ELLSWORTH, September 4-- Thirty-five years ago today,
from the City Hall of this Maine crossroads, World Citizen Garry Davis of Bar Harbor
declared a new government for the world based on inalienable human rights and fundamental
freedoms.
Today's meeting combines the anniversary of that historic event with Davis' first
public appearance as the World Citizen candidate for US president since the Democratic and
Republican conventions.
Both as the founder-head of World Government and as a presidential candidate, Davis is
calling for a world constitutional convention for the year 1990 "to raise
constitutional law to the global level where it belongs. By the year 2000, the world
community must be governed by law or we cannot survive a final holocaust."
"The president of the United States," he said, "can make war but cannot
make peace. Neither the Republican nor Democratic candidate can address the question of
world peace itself. Both are part of the nationalistic war system. I am the only world
peace candidate. Because only a world government can eliminate the anarchy between nations
which breeds war. Only a world government can begin to cope with the monstrous
environmental problems facing the world community. My candidacy as an activist world
citizen is meant to reveal to the American and world electorate the dynamic linkage
between national and global politics."
Davis, a former actor and World War II bomber pilot, renounced his US nationality in
Paris in 1948 declaring himself a world citizen at the same time.
"In the absence of an international government," his May 25, 1948 statement
read in part, "our world, politically, is now a naked anarchy...This international
anarchy is moving swiftly towards a final war..."
Davis' action and declaration found a responsive chord among European youth,
intellectuals and refugees at the time. Einstein, Camus and Schweitzer among others
supported him. An International Registry of World Citizens was founded in 1949 and in two
years over 750,000 individuals from over 150 countries had registered.
On September 4, 1953, citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a United
Nations document, as his sanction, Davis declared a government for, by and of world
citizens from this City Hall.
"Unless we, the human race, eliminate war," he stated, "war will
eliminate us and more unfortunately, all other living species on this beautiful planet. We
must now empower ourselves as individuals on the level where our personal and communal
problems are. That means adding 'world' to 'citizenship.' It's not only the key to
survival but to justifying the teachings of all the gurus, masters, saviors, and prophets,
all the cultural geniuses, all evolutionary progress, all the pain, suffering and anguish
of a war-weary humanity but most of all justifying the trust of our children, innocent of
our follies. In short, law, not violence, must now govern our relations with each other.
"
Today the global government operates from the offices of the World Service Authority,
its administrative and executive agency, in Washington, D.C. Besides registering
individuals throughout the world as world citizens, the WSA issues all world government
documents such as the World Passport, the World Identity Card, the World Birth Certificate
and the World Political Asylum Card.
The World Passport has been issued to over 250,000 individuals worldwide, about half to
refugees and stateless persons, with over 100 nations recognizing the document on a
case-by-case basis and 6 on a de jure basis.
Though US Immigration classifies Davis an "excludable alien," he ran for
mayor of Washington in 1986 on a world citizen platform gaining 585 votes.
On January 19, 1987 at Middlebury College, Davis announced his candidacy for US
president.
The major funding for the world constitutional convention, according to Davis, will
come from a new bank to be founded in the coming months by the World Government which will
issue a global monetary unit - a "peace currency" - eventually to stabilize the
world economic situation.
"If money is an essential economic tool for human well-being and happiness,,"
he said, "then a single world currency for the interdependent world consumer market
issued by a world government is a vital constituent for a peaceful world.
"World peacemakers worth the name must concern themselves with the creation and
introduction of world money into the present chaotic house-of-cards international economic
non-system."
The World Citizen will carry his president campaign to Montreal and Toronto in early
September before heading south to the US.
"Though Canadians of course cannot vote in a US presidential elections,"
Davis explained, "still I seek their political support as world citizens. The next US
president must address issues of a global nature affecting citizens of all countries.
Otherwise he betrays the inheritance of the founding fathers who boldly created a new
allegiance to cope with their local problems."
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