(applause)
- Judges, our Constitution is like the Horcrux
in Harry Potter.
(laughing)
It is the piece of our founding father's souls that is
still somehow still alive ruling over the rest of us.
Let me explain.
- My show, What the Constitution Means to Me
is a recreation of a contest I did as a teenager
I would travel the country
giving speeches about the Constitution for prize money.
- I would travel to big cities like Denver and Fresno
I would give a speech win a whole bunch of money
and then bring it back to put in my little
safety deposit box for later.
I was actually able to pay for my entire
college education this way.
(cheers and applause)
Thank you.
- And a few years ago I decided that I wanted to
make a play about this experience I had as a teenage girl.
It's a very performative style, it's about storytelling,
it's about thinking on your feet,
and I thought it would be fun to create
a live performance event in which some things
were extemporaneous and some things were planned.
Yeah, so at the end of the show I debate live,
a real teenage girl.
- Different branches of government are overstepping
their powers, voter suppression is rampant,
and nine people have disproportionate power
over our basic human rights. And communities of color,
women, LGBTQIA folks and immigrants have their rights
violated on a daily basis. Thank you.
(cheers)
- We have two champion debaters on our show
Thursday Williams and Rosdely Ciprian.
We debate whether or not to abolish the Constitution
and start over.
- This brings me to my final argument,
if we abolish the Constitution we risk sending the country
into complete chaos. Our country's more divided
then it has ever been, the only thing holding us together
as Americans right now, is the faith in this document.
We may choose,
we may choose to interpret it differently
but without it we risk complete collapse.
- I listened to Griswold versus Connecticut
which is the case that made birth control legal in 1965.
The thing I noticed when they were arguing this case
is how uncomfortable they all were
talking about women's bodies, talking about sex,
talking about birth control.
I started to realize that most of the protections
we are guaranteed as say, women
or trans folks
or people who are not white, people of different abilities,
are not specifically laid out in the Constitution
in any concrete way.
- Judges, as a kid I believed this document
was a tool of justice.
I knew it was created by slaveholders,
by people who did not consider most of us fully human.
But I believed in its genius and in it's ability
to transform over time.
Today, however, I don't actually think its failing
I think its working perfectly,
I think its doing exactly what it was designed to do
from the beginning, which is to protect the interests
of a small number of rich, white, men.
- And yeah, we do this basically live every night
and at the end of the show the audience gets to vote
whether to keep or abolish
that the younger people should get to decide our future.
So, Thursday or Rosdely depending on who is debating
that night will get to choose the Judge
from this row of young people in the front.
- I believe we need a brand new, positive rights document
that actively rectifies the inequality at the heart
of this country.
I believe we need a document that protects all of us.
Because why? Why should most of us be banished
to the margins of the Constitution?
Why should we be on page 30? On page 34?
Or not even in this document at all because we're kids?
We all belong in the Preamble. Thank you.
(cheers and applause)
- I feel like I want people to leave the show
feeling like they've taken a real look at what our country
actually is, what this document actually is,
and are hopefully excited about
how we move forward from this moment.
I will say, in addition to that I swear it's really funny.
(laughs)