 Scholastic Student Reporters talk to Dorothy Goldma, who has one of the original copies of the Constitution. (Photo: Suzanne Freeman) |
People for the American Way sponsored the event, which was held during the week of the Republican National Convention. Scholastic News Student Reporters were backstage, where they interviewed celebrities after their turn on stage.
Mandy Patinkin
Singer, Actor
Mandy Patinkin said he had never read the Constitution before, but strongly believed in its importance as a basis for America's freedoms.
"It is a document that has brilliantly outlined a path for our country to follow and ways that make us a good example for people all over the world," he said. "And hopefully this design that these forefathers created is something that will help us survive forever."
Patinkin, who starred in The Princess Bride, and was a regular in the TV programs Dead Like Me and Chicago Hope, said he agreed to read at the event because he wanted to learn more about the Constitution.
"These are the laws that we live by," he said. "These are the laws that govern us and our children and our children's children. It's important to know what the basis was."
Patinkin believes the Constitution should be read out loud more often.
"Most of the great religious stories are repeated every year at different times of the year so people never forget," Pantinkin said. "I think that this is one of the great documents of the world, so I think these events are important, certainly for me, because it's going to be the first time I've heard the whole thing."
Richard Gere
Actor
This was also the first time actor Richard Gere had read the whole document. He read aloud the section that details how the Senate works.
"People forget that this was an extremely revolutionary, visionary time where it was new territory," Gere told Scholastic News Online. "This was a brand-new place and people were trying to think of a new way to make a society and make a government that would govern people in an honest and heartfelt way—in a fair way. I think that we often forget that there really was a visionary quality to the beginning of the United States. It was an experiment in visionary thinking and social contracts."
The Constitution tells us who we are as a people, says Gere. And it protects our basic rights as citizens. "It also gives a context of why we started this experiment of the United States of America," he said. Gere is best known for his roles in the blockbuster movies Pretty Woman and Chicago.
Victor Navasky
Editor and Publisher of The Nation
Unlike Patinkin and Gere, Victor Navasky has not only read the Constitution, he wrote a play about it.
Navasky wrote United We Stood while in college. The play is based on the premise that Patrick Henry took the wrong copy to be signed. "The question was, what do you do about that? Should the person who discovered this reveal it to the world or should he keep it a secret because it would cause chaos?" Navasky said. The one-act play was performed at Swarthmore College.
Navasky called the Constitution a "model for how human societies ought to conduct themselves."
Khaliah Ali
Spokesperson for the National Constitution Museum and daughter of former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali
The Constitution is part of our everyday life, says Khaliah Ali. "There's nowhere you go or nothing you do without those privileges and rights," she told Scholastic News Online. "The Constitution is incredibly unique," she said. "Unlike other governments in this world, the Constitution grants the people the right. The people are given their rights in the Constitution, not by a dictator or one source."
Although she studied the Constitution in college, reading aloud for the "People for the American Way" caught her off guard. "There was a wonderful energy in the room and a sense of pride that came over me while reading it that I had never experienced before," she said. "What I got today more than anything was the camaraderie among everyone; the pride that everyone had and just how proud I was to actually be here. I don't know if I realized it until I stepped up and heard the words that I was actually reading and felt everyone around me feeling the same way I did. It was a very proud moment."
Floyd Abrams
The Nation's Leading First Amendment Lawyer
Floyd Abrams has not only read the Constitution before, he can recite it. Abrams is a renowned advocate of the U.S. Constitution, which he says will be safe only as long as people work to protect it. "The Constitution protects us, but we have to do all we can to make sure it is protected against politicians or others—even members of the public who might want to overcome it," he said.
Abrams was loudly cheered as he read the First Amendment. "I think I got the best part," he said, "because I had a chance to read about the deep protections we have of free speech and freedom of press and freedom of religion and the right of people to assemble peacefully, to petition the government, to complain about what the government's doing. This is the very core of what the country is and certainly what it should be about."
Christine Baranski
Actress
Now that she has read part of the Constitution to an audience, Christine Baranski says she is going to read it out loud to her children. "It was kind of inspiring to hear it out loud," she said. She called the Constitution "the map of our free society."
"It's the roadmap of how we live in a democracy, and without that we could lose our freedoms and our individual rights," said the star of the TV sitcom Happy Family.
Ossie Davis
A leading African-American Playwright, Actor, Director, and Television and Movie Star
Ruby Dee
Actress and Wife of Ossie Davis
 Scholastic Student Reporters talk to Ossie Davis and Ruby Lee. (Photo: Suzanne Freeman) |
Reading the Constitution was a requirement when Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were in school. They've also read parts of it aloud, but this is the first time either of them read it for a live audience. "I think it's a stunning idea," Ruby said. "I have read the Bill of Rights. That's almost like a poem, you know."
Ossie said that while reading the document was meaningful to him, that was not what it was all about. "In a democracy such as ours, where we are not bound together by blood or by race or by religion, we need something to bond us together," he said. "We need public rituals that stitch us together as a people, and this is a ritual in a small way that unifies us as Americans. The basic purpose of this is to ritualize the Americanization of our people. This is a way of pulling ourselves together."
