Celebrating Independents:
America's Independent Businesses Have Reasons for Optimism
By Stacy Mitchell, researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (www.ilsr.org) and author of
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses. A version of this article, minus the Concord information, was originally published in ReclaimDemocracy.org.
See here for the Concord Independent Business Alliance (The Concord Indies) holiday events to help support our local economy.
 On a cold December night in 1773, a band of patriots forced their way onto three ships docked in Boston Harbor and dumped more than 90,000 pounds of tea into the sea. Although we often forget it today, their actions were as much a challenge to global corporate power as they were a rebellion against King George III.
The ships were owned by the East India Company, a vast transnational corporation that exerted enormous power over the American economy. It had a firm grip on the British government too. In 1773 parliament passed the Tea Act, which exempted the East India Company from paying taxes on tea it sold in the colonies. The aim was to enable the company to undercut small competitors, all of whom were subject to the tax, and drive them out of business.
"Hence it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies," according to Tea Party participant George Hewes, "but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen.... "
The British government and the East India Company were betting that the lure of cheap tea would overpower any sense of principle. But they misjudged. The colonists continued to support independent merchants, boycotted East India tea, and that night in the harbor, engaged in a bit of economic disobedience.
 Editor's Note: In Concord, a "Solemn Covenant" had been signed by hundreds of Concord men -- and even a few women:
"...That from henceforth we will suspend all commercial intercourse with the island of Great Britain and will not buy, purchase or consume or offer any person, by, for, or under us to purchase or consume... any goods or wares or merchandise which shall arrive in American from Great Britain...." "Solemn Covenant", July 27, 1774
The list of signators included the most prominent members of the community -- all entirely recognizable today. Meriam, Davis, Wood, Jones, Minot, Haywood, Barrett, Emerson, Adams, Hosmer, Brown, Conant, Maynard, Melvin, Farrer, Wright, Hartwell, Flint, Ball, Hunt, Blood, Buttrick, Brooks, Potter, Fox, Estabrook, White, Miles, Lee, and enough Wheelers to sink one of those British East India Company ships!
After years of growing rage over the unfair tax and trade advantages given to the monopolistic British East India Company, this boycott was the culmination of the "...subversion of our natural and charter rights...," acts which included the blockade of Boston Harbor by the British. Even now, we honor this an act integrity, and courage.
(See here for the Concord Independent Business Alliance [The Concord Indies] holiday events to help support our local economy.)
It's impossible to read this history (as in Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection) without thinking of subsidies for Wal-Mart, favors for Halliburton, and banking policy designed to augment the power of big banks. Once again we have a government that operates largely in the interests of global corporations.
 As we mark the 235th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on December 16th, thousands of small businesses, led by the new and fast-growing American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA), are drawing attention to the importance of small-scale, local enterprise in guarding against economic tyranny. The Concord branch of AMIBA urges Concordians to reassert their economic independence, much as their Tea Party and Solemn Covenant forerunners did, by avoiding global corporations and seeking out independently owned businesses. Townspeople are asked to increase their holiday shopping in Concord by a mere 10%. The Concord Indies are also offering a drawing for a $200 Concord shopping spree (details on their website).
The odds of local businesses gaining ground in an economy where just twenty chains capture one-third of the $2.5 trillion in annual consumer spending seem about as good as, well, the odds that a group of rebels could beat back the British Redcoats at Concord's North Bridge. Independent businesses are outgunned and at the wrong end of a whole host of government policies that favor their big competitors. But like the colonial rebels, they have an ace up their sleeve: the stubbornly independent, self-reliant spirit of America.
"This is about community self-determination," said AMIBA director Jennifer Rockne. Local ownership diffuses economic power. It ensures that critical decisions -- whether to pay a living wage, protect a natural resource, sell produce from local farms, or contribute to a local charity -- are made, not by some distant board of directors, but by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of their decisions.
Art Credits: Page designed by Windfall. Other images courtesy of Clipart.com.
 
 
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