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To view this on the COS website, click here [[https://conventionofstates.com/news/the-shot-still-heard|the-shot-still-heard]]


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====== The Shot Still Heard ======


We the People are the 4th branch of government. And it’s time to make ourselves seen as well as heard, as we have “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”\\
So, make no other plans for the 10th of April 2024. Let us assemble, peaceably, with all seriousness and respect, in support of our Constitution and the Rights therein.\\



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|The Arkansas Convention of States\\ \\ Annual Surge Day Meeting at the State Capital in Little Rock.\\ \\ April the 10th at 10:00 AM\\ \\ I am thinking on another April; 249 years ago. On April the 19th, 1775, at about five in the morning, less than a hundred Patriots stood on a green in Lexington, Massachusetts.\\ \\ It was there that Captain John Parker told his men “//Stand your ground, Do not fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here//.”\\ \\ After the short fight at Lexington the British moved on to Concord and faced about 400 Patriots, armed and in formation. Most of us know how the British regulars were forced to retreat to Boston, with Minutemen fighting them all the way.\\ \\ From seventy men at Lexington to four hundred at Concord and eventually almost four thousand Minutemen and Militia engaged the invaders that day.\\ \\ Think about that. From 70 to 400 to 4000.\\ \\ With no overall command structure, communications, or transportation, the Minutemen answered the call.\\ \\ Have you ever read Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? In the last stanza of that poem, we can read:\\ \\ * So through the night rode Paul Revere;\\ * And so through the night went his cry of alarm\\ * To every Middlesex village and farm,\\ * — A cry of defiance and not of fear,\\ * A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,\\ * And a word that shall echo forevermore!\\ * For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,\\ * Through all our history, to the last,\\ * In the hour of darkness and peril and need,\\ * The people will waken and listen to hear\\ * The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,\\ * And the midnight message of Paul Revere.\\ \\ From //The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow//, 1903\\ \\ So, “Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need. The people will waken and listen to hear.”\\ \\ And if the ranks of local Minutemen can go from 70 to 4000 in a day, how much farther can we go given time and modern communications? And yet. Numbers on a page or in a virtual world are not enough. Just as once before, the number of people who lived around Lexington and Concord were not enough as just a number.\\ \\ What mattered was the 4000 that showed up.\\ \\ 4000 who left home, family, and whatever important work they had to do that day and walked across the dew-covered fields in the light of a spring dawn.\\ \\ Would it not be a wonderful message if 4000 met on the steps of the State Capital on the 10th of April, 2024, at 10:00 AM, in the peace and freedom those men and women of the past granted us?\\ \\ 249 years is but a blink in the eye of history, yet events and progress here are more than thousands of years in past ages. How can anyone doubt the efficacy of our Constitution and the value of an American Heritage and Culture unique in the world and across time?\\ \\ The Constitution of our Republic grants us the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” And we also have the protection of Article V.\\ \\ **We the People are the 4th branch of government.** And its time to make ourselves seen as well as heard, as we have “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”\\ \\ So, make no other plans for the 10th of April 2024. Let us assemble, peaceably, with all seriousness and respect, in support of our Constitution and the Rights therein.\\ \\ Spread the word.\\ \\ Four thousand.|


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|  __Page Metadata__  ||
|Login Required to view?  |No                  |
|Created:                 |2024-02-29 19:51 GMT|
|Updated:                 |2024-04-20 17:28 GMT|
|Published:               |2024-02-29 06:00 GMT|
|Converted:               |2025-11-11 12:03 GMT|
|Change Author:           |John Sweeting       |
|Credit Author:           |                    |