“We are living in a geocentric world of nation-states. We look upon economic, social and political problems as ‘national’ problems. No matter in which country we live, the centre of our political universe is our own nation.” — The Anatomy of Peace, Emery Reves
People write to me at the World Service Authority from time to time asking if it is possible for them to legally and officially withdraw from the nation-state system and raise their allegiance to the global level. In other words, can they legally give up US citizenship and declare themselves World Citizens?
The answer is yes…But why? Before I answer that question, let me tell you that in 1948 I renounced United States Citizenship — to prove that it is possible to exist in a new space, legally, above and beyond the nations that divide us, i.e., a world space! Well I’ve proved it. For 64 years I’ve been a citizen of no nation, only the world! Legally![1]
How did I do it? Following my stint as a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII, first I read the U.S. Nationality Act of 1940, an update of an act of 1868 when the United States was receiving tens of thousands of immigrants from Europe streaming into the US to take advantage of Lincoln’s Homestead Act: Stake out 111 acres of land in the wild West, build your own log cabin, till the soil for 5 years, (don�t kill anyone except maybe some indigenous natives who might resent your presence on their ancestral land), and lo and behold, you could become a bona fide US citizen. However, due to the hallowed principle of reciprocity in law, a natural-born United States citizen could legally renounce his or her nationality but to do so represented a certain number of problems, the first three being, how, when and where?[2]
Now when we are asked this primordial questions, we have a totally different take on the answer.
“Why renounce your national citizenship,” we ask, “when it no longer exists legitimately?” We receive blank, bewildered stares. “Or put it this way,” we continue, “Shortly after the turn of the century around the time of the airplane’s debut but certainly after Hiroshima at the start of the nuclear age when wars became omni and genocidal, the United States ‘renounced’ you as viable citizens. It became a garrison state, a mockery of “We, the people…”
Example: The oath of allegiance now incoming migrants must take today to become US citizens: “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.” “The reference to God,” we note, “as the sanctifier for this modern garrison state exposes the shameless mockery of ‘e pluribus unum,’ the underlying basis of the USA’s founding two centuries prior. The code now is, ‘From many, blind obedience to one’!”[3]
“Or look at it another way even more basic,” we continue “Take a human birth. Did you choose your own place of birth? Can you be born into a political fiction? I mean, birth is a biological not a political fact. After all, you come out of your mother’s womb into the world itself, a human being, member of humankind, not in a fictional state which claims you, body and soul. And since the technological, then electronic breakthroughs at the turn of the 19th century–with so-called world wars starting in 1914–followed by the “Nuclear Age” and then space travel, wasn’t the 18th, 19th century divided system of nation-states rendered increasingly obsolete not to mention totally dysfunctional and now mortal?”[4]
Our fellow human questioner, his (her) eyes wide with bewilderment and anguish, remonstrates, “Yes but they’re in bloody power over us what with the national laws, police and damn armies.”
“Yes, we know all that,” we reply. “But the word ‘power’ brings up the idea of sovereignty. And most people don’t really know what that means. We haven’t yet figured out what really happened in that Philly hall in the summer of 1797 when those 55 citizens of their brand-new 13 states bordering the Atlantic Ocean, exercised sovereignty (or political choice) by artificially creating out of sheer imagination a new level of government.[5]
“Are you suggesting, Garry, that United States citizenship is a fiction and not real?” we are asked in astonishment.
“Let me give you a simple example of reality versus fiction,” we respond. “When driving a car anywhere in the world you come to a crossing and the traffic light is red, what do you do?”
“I stop of course.” is the instant reply.
“And why do you stop?” we ask.
“Because when it’s red, that means stop. Green means go. Everyone knows that.”
“Does everyone throughout the world stop at the red light at a road crossing?”
“They do if they have a brain in their head.”
“Ah, you’ve just ‘renounced’ your United State citizenship,” we reply, “by stating that ‘everyone’ knows that when a traffic light turns red, that means “Stop”, therefore, not only a local “law,” or a United States or even inter-national “law,” but a universal traffic reality! In other words, a code of conduct for us human drivers. And no matter where you are in the world when you come to a traffic crossing and the light is red, you stop. and go when it turns green. But the traffic light itself is a “fiction”. For instance, did you ever consider that principle behind that everyday global event?
“What do you mean, the principle? It’s just commonsense.”
“And there you’ve hit on another ‘renunciation’ of nationality: ‘commonsense.’ And does not everyone at that crossing exhibit the same knowledge of commonsense?” we ask.
