| PLEASE NOTE: The Democracy Symposium was convened on February 16, 2002 in Williamsburg, Virginia. This web site was published prior to the Symposium and is maintained for historical purposes. |
Proceedings from the Democracy Symposium are available here and audio CDs and tapes are available here.
To learn about the purpose, format and content of the Symposium, please peruse this web site. To learn more about the National Initiative For Democracy, which was the subject of the Symposium, please click here
You Are Invited...
to join distinguished scholars in an extraordinary discussion to resolve issues
associated with the National Initiative for Democracy, the first constitutional amendment and federal statute ever to be enacted directly by the People of the Unites States of America. The National Initiative will create a “Legislature of the People,” bringing the People into the operation of government as lawmakers in a partnership with their elected representatives.
Join us at the Democracy Symposium (The Edwin & Joyce Koupal Memorial
Conference) on President's Weekend , February 16 - 18, 2002 in historic Williamsburg, Virginia.
The Democracy Symposium is the pivotal event in an evolutionary process leading to the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy, the most important change to our government's structure since the ratification of the Constitution in 1787.
When enacted, the National Initiative will create a "Legislature of the People", which will operate in partnership with our elected legislatures at the federal level and in every state and local government jurisdiction in the country.
The Democracy Symposium brings together four panels of eminent constitutional and political science scholars and electoral experts to examine, discuss and resolve constitutional, political and pragmatic issues associated with the National Initiative.
The Symposium’s ultimate product will be the final draft of the National Initiative, which will be presented to the American voters, for concurrent enactment of a constitutional amendment and a federal statute, in a national election conducted by the nonprofit corporation Philadelphia II, beginning September 17, 2002.
The Democracy Symposium is being sponsored by The Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit corporation. The draft of the National Initiative for Democracy under consideration at the Symposium is the product of the decade-long work of former Senator Mike Gravel (U.S. Senate, 1969-81), his colleagues Donald H. Kemner, Charles Turk
and David Parrish, among others, and interested citizens from across the country. Funding for the
Symposium has been provided in part by The People’s Lobby in memory of its founders, Edwin and Joyce Koupal, whose lives epitomized “ordinary people doing the extraordinary” and who planted the seeds for a National Initiative in the late 1960's through The People's Lobby organization.
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