have a way of breaking those promises, but I had been writing a meditation on Disney’s spectacular “Andor: Season 2,” before the urgency of this moment diverted me. I promise it’ll be worth a read even if you’re not the Star Wars junkie I am.
I always like to see discussion or comments, either to specific articles or on my Substack page, or in my DMs. I will do my very best to reply.