Why is the U.S. Constitution to be read as a fixed and immutable document enshrining a white supremacist nation, or should amendments and changing circumstances suggest a more dynamic reading.

Meg Mott

Meg Mott, a former Marlboro College faculty member, will talk on “A Dramatic Constitution” on Sunday, Jan. 8, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. The program is supported by the Vermont Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau. The talk begins at 2 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

In this presentation, Meg Mott considers how the Constitution both forces and frames our disagreements. In the first two centuries, citizens regularly debated public matters, drawing on the Constitution as a shared authority.

Since its inception, the U. S. Constitution has been criticized for not doing enough to protect basic freedoms. Even with the addition of the Bill of Rights, slavery persisted. Abolitionists were divided on whether the highest law in the land could ever be redeemed. After William Lloyd Garrison publicly burned the Constitution at a rally in Framingham, Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass rebutted that political strategy.

Why surrender these timeless words to the desires of wicked men? What does it mean for our republic when only legal professionals take the stage?

Once again we are divided on the merits of the Constitution: can it redeem us or is it a convenient cloak for white supremacy?