City Council - Regular Meeting

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Welcome, everyone. Tonight, we stand in a moment that echoes across two and a half centuries. On July 8, 1776, Americans gathered in the summer heat to hear words that would change the world. And tonight, from Maine to Guam, communities like ours gather again, one nation listening together. Our readers this evening are citizens of the year, scouts, veterans, and everyday members of our community. Ordinary people just like those who crowded the streets of Philadelphia 250 years ago, waiting to hear something extraordinary. I invite you to step back into that world. Imagine the uncertainty. Imagine the courage. Imagine standing there hearing a declaration that would sever the tie to the only nation you had known. What did they feel? Dread? Excitement? Anxiety? Joy? Pride? All of it, swirling together. Because those words carried risk. They also carried hope. They carried the possibility of losing everything and the possibility of gaining a future no one had dared to imagine. Tonight, as we read the Declaration of Independence, listen to it for the first time. To the readers, speak as if these words have never been uttered. Let the familiar become new. Let the words ring with the danger, the daring, and the promise they held in 1776. This is more than a reading. It is a remembrance. It is gratitude. It is a renewal of the spirit that began with ordinary people choosing an extraordinary path. Hear the Declaration tonight with new ears, the way early Americans did 250 years ago. If you would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Jesus Christ. so so Thank you.

You may be seated.

Now let's start some treason. In Congress, July 4th, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.

and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the cause which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing unbearably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide a new guard for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governance to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent could be obtained, and when so suspended, he is utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right is stemmable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states, for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of land.

He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected To render the military independent of a superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury. for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our own government. For suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and purgatory scarcely parallel in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections among us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting inattentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.

We, therefore, Representatives of the United States of America and the General Congress assembled appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions to do in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies so boldly publish and declare.

that these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states. That they are absolved from the allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.

And that as free and independent states, they have full power to live in war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, say it with me, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. That was the beginning of our country, and here's to the next 250 years of this grand democratic experiment. Thank you so much to all the readers, to all of you who came out today. This is the kind of thing you're going to see on the 10 o'clock news tonight. The whole town's going to go, hmm, wonder if Batavia did something. So thank you to BATV for once again always covering us and putting us out there for all to see. Thank you very much, folks. Appreciate having you. And thank you so much to A Brass Act, who are now going to play a few songs for us. But I would be remiss if I didn't thank the person behind all of this, Marty Callahan, Christian Patriotic, who made this whole event possible. So thank you, Marty. Thank you, thank you. And for all the readers who did not get a chance to sign the Declaration of Independence, which is exactly what, it's over there, March has it, which is exactly what all the original readers did, we're going to sign that, and we're going to give it to the Depot Museum for posterity. So thank you again very much, and a brass act, take it away.

Hold on.

Thank you.

I'm here to see if I can see you. Thank you.

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