FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - On the eve of Independence Day No. 232, millions of Americans are probably feeling as anxious as those 56 white men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Back then the tyrant was England, the mother country who taxed her colonies without allowing the peoples' input and amassed standing armies in order to intimidate them.
Today the tyrant is big oil. The price for automobile gas shot past $4 a gallon. The conventional wisdom for months was consumers had no choice but to pay whatever the producers decide to charge.
Yet based on several network news reports this week, 21st century consumers are rebelling, like those founding brothers in 1776. U.S. car sales this month reported double-digit losses. Furthermore, vehicle gas consumption is down for the first time in a long time. Additionally, families are selling or leaving their cars at home and renting cars by the hour in order to grocery shop and run other errands.
There's been a great awakening by many people on the eve of July 4.
Last Saturday I watched Van Jones stoke that rebellious spirit with a motivated audience - 3,000 socially active delegates at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. We can't drill and burn our way to energy independence, said the 40ish leader who has led a green movement in Oakland, Calif. and is co-founder of the ColorOfChange.org e-advocacy movement.
Jones said the way to stimulate the U.S. economy is by weatherizing millions leaky homes and office buildings with solar panels and green and white roofs that will cool communities instead of overheat them. Instead of building SUVs, said Jones, build wind turbines that require 80,000 moving parts and therefore need employees.
For 45 entertaining and inspiring minutes, Jones delivered the Ware lecture, a Unitarian tradition since 1922 in which theologians or persons committed to social action speak. Past lecturers included Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, Marian Wright Edelman, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Carl B. Stokes, Howard Thurman and Walter White.
Jones issued this warning to the UU delegates: "I have bad news. Y'all about to mess up and be successful.
"We haven't had a whole lot of practice winning. But people like you have been willing to stand up. Are you prepared to govern? Can we go from being David the protester to Noah the builder?"
Bold assertion by Jones indeed, but his words are a call to action, a call to rebellion. Citizen-consumers have begun rebelling at the fuel pumps, so Jones must be pointing to dramatic future change on the eve of Independence Day.
