Exercising your rights to redress of grievances

Letter to the Editor of the Concord Monitor Online today.

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Restoring order

Robert Seaman, Concord

For the Monitor

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July 08, 2008 - 12:00 am



June 30, 2008, may be remembered in history as the day Americans began, in earnest, the moral and solemn process of holding their government accountable to the Constitution - under threat of withdrawal of allegiance, support and tax money.

Last Monday, approximately 1,200 American citizens began the process of exercising a profound, but little-known, 800-year-old right first articulated in Magna Carta by formally serving a "legal notice and demand" for redress of grievances upon the president, the attorney general and every member of Congress.

Incredibly, academic research since 1986 makes clear the right to petition for redress is not a redundant statement of the right of speech. It is in fact, the individual exercise of popular sovereignty. Here's what the founders sitting at the first Congress wrote:

"If money is wanted by Rulers who have in any manner oppressed the People, they may retain it until their grievances are redressed, and thus peacefully procure relief, without trusting to despised petitions or disturbing the public tranquility."

Demanding an official response within 40 days, the notice includes seven petitions for redress of grievances regarding substantial violations of our Constitution including the war, money, privacy, arms and tax clauses.

If liberty and constitutional order are to survive peacefully, it is imperative that the people learn about and exercise the unalienable right of redress.

For details about the plan to restore constitutional order, visit www.wethepeoplefoundation.org.

ROBERT SEAMAN

Concord