Every 3rd Friday, guest speaker(s)/moderator(s) will present a topic for consideration and exploration. All subjects and approaches to conversation are invited, from traditional lectures, talks, slide shows to experiential learning involving the audience in active participation.
September’s topic: Constitution Day
We the People. One of the most famous phrases in the history of the United States. These three words begin the preamble to our Constitution. Written in 1787 and ratified in the years that followed, it became the supreme law of the land 235 years ago. Court decisions today often hinge on interpretations of what the writers of the Constitution meant when they created it so long ago, in a time very different than our own. It is nearly impossible to know, but there are some clues, and some of those clues can be found in the very beginning of the Constitution, the section known as the preamble. The preamble “sets the stage” for the Constitution. It communicates the intentions of the framers and the purpose of the document.
In honor of Constitution Day this year, in our September Theater of Ideas community conversation, we’ll take a look at the preamble to the Constitution to try to understand the intentions of the framers and the purpose they had in mind for the document that is the fundamental law of our land.
Then we’ll work together to create a preamble to a constitution we might write today. If we were to set out our intention to create a document that would be the law of the land, given who we are now and what we know now, what would our intentions be, what would be our guiding principles and what would be the purpose of the document we were setting out to create?
Join us on Friday, September 19 at 6 pm at LAVA to take a closer look at “We the People.” What did it mean 235 years ago? What does it mean today?
