IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America:When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and 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 the separation.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, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under 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 these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. 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, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, 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 these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare,

That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

— And 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.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton 

Sarah Gamble is from North Carolina. In the past year her house was struck by lightning, set aflame, and then broken into. Her car was nearly destroyed by vandals after it was involved in two separate hit and runs. She went to the hospital with bronchitis, lost her job and won the Pew. She hopes to see you at her exhibition. 

Opening reception  Friday, July 3rd 

6:00 to 10:00pm

1001-1013 N. 2nd St/Ste.7

The Piazza

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Live at the Minotaur release party in London, June 15.

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BY SYDNEY SCOTT Our obsession with vampires seems to be as deathless as the undead. Images of pasty-faced bloodsucking sophisticates with miles and miles of style epitomize our notions of the vampires thanks to the lurid prose of Bram Stoker and Ann Rice. But with the sudden and, arguably, undeserved success of her ‘tween hit Twilight, Stephanie Meyer has flipped the script for a new generation. I managed to avoid reading the book for a while, but eventually I succumbed to the hype when my old roommate kept urging me to read it. It took me two months to finish the book, because I kept stopping and trying to convince myself that the end would be worth it — it wasn’t. Meyer’s story about a teenage girl named Bella who moves to a dreary Washington and falls in love with a “vegetarian” vampire, Edward Cullen, is told in the most wooden of prose. The dialogue is weak and a lame parody of what Meyers believes teenagers sound like. The book drags on for what seems like years before anything eventful happens and the events are all rather predictable. Bella being hunted down by a vampire? Yeah, didn’t see that coming. The characters aren’t any better. Edward and the rest of the Cullens are PG teen-friendly vampires. But unlike the vampires of yore, they don’t die when exposed to sunlight, they sparkle. The Cullens do not sleep in coffins, they don’t drink blood, and they go to school! Um, excuse me Mrs. Meyers, but you just drained all the bad-ass coolness out of vampires. However, Meyers has undoubtedly found a formula that works,’tweens plus sparkling vampires plus a ridiculous love story equals hit! The phenomena that is Twilight does not look like it will be dying down anytime soon with toys and perfumes hitting the shelves of your local Hot Topic. Sad to say that may mean the dawn of a new sparkling vampire empire and the end of Dracula’s reign as the Prince Of Darkness. Pity, that.

INQUIRER: Another proposed hike in parking meter rates in downtown Philadelphia has been canceled because the first increase worked better than expected. A day before rates were to increase to $3 per hour, Philadelphia Parking Authority officials said Wednesday that rates will stay at $2 , and some will even be reduced by 50 cents. The parking authority already doubled the downtown rate from $1 to $2 on Jan. 1 to discourage all-day parking. The plan worked. The parking space vacancy rate went from 2 percent to 17 percent, making it easier to find a spot. MORE

BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey center. Why? Because we love you!

ON THE COVER

CP: In an interesting counterpart to the “city employees” spread from a few weeks back, CP shows us the names, faces and stories of locals who are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though deliberately cursory and intended to give a broad cross-section of local soldiers, it still presents the hopes, beliefs and economic circumstances that go along with military service. Take Rob Pomroy of Fishtown, currently in Iraq, for example.

“I was working three jobs,” Rob Pomroy, who was born in Fishtown, says over a pay phone from Iraq, “and I never really saw my little girl because I was too busy working to put food on the table.” Pomroy was living with his girlfriend and her mother in Chalfont when he decided to visit the recruiting office. After he signed his contract, his 3-year-old daughter, Zoey Rose, had health insurance for the first time in her life. Before long, Pomroy was in Schweinfurt, Germany, awaiting deployment. In the winter of 2008, he gathered with his company outside their barracks; his sergeant read off, “Pierson: November 27, Pomroy: November 27. … ” When written orders followed, he called home to Zoey. “Daddy has to go far away, for work, to beat up the bad guys,” he said.

 

It’s unnerving how many of the featured soldiers are my age or younger, and the rash of post-9/11 militarism that determined the fates of many of my high school classmates is present in many of the stories. At the time of the attacks, Matt Brennan was a sophomore in high school, and Tim Stanton was in fifth grade; both decided then to join the military. Laura Golembiewski puts it even more succinctly: “I just wanted to fly the planes and bomb the motherfuckers.” Incredibly, these feelings are still smoldering and have been for longer than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on. From the beginning, we’ve tried to win over hearts and minds abroad; I worry about our own.