“Of course.”
“Then haven’t you defined a universal law based on commonsense or even justice since the traffic light is regulated for every driver who comes to that crossing and for the community of drivers taken together?”
A glimmer of light begins to shine in my friend’s eyes. “I’m beginning to see what you’re getting at,” (s)he says. “The one and the many principle.”
“Bingo! E pluribus unum on a world scale![6] Just like a symphony orchestra or a flock of birds. Or humankind. Now let’s go back to that meeting in Philly,” we continue. “When the so-called Founders carved out a tiny part of the coastal area in the North American continent-part of the world territory actually-in which around 3 millions of their fellow humans resided, and circumscribed it with millions of ‘traffic lights’ called ‘frontiers,’ (continually expanding) weren’t they denying the self-evident universality, both of their own humanity and that of everyone else’s humanity?”
“Yes, but at that time the British, French and Spanish man’a’wars were still out in the Atlantic ready to knock off the states one by one if they didn’t unite,” s(he) replies.
“The fictional ‘states’ yes, but not the people, and because of this fundamental difference, the founders were obliged to make a crucial and fatal compromise in the legal text they were preparing to impress on the 3 millions inhabitants now living no longer in mere colonies.”
“I’m listening,” s(he) returns nervously no doubt wondering where all this led.
“Now a major dilemma had arisen: Who was going to represent the new fictional nation they were creating vis-a-vis the nations poised in the Atlantic and the rest of the world of similarly fictional nations, large and small? Well, they figured it had to be the president when he was acting as the ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of the army and navy in time of war. But then, who would be representing the citizen’s rights? In short, which was ‘sovereign,’ the people or the nation? Remember, there was no bill of rights in the original Constitution they wrote. In time of war between nations, only the nation was considered ‘sovereign.’ And as the army and navies of the world operate in the anarchic space between nations, the national citizens were left without civic representation but on the contrary became mere subjects to the imperial state in which, as the prime executive, the president would be a virtual dictator. The people, in brief, in time of war would at his singular command. But the nation-state, by definition, is a war state. The rational? “National Security.”[7] Now, are you beginning to understand why and when the United States ‘renounced’ the entire citizenry…right at the very beginning of its founding. Now today, when wars between nations have become global and genocidal since 1945, you want ‘out’ when you were always ‘out’ right from the start since in a world of anarchy, the fictional nation-state is in a continual state of war…with the people.”
“Wow!, s(he) replies. “That’s quite a revelation!”
“But happily, there’s an antidote, not only rational but the only road to a world without war. James Madison proposed when drafting the famous Bill of Rights between 1787 and ’89 that there had to be included a legal remedy for the people when the president put his Commander-in-Chief war hat on. And it bears directly on your question of renouncing your United State citizenship because in effect it recognizes your already inalienable right to claim your own sovereign humanity.”
“So what is it exactly,” s(he) asks eagerly.
“It’s the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the most revolutionary right ever included in any national constitution.[8]”
“And why is that?”
“Because it refers to that right we already discussed when stopping and going at the traffic light at the entire discretion of the driver of each and every car in the whole world community. In other words: world law at the command of each national citizen!”[9]
“Amazing! World law! Part of the US Constitution? How do you figure that?”
“Ah, because of Madison’s genius The Ninth Amendment doesn’t spell out any particular rights. But what it does reveal is that the eight rights he did spell out are not all there are BUT all the other human rights — and here is the universality built in to the US Constitution — are ‘retained by the people.’ That simply means they are inalienable which in turn means universal. So, you see, the United States of America ‘renounced’ or rather, recognized you right from the start as a sovereign human being! But, and here’s the catch: Since inalienable rights belong to the people, YOU MUST CLAIM THEM YOURSELF AS THE SOVEREIGN IN QUESTION. AND THESE ARE BRIEFLY, ‘LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS’ AS PRESCRIBED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.[10]
“And in political terms that simply means claiming world citizenship as the Founders claimed national citizenship in the 18th century to embody those inalienable rights. And, almost miraculously, that claim is the beginning of a higher level of government.[11] So rather than renounce that now invalid and deadly national allegiance caught historically in an anarchic political world,, simply exercise your inalienable sovereign power by claiming the higher one relevant to fundamental and inalienable human rights.
“That’s ‘world government!’ And that’s what law-making is all about!”[12]
“Where do I sign up?”
