The price of liberty is said to be eternal vigilance. But just being watchful rarely does anything to stop the theft of our rights. Instead, the real price of liberty is open defiance – the courage to stand against the oppressors. And the price of that can be prison.
Doug Hughes has dared to defy the corrupt, plutocratic order that the moneyed elites, both political parties, and the Supreme Court have imposed over us. Dismayed and disgusted that We the People are blocked by big money from having our voices heard and responded to, this Florida letter carrier chose to get heard with one dramatic act of civil disobedience. In April, Hughes flew his homemade gyrocopter across Washington and onto the lawn of the US Capitol to protest the usurpation of our most basic freedom: the right to be self-governing.
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This was no stunt, no spur-of-the-moment outburst, but a thoughtful, well-planned, non-violent stand against the tyranny of money. Undertaken in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr., this mailman-on-a-mission was fully aware of and prepared to pay the price of civic defiance. Sure enough, on May 20, a federal grand jury indicted this messenger of democracy on a mess of charges that could add up to more than nine years in prison. Far from backing away, however, he’s now calling out you and me: “We spend billions protecting the United States from terrorists,” Hughes recently wrote. “It’s time for American’s to spend time protecting democracy from plutocrats.”
One time when Thoreau was in jail for his defiance of authority, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson happened by and asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau retorted: “Why are you not here?” We can best honor Doug’s sacrifice by “being there” in the fight to save democracy from plutocracy. To help Doug and his family during his fight go to www.GoFundMe.com/sn8gc2s. And to join the fight, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org .
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