Independence Day observed by reading of founding documents on steps of Athens City Hall

The following was submitted by Indivisible Georgia 10:

Around 80 people gathered at Athens City Hall on Friday morning to celebrate the Fourth of July by publicly reading key documents from the founding of the America.

The event was organized by Indivisible GA 10, a non-profit, non-partisan activist organization that advocates for progressive ideas and policies.  Indivisible GA 10 includes members from across Georgia’s Congressional District 10, which includes all or part of 20 Georgia Counties, including Athens-Clarke,  Oconee, Barrow and Oglethorpe counties and most of northeast Georgia.

“We are here,” said Jacqueline Elsner, a member of Indivisible GA 10 and an organizer of the event, “to tell each other to take a breath, and to keep opposing and to keep working to save our country.”

Attendees at the Fourth of July celebration were invited to step up and participate in the public readings, which included portions of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Frederick Douglass’s 1862 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” the Bill of Rights and other amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The line of participants up the stairs of Athens’ City Hall was long, while even more people stood on the sidewalks and grounds holding signs supporting American values and protesting the Trump administration’s cuts to federal services and arrests and deportations of people without due process.

The event lasted about 40 minutes and ended with the audience joining Elsner in singing the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution to the tune of “Schoolhouse Rock.”