PW: Well, it’s a little hard to address this one head-on: a tribute issue to the late Steven Wells, PW staff writer and longtime music critic and culture warrior. There’s first-person reflections from other PW staffers both current and former, and they’re heartfelt, personal and funny all the way around. Some musical heavyweights even pay tribute: check this from Billy Bragg.

His writing was a kind of performance art, a skill he picked up from his years as a ranting poet. They were a rum lot, the ranters, more wind-up merchants than poets, if truth be told, taking on audiences with a bit of humor and a lot of balls. Swells excelled at the job. He was provocative, polemical and laugh out loud funny.

Seething Wells was his poetic pseudonym and the name under which his first journalism appeared in the NME in 1981. Later on in his time at the paper, he also wrote reviews under the name of Susan Williams, seeking to subvert the ladish world of rock journalism. Politics were important to Swells. A supporter of the Socialist Workers Party, his critique of bands and colleagues was often couched in class war rhetoric, but he had too much of a sense of humor to be a real Trotskyite.

He was at heart an iconoclast. Put anything on pedestal and Swells couldn’t resist taking a pot-shot at it. Nobody was spared. He was one of my earliest supporters in the music press, shared my idealism, yet continually referred to me in print as “Bilious Braggart,” even when he was praising my output.

Star turns aren’t the norm, though; I liked the short, pithy ones from Matt Prigge and Tim McGinnis best. Tim’s dead-on: every writer needs an editor to tell them, at least once, to completely rethink what they’re doing. But in the end, it doesn’t matter what I think of these tributes, or of Wells’ writings for PW, because his accomplishments speak for themselves. He found his own style, voice and approach, had his say, and stuck to his guns to the very last. None of us could ask for a better role model.

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: Moon: At least it’s not about somebody dropping trou. Bike power won’t make you a rockstar. Star bartender talks “testicular fortitude.” Obama misses the point on needle exchange.

PW: The audacity of P.O.P.E. Free jazz? I’ll take it! John Dillinger at the movies: More than a passing reference in High Fidelity. “Springtime for Hitler” during summertime in Philly. Go figure.

WINNER: PW takes the title this week, though I’ll say I wish they’d run Steven’s last column in print. One last by-line would have meant one last promise of something really incendiary.

[Click to enlarge]

UPDATE: Police sources tell KTLA that they’re making preparations for a massive public memorial for Michael Jackson Tuesday morning at Staples Center.

CNN: Many of his fans had hoped they’d get a chance to pay last respects at Neverland Ranch, which Jackson purchased in 1987, filled with animals and amusement rides, and named after the fictional world in J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.” Gregory Son, a 31-year-old musician, was among many fans who had planned to ride to the ranch to say goodbye to Jackson. “I think he was a modern-day prophet,” Son said outside Grauman’s. “We kind of lost our father.” Next to him, 26-year-old Sean Vezina, wearing sunglasses and a fedora like Jackson’s, stood silently. Vezina said he made his living as a Jackson impersonator, but was mourning too much to display any moves. MORE

ZIMBIO: Michael Jackson has turned the deed to his financially plagued Neverland Ranch over to a company that he has a partial stake in, effectively ending his reign as the King of the House That Pop Built. Then again, one could wonder what took so long. Jackson hasn’t spent any time at the Los Olivos, Calif., estate he bought in 1988 since being acquitted of child-molestation charges in 2005-crimes he was accused of committing on his 2,500-acre property, which in its heyday featured a working petting zoo, amusement park and various other kid-friendly attractions. Jackson nearly lost the whole kit and caboodle to foreclosure in May, but an eleventh-hour reprieve from L.A.-based real estate company Colony Capital, which bought a $23.5 million loan that the Thriller artist had been unable to pay back, saved Neverland from the auction block. MORE

LA TIMES: For his part, Jackson seemed to consider Rowe, whom he married in 1996, little more than a baby machine. When their daughter, Paris Michael Katherine, now 11, was born, he snatched her and “just went home with her with all the placenta all over her,” leaving Rowe behind in the hospital, Jackson told ABC News in 2003. When their son, Prince Michael Jr., now 12, told the interviewer, “I haven’t got a mother,” Jackson assented: “That’s right.” Jackson said the children would not benefit from contact with Rowe because “she can’t handle it.”She also appeared to love Jackson, even though their marriage was established for the sole purpose of bearing him children. Jackson rewarded Rowe with large sums of money for forsaking the children, and money appeared to be a concern when she later tried to obtain custody of them after the singer was accused of child molestation in 2003. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: THE RESURRECTION OF MICHAEL

Former Inquirer Pop Music Critic & Rolling Stone contributor, current NPR commentator and author of 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die. We talk about the death of the music industry, the death of newspapers, the death of criticism and how he picked the songs you simply must hear before your own death. More fun than it sounds. Look for it Friday.

