Soncat News's Library tagged Rights →  View Popular

Imagine a place where people make their own law. Where people in their local community are the deciding authority exercising the power to govern. Where the rights of corporations do not and can not trump the rights of people, rivers, mountains, trees, birds, and animals. Where people living in a locality assert their right to govern themselves free from the corporations that have usurped the locals authority. Where the fundamental guarantee of our republican form of government is upheld: securing the people's inalienable right that the many should govern, not the few. Where the law serves and protects people, communities, and the planet instead of protecting property and the interests of business to make profit.

People's thinking is being liberated through exposure to the history, and most importantly, the corporate history of the United States. This context of people's struggles to govern themselves include the American Revolution, the fight between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, the Abolitionist Movement, the Populist Movement, the Women's Movement, the Labor Movement, and the Anti-Segregation and Civil Rights movement.

The New York Times recently revealed that the Bush Administration has been ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone conversations and e-mails of U.S. citizens, without first seeking a warrant. President Bush has acknowledged the truth of the reports.

Such warrantless surveillance contravenes both the Constitution and federal statutes. For ordinary domestic surveillance, the U.S. Constitution generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause to believe that the target of the surveillance has committed a crime. Several statutes, including Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (the "Wiretap Act"), and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"), similarly require that a warrant generally be obtained when the government wishes to spy on people in this country.

The President contends, however, that these warrant requirements, and the statutes that contain them, do not take into account the current realities of terrorism and must therefore go by the wayside. Bush's claim does not withstand close scrutiny.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the following principles of freedom be adopted by the Freedom 21 Conference, meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, July 9-12, 2000:

In establishing this Republic, our forefathers taught that man made institutions have no authority to grant or deny that which has been established by God. They taught that unalienable rights are endowed upon mankind by God, the Creator, and that governments exist not to grant or deny these rights, but only to protect them. They stated that it becomes necessary in the course of human events from time to time for a people to dissolve themselves from the political bonds that hold them. They recognized and warned that a central, federal government could become too strong and they went to great lengths to ensure that a system was established that was checked within itself by a balance of powers. This system was also the agent of sovereign state governments that made up the union. This was to ensure that the federal government did not, "usurp from the States all government in little as in great things, when all government shall be drawn to Washington as the center of power it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as oppressive as the government from which we separated." Thomas Jefferson.