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September 4, 1988 or (202) 638-2662

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."