INQUIRER: Three men who were filmed being beaten and kicked by Philadelphia police last year were found not guilty today on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and conspiracy. Dwayne Dyches, 26; Brian Hall, 24; and Pete Hopkins, 20, were charged in a May 5, 2008, shoot-out in the city’s Feltonville section in which three people were wounded. The three men allegedly led police on a 21/2-mile chase that ended when police yanked them from Hall’s Mercury Grand Marquis near Second and Pike Streets, then beat and kicked them as a Fox29 helicopter captured the scene on tape. MORE

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009, directed by Michael Mann, 140 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

It should have been a natural: action director Michael Mann and the Dillinger legend.  Tommy guns, fedoras, prison breaks and the final gundown in the streets of Chicago; it is easy to imagine the tough-minded Mann making one of his most compelling films out of these elements.  Such a film may be easy for Mann fans to imagine it but somehow thepossibilities have completely escaped Mann himself, who has against all odds served up a joyless and unmoving portrait of the final year of The Great Depression’s Most Wanted Bankrobber.

Feeling tremendously over blown at two hours an twenty minutes, Public Enemies’ long list of problems begins with its humdrum script, co-written by Mann and Irish screenwriter Ronan Bennett.  Telling the story of Dillinger’s pursuit by G-Man Melvin Purvis,  Public Enemies is a series of interchangeable bank robberies and narrow escapes strung  together in an entirely random manner, rolling on without form or structure until Dillinger’s luck inevitably runs out.   Mann strays from facts when it suits him (supplying the robber some romantic last words he never uttered) yet he refuses to give his story the momentum and the personal detail it needs to sweep us up in the tale, instead mounting familiar re-creations of gangster scenarios we’ve heard and seen countless time before.
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Standing L-R: Tito Jackson, Randy Jackson, Michael Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Jackie Jackson. Seated L-R: Joe Jackson, Leon Huff, Kenneth Gamble.  Photo taken in 1976 in Mr. Gamble’s office at Philadelphia International Records.

WIKIPEDIA: In 1975, Joseph negotiated a new recording contract with CBS Records, who offered a royalty rate of 20% per record, compared to Motown’s standard 2.8%; and would allow the Jackson brothers to write and produce their own records and play their own instruments. After unsuccessfully attempting to talk the group into staying on the label, Motown sued for breach of contract. Although Motown eventually let the group go, The Jackson 5 were forced to change their name to The Jacksons, because Motown retained the “Jackson 5″ trademark during the settlement of the lawsuit. The Jacksons also replaced Jermaine with the youngest Jackson brother, fourteen year old Randy, since Jermaine chose to stay with Motown and his father-in-law Berry Gordy (In 1973, Jermaine married Gordy’s daughter Hazel). Randy had been an unofficial member of The Jackson 5 since 1972, playing congas onstage as part of their live act.

After losing The Jacksons, Motown would not have another success of their caliber for the duration of Berry Gordy’s ownership of the label. Gordy often said of The Jackson 5 that they were, coming after the label’s most famous acts, “the last big stars to come rolling off the [Motown] assembly line.”^[5] In summer 1976, CBS television signed the Jackson family (including Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jackie, Randy, Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet) to appear in their own variety show, to compete with ABC’s Donny & Marie. The Jacksons debuted on June 16, 1976, and ran on CBS until its cancellation the following March. The show was the first variety show hosted by an African American family.

As part of CBS’s Philadelphia International Records division, and later moving over to Epic Records, The Jacksons continued releasing popular singles such as “Enjoy Yourself” (1976), produced by Philadelphia International’s Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff. After two LPs produced by Gamble and Huff, The Jacksons wanted artistic control, and produced their next LP, 1978’s Destiny, on their own. MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Randex Communications, PIR plans to release archival video footage of the aforementioned recording sessions. Full press release after the jump.

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