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On Thursday, July 19, the Carter County Democratic Party will do a public reading of the U.S. Constitution. The public is invited to listen and participate, starting at 5 p.m. at Covered Bridge Park in Elizabethton. From the preamble to the 27th Amendment, the reading should take about one hour. Pocket Constitution booklets will be available to anyone who attends.

The Democratic Party cherishes the principles, rights and freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, which establishes that our government must remain accountable to the people. Recently, there have been attempts to intimidate people who exercise their First Amendment rights by assembling and speaking out. Yet, to be sure, protest is not a threat, disagreement is not disloyalty, and criticism is not chaos. The First Amendment is first because all other freedoms are built upon the protection of our individual rights. These rights do not belong to any one party or leader. They belong to us all.

The text of the Constitution spells out the duties of the three branches of government (legislative, executive and judicial), enumerates the rights of individuals (the Bill of Rights) and lists the changes that have been made to the document over the more than 200 years of its existence.