A grand spectacle unfolded on the Boston Harbor Saturday night time.
Hundreds of reenactors from across the nation, dressed up in colonist garb, boarded a tall ship and destroyed greater than 2,000 kilos of British tea into the waters. The hundreds gathered to observe the theatrical scene went loopy in applause.
Exactly 250 years to the date, the Boston Tea Party got here again to life for one afternoon into the night time.
Matthew Solander, of Quincy, dressed up in a grey colonist swimsuit as one of many reenactors to board the chilly ship. He known as the function an honor and mentioned that these sorts of occasions are important to the general public’s understanding of the nation.
“We should remember our history as a nation. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” Solander informed the Herald exterior the Old South Meeting House. “Doing stuff like this helps the public remember how we were born with privilege.”
Though life is rather a lot completely different than it was again then when colonists protested taxation with out illustration, organizers say points from the historic rally are as relevant as ever earlier than.
“The biggest thing is the impact an ordinary citizen can make on the grand scale,” mentioned Evan O’Brien, inventive supervisor at Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. “It was ordinary people supposedly, not necessarily of the upper class; but people that had ordinary trades that did an extraordinary thing, and they’re worthy of that recognition.”
Shawn Ford, government director of the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, echoed that time.
“Who of us today would be willing to throw our livelihood, our families, our fortunes at property out the window, based on an idea that had a 100% chance of failure,” Ford informed the Herald final month. “People today don’t always understand the significance of what happened 250 years ago.”
The Old South Meeting House, Downtown Crossing, Harborwalk and Faneuil Hall have been flooded Saturday with Bostonians and people visiting to commemorate the event. Presentations, retrospectives and a rolling rally all occurred previous to the reenactment on on the waterfront.
Organizers acquired 250 kilos of free tea from London’s East India Company — the identical firm that provided to the Sons of Liberty on Dec.16, 1773 — and a couple of,000 kilos from 7,000 particular person submissions that got here in from world wide.
The Boston Tea Party had nothing to do with taxation or tea, however quite had every thing to do with illustration, Ford mentioned. Without the Tea Party occurring and bizarre residents making their opposition in the direction of the British identified, he mentioned, who is aware of what present-day “America” would appear to be?
“It’s a reminder for all of us, not just here in the United States but all over the world, that democracy is in action: Doing what’s right, no matter the odds, for our friends, our families, our homes, our future,” Mayor Michelle Wu mentioned Friday at a information convention previewing the anniversary.
Hundreds of hundreds of {dollars} had already been invested into marking the grand event by early October, mentioned Jonathan Lane, government director of Revolution 250, a consortium of greater than 70 Bay State organizations working collectively on the commemoration.
“This is the kind of event when all is said and done, if you tabulate it out, all the work that has been done all year long to promote this, it’s going to be well over $1 million to do just this one event,” Lane informed the Herald.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”