Non-consumption and non-importation movements in response to taxes levied on various goods imported from England. Precursors to the future direct action taken at the Boston Tea Party.
And I’m guessing that when the ACLU mentions the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the article, they mean the bigger series of events and not as much the destruction of property in the harbour. I imagine they’re not advocating for the constitutional right to illegally destroy property as a form of boycott.
(Fully appreciating that context was very different in 1773, I’m not suggesting the Boston Tea Party was “wrong”.)
It was less about the taxes, and more about the fact that Britain banned the import of tea by any other country.
These days, we have plenty of monopolies that probably deserve similar treatment (or anti trust actions), so the schools don't teach that part of the story.
There was a stronger anti-tax argument for other things (stamp act, especially) but the tea issue was mostly a bunch of smugglers and smuggler-connected folks who were pissed off that the British had not just made any gray-area work they were doing explicitly illegal, but were also undercutting them such that they couldn't compete on price, even by breaking the law.
For ordinary tea drinkers the whole tea thing actually made tea cheaper. It's one of the weirder things to get attention as a reason-for-revolt, really. I suppose the "tea party" protest is just odd and interesting enough that we can't resist lumping that in with far more legitimate grievances.
And I’m guessing that when the ACLU mentions the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the article, they mean the bigger series of events and not as much the destruction of property in the harbour. I imagine they’re not advocating for the constitutional right to illegally destroy property as a form of boycott.
(Fully appreciating that context was very different in 1773, I’m not suggesting the Boston Tea Party was “wrong”.)