Protest Speech - April 5, 2025
Please refer to your copy of the Constitution...
I’m Maura Mandyck, one of the organizers of Indivisible Mobile, and a teacher and a librarian. Pause for wild cheers of support here! I’m touched at the support I’ve gotten lately just for being a librarian, touched on a personal level and because my sense is that people instinctively understand that librarians are traditionally on the side of freedom. Public libraries especially are one of the crowning achievements of American democracy. James Madison, whom I will mention again a little bit later, first proposed a congressional library in 1783, and in 1800 President John Adams signed an act of Congress creating the Library of Congress, which is the oldest federal institution in the United States. Thomas Jefferson’s personal books comprised most of the collection after the original library was burned by the British in 1814. I am a founders fan girl, so let’s hear it for Madison, Adams, and Jefferson, whom Cory Booker recently referred to as “those imperfect geniuses.” While we are at it, let’s hear it for Cory Booker!
Back to libraries. In 1731, a town in Massachusetts had been the beneficiary of 116 books from one Benjamin Franklin, and the town voted to allow all residents to borrow the books free of charge, making the Franklin Public Library the first public library in the United States.
In the late 1800s, along came Andrew Carnegie, a wildly successful industrialist and the 19th century’s version of a billionaire. Carnegie was a good billionaire, though, and espoused a “Gospel of Wealth" that exhorted the rich to use their money to improve society. Carnegie himself gave away almost 90% of his wealth, notably by building more than 2500 public libraries. His vision was that libraries would "bring books and information to ALL people,” and so they have done.
That is, until quite recently. Most of you will know that about two weeks ago, the Fairhope Public Library lost its state funding because of a challenge by the so-called Moms for Liberty. Conservatives have a real knack for irony, don’t they? They institute a direct challenge to the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment and call that liberty! But communities LOVE their libraries, and the funding shortfall was almost immediately addressed by donations. Then on March 31st, the City of Fairhope announced the Fairhope Library Board as its 2025 Volunteer of the Year. Take that, Moms for Liberty.
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, the Constitution which was largely framed by James Madison, who I mentioned earlier, also guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” which is, of course, exactly what we are doing here today. We have some GRIEVANCES, amiright?
And this is irony too, I think, that almost all of those grievances that we have the right to air because of the Constitution have to do with persistent and outrageous violations of the Constitution by the freaking President of the United States, an office created by the Constitution, Donald J. Trump! I have not studied the U.S. Constitution so closely in my life as I have in the last three months. I literally carry it around with me. My favorite bits include the preamble, of course, the We the People part, which in the original document is written in large, commanding script. It’s clearly the most important phrase in the whole thing! We the people, like we, the people, here today exercising our Constitution-given rights.
I’m also fond of Article I, Section 1, in which “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” ALL LEGISLATIVE POWERS. All of them. And in case ALL is not clear enough for you, Section 8 enumerates those powers specifically. You can refer to your own copy.
The Executive doesn’t even appear until Article II. Section I of that article says that before the President enters office, he (and of course our sainted founders, God love them, assumed the president would forever and always be a he)... Before entering office, the President shall take an oath, that goes like this: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Donald Trump took this oath. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the inauguration, but I did watch the oath taking on YouTube, just to make sure he actually said these words, and he did. But recently he also said this:
“We’re having a lot of problems with the courts, because the courts want to pretend they’re president, and they’re not president,” Trump said. “They didn’t get eighty million votes, and they didn’t—they can’t do that to this country. That’s not their job.”
Which made me fantasize about writing him a letter… And like a good librarian, I would cite my source, the only source I need, the US Constitution.
Dear President Trump, I would write,
No matter how many votes you got, the President is still subject to the rule of law. The job of the Congress is to make the law, the job of the courts is to interpret the law, and the job of the president is to execute the law. Which doesn’t mean kill the law dead! Maybe this is the problem! You are confused about what “execute” means! Execute can mean to put to death, like you are trying to do to democracy, but it also means “carry out or put into effect,” as in, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute [carry out! Put into effect!] the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
I’m so glad we got this cleared up.
Sincerely,
The American People
P.S. And more people voted for someone else than voted for you. Loser.
There’s some other great stuff in the Constitution, like the 4th Amendment and the 5th, and the 13th, which is a really great one, and the 14th and the 15th and the 19th! Seriously, it’s a page turner, this thing. And Donald Trump is shredding it every day he is in office, and will continue to do so until he is charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors” as outlined in Article II, Section 4, which is another one of my favorite parts, impeached and removed once and for all, please God.
I will also note that I have been very carefully through the entire US Constitution many, many times, and no where does the Constitution make provision for whack job billionaires intent on destroying the government. So Elon, I think you’re gonna have to go too.
Last thing, and also a librarian thing. I have read a book lately that knocked me out. It’s called The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming our Democracy from the Ruling Class. We have QR codes for you for after this event that will take you to all the literature we want to share, and to a newsletter that I’ve started writing on Substack for more on this book and other terrific things I’ve been reading. Bernie Sanders and AOC are out there fighting oligarchy right now, and oligarchy, that is, government by the powerful and wealthy few at the expense and to the detriment of the people, is exactly the right word. Remember that the theme of this protest, along with “Hands Off,” is Remove, Reverse, Reclaim. We need to remove Donald Trump; no matter how far-fetched or unlikely that might seem right now, I genuinely believe it has to be the goal. Then the incalculable damage he and his henchmen have done will have to be reversed, somehow. This can be done too, I have to believe. And then we will have to reclaim the democracy described, aspirationally, we have to admit, in the Constitution. But it’s in there.
The author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, Thom Hartmann argues that we have faced a crisis of oligarchy twice before in American history, once during the American Revolution against British rule, and then again with the rise of the plantation south and the scourge of chattel slavery. You might recall that both of those crises led to war. We can also make the argument that the so-called Gilded Age (and think of Trump’s favorite decorating scheme! Everything gilded, even the toilets!) was a crisis of oligarchy, and that crisis led to the Great Depression, which also contributed to more war. The book outlines the ways that we might beat back oligarchy and tyranny, but clearly none of this is going to be easy.
Cory Booker said that this is a moral moment. And he asked “Where does the Constitution live? On paper or in our hearts?” Your presence here today suggests to me that it lives in our hearts! The United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government. Can you imagine that we will let someone like Donald Trump destroy it?! Of course not! The Constitution lives in our hearts and must absolutely continue to live in this land. It is our job to make it so. Thank you for taking it on.