“At www.worldservice.org”
Postscript: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government…” Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
**************************
[1] “…a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of conscience, must convince all those who reflect on the subject that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.” Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775; “Every man… possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will.” Thomas Jefferson, 1790
[2] My latest book, World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court, (World Government House, 2011) (www.worldgovernmenthouse.com) goes into these questions in detail
[3] “Any method of maintaining international peace today must eventually fail if it is not grounded on Justice under Law and the protection of the Individual under due process of law.” World Habeas Corpus, Luis Kutner, 1968, p. 73
[4] [12] “Our so-called ‘contemporary’ political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system…They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable — a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein.” The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler, Bantam Edition, p. 414
[5] Tom Paine, who sparked the revolution with his essay “Commonsense,” wasn’t taken in by the subterfuge noting that “Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are without regard to place or person; my country is the world; my religion is to do good and all men are my brothers.”
[6] “Government can be safely acknowledged a temporal blessing because, in terms of the power it wields, there is nothing inherent in it. Government is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Its authority is the free and revocable grant of the men who have promised conditionally to submit to it. Its organs, however ancient and august, are instruments that free men have built and free men can alter or even abolish.” Earl Warren, Chief Justice, Supreme Court.
[7] When the so-called “enemy” is “terrorism” the war becomes total virtually incriminating the human race itself as exclusive national citizens.
[8] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. –The Ninth Amendment
[9] “The inalienable human right of the United States citizen to add world citizenship — as the founding fathers added United States citizenship to that of their state allegiances — is incontestable and indeed the highest act of patriotism. For only in that planetary social and political level can the lesser members be protected and nurtured. The US Constitution itself, in the Ninth Amendment, provides for the rational extension of civic rights and responsibilities to the highest level as foreseen implicitly by the original founders.” (From Dear World, A Global Odyssey, World Government House, 2000)
[10] “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, 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 to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…”
[11]”I no longer find it compatible with my inner convictions . . . by remaining solely loyal to one of these sovereign nation-states. I must extend the little sovereignty I possess, as a member of the world community, to the whole community, and to the international vacuum of its government . . . I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world.” (Original renunciation of US nationality May 25, 1948)
[12]”As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or ‘containers’ to bring a semblance of order to the world — a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism.” Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave
Sovereignty & Humankind – New Year’s Statement
Friday, December 30, 2011
The nation-state system, imported from former pre-industrial/electronic centuries, has become dysfunctional due to a condition of anarchy between each and all states which is the breeding-ground of war.
World wars, therefore, began in 1914. The so-called Nuclear Age, however, exploded on our human psyches and hearts with the bombing of Hiroshima changing the dimension of war from relative to absolute, i.e. genocidal. Therefore “sovereignty” in today’s instant communicative world pertains to humankind itself. This in turn involves each and every human on planet earth, not to mention most other creatures co-inhabiting the planet.
The Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution refers to “unenumerated rights retained by the people.”*
James Madison added it after providing the first eight rights.
If rights are “retained by the people,” they are “inalienable.” i.e. sovereign human rights and universal.
Madison’s foresight in adding the 9th Amendment was to provide an antidote to the US president’s power when acting as the “commander-in-chief” in time of war by virtue of article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…”
The US president — as all heads of state — thereby has become a legal dictator as Commander-in Chief “in time of war.” All lower level officials in the government thereby become involuntarily complicit and obedient to his command in the name of “national security.”
Thus, having declared a war on “terrorism” in 2001 which is a condition and not an enemy, the United States today is not only a virtual garrison state but an indictable “enemy of humanity.”
The only document defining sovereign human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations December 10, 1948 as a “Common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations…” Article 21(3) provides that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government…”
In conjunction, Article 6 of the UDHR, provides that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” Ipso facto, the law before which “everyone” has the right to recognition must be world law.
All humans, as “sovereign citizens,” therefore are already world citizens.
The World Government of World Citizens (see www.worldservice.org) has founded the “World Court of Human Rights” on June 12, 1974. (See www.worldservice.org/wsalstat.html).
The evolution and statute of this court is described in the author’s book: World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court.” (See Catalogue, sites above and below).
Conclusion: The essence of “sovereignty” is political choice. As we humans are all “planetary citizens,” our claim to sovereignty is not only legitimate but essential for survival itself.
World Citizen Garry Davis
*”The enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
**www.worldgovernmenthouse.com
Oh, It’s Human Rights Day Again!
