The Full Text Of Today's Declaration From Charleston South Carolina

This Is What We Signed And Placed Upon The Doors Of City Hall In Charleston, SC During Our Rally And March For Liberty!! Written By Tyler Bessenger, Edits By Corey Allen!

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have subjugated them to another, and to the equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to such dissolution.

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.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind 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 results in 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 sufferance of the people of Charleston;

and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter the government of their beloved City. The history of the present City Council of Charleston is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the people of this City. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

City Council has repeatedly increased the level of tax imposed upon home and business owners alike, without the consent or consultation of the citizens of the city.

In fact, these have been imposed upon us in spite of our express displeasure. These excessive taxes have resulted in an ever-increasing cost of living within the city, and have served only to more rapidly broaden the divide between rich and poor within its borders. As taxes are raised on homes and rental properties, more often than not, this disproportionately affects the most vulnerable among us, leaving members of the elderly, underserved, and minority communities to choose between the roof over their heads or the food on their table.

City Council has imposed devastating shutdowns and reductions in capacity of nearly every business in its jurisdiction, forcing an ever-growing number of small businesses to close their doors forever and sending thousands of Charlestonians into a precarious economic position. While crippling our economy and devastating the livelihoods of an untold number of our citizens, City Council has also seen it prudent to elevate the needs of themselves and workers within the bloated bureaucracy high above those of private citizens.

Citizens whose hard-earned tax money pays their salaries, choosing to increase the tax burden of the people over a temporary reduction of salaries and unnecessary expenditures, while thousands of private sector citizens still pray for employment.

City Council has imposed Mask Mandates in response to the COVID-19 Epidemic, despite study after study showing that the use of masks has little to no impact on the spread of this virus.

Similar mandates have been judged unconstitutional repeatedly in courts throughout the Union, and many more legal cases are being brought presently to challenge these impositions. The forced use of masks has shuttered many other businesses who find themselves unable to operate while complying, and City Council has weaponized the police force by issuing unreasonable citations and fines against citizens who feel they may know their own health better than politicians on Broad Street.

The implication by City Council that the use of masks are a necessity to prevent the spread of disease has, in many cases, turned citizens against one another over a policy with no sound basis in science or reason.

City Council and Police Chief Luther Reynolds have castrated the Charleston Police Department and surrendered jurisdiction of the streets of Charleston to violent, Marxist mobs. They have allowed riots, looting, threats, vandalism, and violence to become common place on the streets of Downtown Charleston. From the murder of a College of Charleston official on the street to an apocalyptic surrender of King Street on May 30th, and a continued disregard for the safety of our People, the citizens of Charleston no longer feel safe on streets that were once freely traversed by all.

City Council has gone further in appeasing the aforementioned violent mobs by acquiescing to their demands to remove some of the City’s most prominent historical monuments and landmarks.

While increasing taxes to relieve budget shortfalls, which were the result of their own obscene and ineffective economic shutdowns, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars removing the more than a century old John C. Calhoun monument.

City Council not only sat idly by while King Street was ravaged, but then went one step further to bend the knee to the demands of the mob which held the City hostage. The cost of removing the monument is still unknown,

as City Councils continued ineptitude has resulted in the removal taking months on end and continuing to this day.

City Council has established what it has christened “The Equity, Inclusion, and Racial Conciliation Committee”. This is nothing short of a barely-veiled government sanctioned platform for radical, leftist, anti-American, racial bigotry and propaganda within the City of Charleston. Taking their ques directly from radical literature such as “Critical Race Theory” and “Das Kapital”,

this City sponsored socialist wing of Charleston’s City Government serves to demonize certain portions of the population while trying to convince other segments of the population that they are inherently disadvantaged and less capable than their counterparts. We find this fundamentally repugnant and directly at odds with the absolute truth that all men are created equal.

City Council has supported histrionic and hypocritical lawsuits being brought by

Mayor John Tecklenburg against several oil companies for what he has described as their role in climate change and flooding within the City. They have forged documents and refused to cooperate with FEMA, stonewalling an effort to help the people of this City who have been placed in dire need as a direct result of City Council’s decisions of over-development without regard for the impact on the land. Not only are such moves unabashed displays of the Mayor’s own hypocrisy,

as both he and his family have earned great wealth through both the oil industry and property development themselves, they also serve as yet another insincere pedestal from which City Council and the Mayor can signal their false virtue while producing no tangible results. In fact, due to the lawsuits, the cost of fueling City owned vehicles has gone up due to some oil companies’ inability to do business with the City while involved in this litigious soap opera.

City Council has repeatedly touted itself as the champions of Charleston’s Black Community, even going so far as to establish the aforementioned committee whose sole purpose, they claim, is to establish racial justice within the City. This is an obvious façade. City Council and its Democratic Party operatives, while making such bold and virtuous claims, have systematically reduced Charleston’s Black Community by nearly fifty percent over the last fifty years. Before the ascension of the previous Mayor Joe Riley,

Charleston’s population was approximately fifty percent black. When Mayor John Tecklenburg took office that number had dropped to less than twenty-five percent, and this number continues to dwindle under his leadership and that of his Democrat allies through gentrification and overdevelopment within the City of Charleston.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble of terms; our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A Council whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to govern a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our City Leaders. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by them to extend unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and of the people by whom they were elected.

We must therefore hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in conflict, and in Peace, Friends.

We, therefore, the People of Charleston, South Carolina, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of this city, solemnly publish and declare, that these grievances and failures on the part of the Charleston City Council must be addressed and resolved immediately.

We insist, in order to rectify and restore a trusting relationship in the City between the Governing and the Governed, that Mayor John Tecklenburg, Councilman Vincent Shahid Jr, and Councilman Robert M. Mitchell resign their positions in government and that elections be held to fill those vacancies. For too long the People of Charleston have been overlooked by their elected officials and expected to accept blow after painful blow from those in power who see themselves as our betters.

This behavior cannot and will not be allowed to continue further. For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Signed: