New York Draft Riots of 1863

When I went to Ellis Island last month, I was inspired to buy a simple New York history book, one oriented to probably 5th or 6th graders.  It has activities like making colonial porridge, or doing archeology in your own New York City backyard.....  Haven't tried that yet, but I read it in bits and today I was reminded of the riots that occurred in New York following Abraham Lincoln's draft law which stipulated that people could avoid the draft by paying $300.  The riots were fairly severe, and I recalled reading about them in Dorris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals.  

What struck me about them as I revisited them today, was what this said about the people of the time and what it could teach people of our time.  When authority asks something of us, or tells us something must be a certain way, we can feel very powerless.  There is nothing that can be done in a corrupt world like ours.  We must carry on and just make the best out of our world.  Or maybe we even pretend that our rights are not being violated, or maybe at a certain point, things seem so futile that we don't even notice.

What does it take for a person, or a group of people to believe in their own rights and to voice them?  When these people decided they could and should riot, was it because they had at some point been treated better?  Or were they exposed to ideas that led them to believe they were entitled to something better than a blood tax on the poor?  Something at this time and place made people believe in their voice against such oversight.  And it mattered and they became less powerless for it.

And for us as individuals, we may also have such rights.  If we reflect on our needs as people, and reflect on the obligation of our government, what do we conjure?  What are our rights?  And how are they being violated?  I think of the way our government is representing us in the world, the way people and natural resources are being exploited.

Do we see these things, and do we use our voice, or whatever power we can find, to work against them?  It says something of a period in history when people are awake enough to find their voice in the midst opposition, or worse, unjust status quo.  Are we awake right now?  Are we listening to ourselves, to what can and should be in this world?  Do we believe that it matters?