December 10, 2011
Some scattered thoughts:
Ask a hundred people in any street in the United States or in France, England, Egypt, India or in fact anywhere on the planet if they can quote any of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed 63 years ago today as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations…” by the General Assembly of the United Nations sequestered at the Palais de Chaillot, Place Trocadero, Paris.
I’ll wager that not one has a clue. I’ve asked thousands. The general ignorance about a document which is THE VERY FOUNDATION OF PEACE, COMMON WELFARE AND FREEDOM IN THE WORLD is not only startling but frightening. Why? Because if you don’t know your human rights, YOU CAN’T CLAIM THEM.
“Occupiers” take note: THE UDHR IS YOUR GLOBAL PROGRAM OF ACTION AS WELL AS YOUR GLOBAL MANDATE TO TAKE OVER!
Your worldwide protests against the so-called “1%”, however, fall on deaf ears. Why? Because you haven’t claimed what you are FOR. So long as you acknowledge them as the “winners” of the economic pile, you are admitting you are already the losers. Don’t you know yet that you are HERE AND NOW the SOVEREIGN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD? That’s what the UDHR opens with: “Whereas recognition of the inherent DIGNITY and of the equal and INALIENABLE RIGHTS of all members of the HUMAN FAMILY is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world�.:” That you, members of the human family. (emphais added). And it gets better as you read on: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government….” (art 21[3])
I know, I know, the schools don’t teach it; the parents never heard of it; the politicians, God forbid, never mention it, the writers and pundits � smug in their ivory intellectual towers � mention if, if at all, as pie-in-the-sky never to be brought down to the crowded alleyways of the struggling, depressed common peasant herds who are unconditioned to think of themselves as bona fide members of the entire human race and even if they did, what to DO about it?
Before you can DO anything, you have to BE someone! Claim your inalienable global citizenship NOW!
My last blog was pointed directly at you millions of courageous “occupiers” in your tents and crowded street mobs using “mike checks” and pointing you tent poles at the complacent “1%” in their penthouse suites smugly overlooking the cities with their drinks in hand ignoring the noise from the crowded streets. I advised you to “VERTICALIZE” your movement, or more precisely, yourselves from your horizontal, therefore, supine position on the planetary soil. In short, STAND UP AND CLAIM YOUR REAL PLACE IN THE WORLD! Article 6 of the UDHR states that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. EVERYONE!!!!! No exceptions. Male or female, Jew, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, black, white, yellow or red, or whatever.
But, wait a mo, what law? Where is the law which covers EVERYONE? Where is the court adjudicating such a law? Gotta be a world court, that’s for sure. The Preamble of the UDHR even states that “…as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” Should be? Why not “shall be”? But more to the point, human rights must be protected by the rule of law�but that means WORLD LAW, brothers and sisters. Yes, world law But�I don’t hear any of you shouting for world law in your “mike checks.” I hear a lot of shouts for “justice” and “democracy” along with the beefing about “injustice” and “monopoly.” “You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” wrote Buckminster Fuller. ” To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” A World Court of Human Rights was founded in 1974. Professor Luis Kutner became its “Chief Justice.” We declared it de juris on July 27, our 90th birthday. Check out https://worldservice.org/cat.html?s=4#books Thanks for your attention.
Garry Davis
Founder/President
World Government Of World Citizens
Washington, DC
Message to all “Occupyers”:
“Verticalize,” then “Syntegrate”!
By Garry Davis
“As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or ‘containers’ to bring a semblance of order to the world — a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism.”
The words I then recited were simple but prophetic reaching back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks, Stoics and Raja Rishis of South India:
“I hereby swear that I desire to make a formal renunciation of my American nationality, and pursuant thereto hereby absolutely and entirely renounce my nationality to the United States and all rights and privileges thereunto and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the United States of America.”
When I dropped my hand, I had legally freed myself from the 19th century Age of Nationalism…and war itself…at least in this lifetime.
But it wasn’t enough. Though I was in my own stateless “space,” the national myth no longer binding me, I was still a full-bodied member of the human race and eager to fulfill that sacred and challenging destiny wherever it would lead me.
That same day, therefore I issued a press statement, carried by AP, Reuters, INS and other wire services, that “I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world.”
In short, I had “verticalized” myself to the global level. Who, indeed, could deny me that sovereign right? Moreover, I became a “world citizenship government-in-microcosm.” “Every man possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will.” (Thomas Jefferson, 1776) “My country is the world.” (Tom Paine, 1776)
No longer “in” a nation, when I walked out of the US Embassy “territory,” and onto the Champs Elysee, I started my personal “occupying” of “world territory”!
