Afrofuturism
Culture
Vesey Government
Legislative
Executive
Judiciary
Foreign Policy
Defense
Bill of Rights
Bill or Rights
lllll
The Vesey Republic
Draft Program for A Majority Black-Led Nation-State
Governance Theory
4.17.23
Article 1.
All citizens and persons born in the Vesey Republic stand equal before the law. The liberties enumerated in the Charter of Rights shall not be denied or curtailed by any Vesey Republic federal, regional, or local government body. The Vesey Republic Estates Parliament shall have the power to enact and enforce appropriate legislation to comply with the provisions of this article.
Article 2.
All women in the Vesey Republic shall have the right to obtain a safe, affordable, legal abortion.
Article 3.
The free communication of ideas and opinions is an indispensable right of the Commons. The Vesey Estates Parliament shall make no law prohibiting the freedom of speech or censoring of the press. Every citizen may speak, write, and print freely, but shall be responsible for any abuses of this freedom as defined by law. The Commons have the right to peacefully assemble in public spaces and submit petitions of its grievances to the government.
Article 4.
The Vesey Estates Parliament shall make no law establishing a state religion. The Commons of the Vesey Republic shall be free to practice any religious preference desired or express no religious preference.
Article 5.
The Vesey Republic Commons have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. No warrants shall be issued for searches or seizure of the Commons' property without the demonstration of probable cause to conduct searches, a description of the places to be searched, and designation of the persons or things to be seized.
Article 6.
No person shall be charged with a serious crime without a finding that probable cause exists, or that a crime has been committed as determined by an indictment of a jury of a defendants' peers.
No person shall be subject to double jeopardy for the same offence; nor shall any person be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against themselves, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Article 7.
In all criminal trials the accused is entitled to a fair and speedy public trial by an impartial jury in the appropriate jurisdiction where the crime was committed. The accused has the right to be informed of the charges, to confront witnesses against them, to have witnesses in their favor, and to have the assistance of an officer of the law.
Article 8.
In federal civil suits, the right of a trial by jury shall be preserved.
Article 9.
Excessive bail and excessive fines shall not be imposed. Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted.
Article 10.
The Commons have the right to require of every Vesey Republic public agency an account of their appropriate administrative records.
Article 11.
It is the right and the duty of the Commons to resist any infringements and attempts to trample on its rights by the government, and if necessary, remove the government to prevent state capture by the forces of despotism.
Summary of the Table of Rights
The Vesey Republic's Charter of Rights establishes the unassailable individual and group rights of the Black Commons' first independent nation-state.
As a binding instrument embedded in the Vesey Republic's written or unwritten Constitution, the Charter
of Rights defines the limits of the legislative and executive powers vested in the parliamentary sovereignty of the Vesey Estates Parliament.
In the Vesey Republic's public square, provisioned with the bricks and mortar of free speech, a free press, and the counsels of open public assembly, a new national identity will be constructed.
The cornerstone of the Vesey Republic's national project is the condominium of the Commons' birthright freedoms and its conventions of jurisprudence.
The jewels of justice not experienced by the Black Commons in its 400-year sojourn will be realized in the fullness of Vesey's liberatory statecraft and an independent judiciary system.
In contested spaces where legislative acts enacted by Vesey's Estates Parliament conflict with the Common's birthright freedoms enshrined in the Charter of Rights of justice are mediated by Vesey's High Court of Justice will forge the substance of majority Black-led self-rule will be created.
Balancing the Common's individual liberties with Vesey's commitment to the republic's collective interests will permeate every great question before the nation's unfinished agenda.
As a majority Black-led multi-racial society with significant gender diversity, the Charter of Rights incorporates two areas of group rights consistent with the Vesey Government's goal of creating the first post-modern non-heteropatriarchal society.
First, the Charter guarantees the equal treatment of all Vesey citizens, irrespective of race, nationality, gender, and group distinctions.
Second, women have the right to obtain a safe, affordable, legal abortion.
At the same time that the Vesey Republic upholds the equal treatment of all its citizens, New Black Nationalists recognize the biological reality that childbearing creates a singularly unique inequality between men and women that is manifest in myriad ways.
The right guaranteeing a safe legal abortion for all women does not eliminate this inequality. However, it travels a considerable distance in addressing a natural or biological inequality not consciously created by humankind.
Being present at the creation of England's colonial administrations and the founding of American Empire, the Black Commons inherit strands of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights derived from England's 1689 Declaration of Rights and the Magna Carta settlements of 1215 and 1225.
Other rights like the Second Amendment's right to bear arms is a dead letter to Vesey's Republic that will give no quarter to personal ownership of firearms and assault weapons. They will be banned. Nor shall Vesey's citizens be forced to quarter Vesey's national armed forces in their homes nor seize their private property.
To safeguard the Vesey Republic's virtue and growth as a republic of high ethics and transparent administration, it is the right of the Commons to call the Estates Parliament and First Prime Minister to account and examine its records.
To provide additional safeguards to capitalize the Commons' political capacity to directly affect the affairs of state, the Vesey Republic's written or unwritten constitution invest the Commons with the authority to call for national referenda on matters of vital national interests. The conventions of the Vesey Estate Parliament shall also through statutory authority have the power to call for a vote of "No Confidence" in the Estate Parliament to demand new elections to replace the First Prime Minister's government.
Should the Estates Parliament betray the constitution and work in opposition to the republic's collective interests, Vesey's Charter upholds the right to revolution.
The Vesey Republic Charter of Rights is not a declaration that claims the authority of universal rights, God-given rights, natural rights, or human rights. It is not an incantation or product of intellectual fancy. The Charter of Rights reflects the four-hundred-year experience of the Black Commons' who were present at the creation of British and American Empire, and its exit to independent nationhood and liberation by any means necessary.
The Vesey Republic Charter of Rights
TheVesey Republic Charter of Rights
1969 Republic of New Afrika Detroit Convention
