Abstract

Freedom's Trail

Editorial. The article presents an editorial on social and political movements in United States history, and discusses President George W. Bush's stance on various issues of civil rights. As Democrats prepare for their 2004 convention in Boston, Massachusetts, they should ponder the city's catalytic role in American history. If they venture outside their hospitality suites for a walk on the Freedom Trail, they will see historic places associated with the American Revolution and be reminded that the battle for freedom was begun here. But they might also take a moment to remember that the battle for freedom was not won here. In seventeenth-century Boston, Roger Williams was banished for standing for religious freedom against the Puritan theocrats, yet he continued to preach that no sect may claim a monopoly on truth and he opposed the merging of church and state. In the eighteenth century, Boston abolitionists challenged slavery, the ultimate in property rights, and in the nineteenth century, textile workers in nearby Lowell launched the long struggle for the rights of labor in America. Women suffragists demanded not only voting and economic rights but also control of their own bodies, paving the way for the modern abortion rights movement. Everything each of these movements stood for, the Bush Administration stands against.