I was happy and felt free as a bird in full flight!
But the French government immediately roared: “Out! Or our national gendarmes will put you ‘inside.’ Permanently!”
Out, but where? Out to sea? Up in a balloon? The moon? Que faire?
As my final date for departure arrived, I was surprisingly if contradictorily “saved” by the United Nations which “verticalized” in the middle of Paris: Place de Trocadero, the Palais de Chaillot where its General Assembly was to hold its session. In brief, France had ceded a tiny piece of alleged French territory to the UN…for three months! The absurd charade was on! With pack on back, on the morning of September 11th, I “left” France taking the Metro to Place Trocadero and, “entering” the UN’s “international territory,” claimed to be its “first citizen.”
In short, I “occupied” it as a human being!
A New Age for citizenship was born! We had a “proper home!” Seven thousands journalists were in Paris awaiting the opening sessions. I became the “story” of the day…and even that year.
That first sojourn on the UN “territory,” however, lasted only 7 days. French gendarmes in collusion with the UN�s Secretary-General staff, “invaded” the territory, bundled me and my tent into a police car (familiar?) and transported me “back” to France. Illegally! (Or perhaps “allegally”). But 7 days were enough. The issue was joined: world citizenship inclusivity versus national exclusivity.
I became world famous.
But if I, still “stateless,” could claim to be and function as a world citizen on world territory, why not everybody else? Indeed, as I wrote in my last blog, we, humanity, are already THERE! Rather, HERE!
The letters started trickling in, but soon became a torrent. Three years after WWII with Europe still in ruins and Hiroshima fresh in everyone’s minds, the “cold war” starting between the USA and the USSR, the refugee world proliferating, many recognized world citizenship as the “way out” of the war game entirely. And it is! Even the UN proclaimed it on its final day in Paris.
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly unanimously voted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a “common standard of achievement for all people and all nations.”
As legitimate members of the world’s “people,” we World Citizens eagerly grabbed it and ran.
Over 750,000 fellow humans joined me by registering at the International Registry of World Citizens I founded on January 1, 1949. “World territory” was filling up!
Then on July 10, 1949, a giant leap forward occurred and is the real lief motif of this blog: The city of Cahors in Southern France passed a resolution signed by the mayor declaring it a “world city.” Thus began the “Mundialization” movement which has since spread to over 900 cities throughout the world. (See, www.worldservice.org/mund.html).
From that day when Cahors “mundialized,” every citizen in a “mundialized” city “verticalized” to world territory!
Lastly, on September 4, 1953, from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine, after numerous jail visits thanks to my stateless status, on the advice of top civic rights lawyers, and with the mandate of the UDHR, based on our claimed global sovereignty, I declared the World Government of World Citizens. (“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.” Art. 21[3], UDHR).[1]
Fast forward to 1986. On August 22, 1986, I filed with the DC Municipal Office my “world citizen” candidacy for mayor of the capitol of the United States!
Mayors, I thought then and now, (2011), legally responsible for their citizens welfare and safety, are the veritable key to a world of order and wellbeing, NOT the now totally dysfunctional nation-state system. Luis Kutner, the passionate advocate of World Habeas Corpus[2], wrote that,
“The time-clock of World-Man is now ever-set at one half-hour from annihilation. Man, who has achieved the ever-expanding greatness of physical science, of ultimate outer space Satellite control, of intercontinental missiles, can annihilate total World-Man in minutes…Since total man is a unified being, with an international dimension, a basic unifying principle is necessary to unify the freedom and liberty of man.”
My candidacy for mayor was formally accepted by the DC government despite the fact that in 1977 I had been classified an “excludable alien” by the US Immigration Department and succeeding courts clear up to the Supreme. (See www.worldservice.org/petition.html).
My platform in brief was “World peace through world law” claiming that Washington, like Moscow, was targeted by nuclear bombs and could only be protected by the world government.
I received 585 votes.
My rationale was simple: Most people lived in cities throughout the world. That’s why we’re called “citizens.” Cities are real; nations are fictions. Cities have become the prime targets since WWII. Think Hiroshima, Nagasaki, London, Coventry, Tokyo, Berlin, Jerusalem, etc. Cities are now targeted…everywhere. That’s where we, or most of us, live. Nations don’t “die.” They have no blood, no heart, no being. They are man-made creations usurping part of the planet’s territory. But cities “die,” or are destroyed in national wars.