The Constitution is one of the most important documents of the world, Ruby said. "I think it offers so much hope despite the pain that brought us here and the people that suffered to make the United States the United States," she said. "It's a document of hope for the world, I believe, and we need to protect it. I think rituals like this help us to understand that we can't abandon it. We can't trash it. We can't disrespect it."
The two wrote a book together about their lives: With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. The couple have been married since 1948. They have appeared in many films together, breaking color barriers in the early stages of the movie industry. They have always been active in the civil rights movement.
Bill Irwin
Actor, Comedian
The amendments to the Constitution that Bill Irwin read got a lot of laughs from the audience. He first read the amendment that started prohibition back in the 1920s. Prohibition outlawed the making or sale of alcohol. He also read the amendment that repealed prohibition.
Irwin has guest-starred in the TV shows Third Rock From the Sun, The Cosby Show, Saturday Night Live, and Pete and Pete. He has been in numerous movies and was a full-time actor on Sesame Street. He says how we interpret the Constitution makes a difference in how powerful it is.
"They say that they can't pass any law that violates this Constitution, and that's our job, until the end of my life and the end of your lives, to figure out what that means," he said. "People always throw around the Constitution, but very few of us have ever read it. Like you asked me if I have read it—I've never read the whole thing before. So now it's time to learn from the law itself—the highest law of the land."
Alec Baldwin
Actor
Alec Baldwin studied constitutional law in college. This was his first time to recite it in front of a live audience.
"I think that a lot of people in this country don't know what's in the Constitution or why it's there, and it's very important now and then to roll it out and have a good look at it," he told Scholastic News Online.
Baldwin said the Constitution is important because of what it prevents: It keeps the government from abusing its power and hurting its citizens.
"This is a country that was formed by people who wanted to escape the tyranny of a powerful government," Baldwin said. "Many of the people who came to this country to form this country came from other countries where they were told they couldn't be in the businesses they wanted to be in; they couldn't study the things they wanted to study; they couldn't practice their religion."
Baldwin read the 25th and 27th amendments. The 25th Amendment deals with the succession of office if the President has to leave office for any reason. The 27th Amendment states that Congress cannot vote itself a pay raise while in office.
As an actor, Baldwin has been in everything from daytime soap operas to Broadway plays to major motion pictures. He has two movies opening this fall: The Last Shot with co-star Mathew Broderick, and The Aviator with co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.
Betty Friedan
Feminist and Activist
When asked if she had ever read the Constitution before, Betty Friedan answered with an emphatic, "Of course!"
The document is important, especially for women because it "establishes and delineates the rights of all Americans, including women." It is important to her personally because she, too, is an American, she said.
"I believe strongly in freedom of speech and of the press and the right of the people to dissent and organize, and the Constitution is what protects all those things," she said.
Friedan read the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote.
"It's important to understand our constitutional rights and to stand firmly in support and protection of them," she said. "You learn it in school in ways that are not cut and dried; in ways that are not as alive and vital to you as it is to me."
The feminist movement got its start in 1963 with the publication of Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique. She is founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW) and National Women's Political Caucus. As an activist for women's rights, she knows what it takes to protect freedoms. Scholastic News Online asked her if the freedoms protected in the Constitution were safe.
"Well, it's never completely safe," she said. "There are always those who would like to undermine our liberties and take the people's rights away. But you have to retain vigilance in each generation."
 Scholastic Student Reporters talk to 10-year-old Diana, a fifth-grader from New York. (Photo: Suzanne Freeman) |
From the Audience
The more than 700 people who turned out to hear the readings seemed moved and pleased by the event. Suzanne Ceresko of New York said she was surprised at how interesting it was to hear the document read aloud. "I was surprised because I hadn't read it in such a long time—not since high school—and I had forgotten some of the details of it. It was very enlightening," she said.
Ten-year-old Diana said she learned something new. The New York fifth-grader said she is studying the Constitution in school, but didn't know about the amendments. "In class we only read the first part so far," she said.
Hearing the Constitution read aloud was especially meaningful for Mark Polansky, because his mother lives with one of the original copies. "I get to look at it whenever I want to," he said.
His mother, Dorothy Goldman, allowed People for the American Way to display her copy at the Cooper's Union event. It was enclosed in a glass case. Goldman stood nearby as people came by to look at a piece of the nation's history.
Two documents were on display in the case. One was the Constitution. The other was two copies of the Bill of Rights. One was a draft version that came from the House of Representatives. The other was the final version that came out of the Senate.
Goldman's Constitution has traveled to most of the presidential libraries, some historical sites, and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. "The National Constitution Center is like Disneyland for History," Polansky said.
"I like to have it travel," Goldman said. "It has also been with some immigrants when they took the oath of allegiance to the United States. I thought that was pretty special, too."
Her favorite part of the Constitution is the preamble, which begins "We the People," "because it belongs to all of us," she said.
Her son shares her love of those first three words. Hearing those words spoken out loud was moving, he said.
"I had never heard the entire thing in spoken word, so I realized that as old as this piece of paper back here is, it has everything to do with what is on the street and on the front pages of the newspapers today," he said.
