The following was sent by the Florida Right to Clean and Healthy Water initiative.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Declaration against the Tyranny of Water Pollution In the State of Florida, July 4th, 2023
The unanimous Declaration of those coordinating the Florida Right to Clean Water initiative,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–and, in Florida, the right to clean and healthy waters.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, 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 amend its state constitution, laying its language on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Floridians have the power, initiative, and ability to amend their state constitution to limit and restrain their state government to actions that do not harm nor threaten to harm Florida waters.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that state constitutions should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object (of special interest profit over the health, safety and welfare of Floridians) evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism by pollution and environmental destruction, it is their right, it is their duty, to amend their constitution, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of Floridians; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their state constitution with the fundamental right to clean and healthy waters.
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