You can’t live “in” a nation. Because a nation is a passive fiction of pure imagination whereas a city is dynamic with ancient codes of communal living based upon the “one and the many” social philosophy. One could even describe national citizenship given today’s instant communication and space research as not only oxymoronic and transient but mortal. After all, World War II was the first war where cities gained the deadly status of “targets” on war’s “front lines.”
I know. From the pilot’s seat of a B-17, at age 23 I bombed some of them myself. (The victims, incidentally, were civilians, man, women, children, not Nazi soldiers.)
And that brings me to mayors of cities, God bless ’em…elected by the citizens…responsible to the citizens…no matter where on the planet.
On November 2, 1985, for instance, the World Conference of Black Mayors[3] passed a Resolution stating in part that “…it is unconscionable that spending of the arms race consumes more of the world’s resources, while human needs go unmet; and…the increasing militarization of the world and the threat of an arms race in space is unacceptable…and the cost of the arms race has endangered the economic and social resources from domestic needs such as housing, jobs, public transportation, health care, human welfare, and education…”
Talk about 99% vis-a-vis 1%!
And on Saturday, June 18, 2011, the United States Conference of Mayors gathered in Washington and passed a resolution calling for the “speedy end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
All mayors talk the same human language: water supplies, traffic problems, street and electrical maintenance, recycling waste, local administration and on and on. Today over 900 cities throughout the world have “mundialized,” that is, declared themselves “worldly” like Cahors. Makes perfect sense. When you can fly around the globe in two days and the Space Station does it in 1 and 1/2 hours, We, humanity, “left” the nation-state system over 200 years ago when the horse was the fastest way to get around. Are we crazy to continue the war game when, as the good and wise mayors are now complaining, it is killing our cities (not to mention our world) with us in them?
The message is clear:
MAYORS OF THE WORLD ARE ALREADY UNITED! AND HAVE BEEN CLAIMING IT!
In brief, they are ALREADY de facto World Citizens.
Read what the City Council of Burlington, VT claimed on June 20, 1992 after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in my last blog: “Occupy…Earth?”
Brave, relevant and inspiring words, but what is missing? Like all good resolutions, it is static, not dynamic. Nothing happens. Where’s the “beef?” How do the good citizens of Burlington or Shanghai or Berlin or Rio de Janeiro “declare their citizenship responsibilities BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR CITY, STATE AND NATION? ” And to what should they declare it to? The UN? Sorry, neither cities nor citizens allowed. (I found that out personally). Only nation-states…eternally talking. There’s got to be something “out there” to ACCEPT that global responsibilities.
Here then is the simple yet revolutionary answer: Citizenship and government are corollaries! There was no recognition formerly of the overall world government to sanction the citizens’ good will pledge… “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government…” provides art. 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The authors of the UDHR unfortunately didn’t use the present tense. They assigned peacemaking as a “shall be…” not as “is.”
But to the mayors of all the cities of the world, and to their citizens gathering today in town squares and parks, the World Government of World Citizens NOW IS! How do I know? Because, following the sanction of the UDHR declared by the entire body of nations in the UN, I myself declared it on September 4, 1953 from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine! (See www.worldservice.org/ells.html).
If the mayors of our cities recognize their avowed responsibilities to represent their citizens’ wellbeing, given the “global village” they actually live in this century, they must REGISTER THEIR GLOBAL ALLEGIANCE TO THE ONLY DECLARED AND OPERATING WORLD GOVERNMENT EXTANT.
Moreover the over 900 cities already declared “global” are thereby inhabited by literally millions of already declared “world citizens” as have the citizens of Burlington, Vermont.
The wait is over. Our human future is at stake. We are at that historic juncture where it is all or none in terms of survival. THE BOMB is ticking away! It is pointed at US the real “occupiers” of world territory. The species itself is in danger of annihilation…and by its own hand. The “shift” in consciousness is taking place NOW.
Citizens of the World, we are already the human occupiers of planet Earth!
Claim it before it is too late!
Only then can we passengers communicate to one and all via the internet and all the myriad technical marvels finally eradicating space and time between humans the “operating manual” for Spaceship Earth.
And that’s known as “Syntegration.”
***************************
[1] See www.worldservice.org/ells.html
[2] Oceana Publications, Inc., 1962
[3] Founded by Johnny Ford, Mayor of Tuskegee in 1972