When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the bands which have subjected them to a government which has burdened and oppressed them, and to restore the powers and rights to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among the people, 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 upon such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to seem to them most likely to them to effect their future safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shown that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute despotism it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suffering of the American people, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their present government.

The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

On repeated occasions, the current government has manipulated elections from which officials have assumed their offices.

A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people.

Its current president has allowed his subordinates to suggest a postponement of the constitutionally required date of a presidential election, a step unprecedented in United States history, even in times of war and civil rebellion. While doing so, he has suggested that no further national elections will be necessary.

The current government has repeatedly undermined access to equal voting rights, and has promoted the power of the dollar to replace the voice of the people in elections.

It has compromised the security of the people in their persons, homes, workplaces, schools, travels, papers, and effects by sponsoring actions that harass the people with both open and clandestine searches and surveillance.

It has denied immigrants their rights under asylum law and the Constitution, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest and cruel and unusual punishment.

It has refused detainees under its authority access to counsel and security from physical mistreatment, in violation of international covenant, the supreme law of the land, and the English-speaking tradition of law dating from Magna Carta.

As has been the case for nearly two generations, it has failed to erect adequate safeguards against domestic terrorism and the massacre of children and young people in our schools and colleges.

It has long evaded international covenants for the protection of the environment, the humane treatment of prisoners of war, the security of nations from invasion, and the prevention of war crimes, thereby subverting the law of nations and the supreme law of the land. The current president’s actions in this respect are especially cruel and malign.

It has acted to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

It has weakened enforcement of environmental laws most wholesome and necessary to the public good, has compromised others, and has allowed corporations to poison the environment on which the public’s health, prosperity, and well-being depend.

It has hollowed out the nation’s civil service and established bribery as standard government practice.

It has further endangered public health by........

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