Opening words by Roland
Rogers, President NYC350 at the Open Air Interfaith Service in
Bowling Green on Manhattan, May 4, 2003 As President of the Committee for New York City's 350th Anniversary
celebration I'd like to thank everyone for coming out on this
bright sunny afternoon. What you are about to hear are messages
of hope and of commonalty that we share as New Yorkers. As we
plant the spiritual seed of opportunity for a better future, let
us not forget those who died to make the present possible.
Today is a wonderful opportunity for New York to speak out in
support of tolerance and individual freedom as an answer to those
whose actions or beliefs favor the opposite - intolerance, tyranny,
injustice, division and ignorance. You know that in an intolerant
society, the notion of freedom is meaningless.
This city was founded and built by people from various parts
of the world under the umbrella of toleration as guaranteed by
the laws of the Dutch Republic in the year 1579. It was the very
first settlers to Manhattan who planted that legal-political condition
onto our shores in the year1624 when they were explicitly instructed
to "not persecute someone by reason of his religion and to
leave everybody the freedom of his conscience".
We've made these connections this year - New York City's 350th
anniversary year as an incorporated municipality - by having Dutch,
French, English, African, Eastern Europeans and Native Americans
join together in celebration of a unique experience.
By creating a legal deed in 1626 between natives and settlers,
Director Pieter Minuit took possession of Manhattan Island and
confirmed the settlement that had taken place around Fort Amsterdam
in 1625. His deed formed the basis for the cultural struggle for
toleration by a religiously, ethnically and racially diverse population.
The explicit 1645 patent of religious freedom for Flushing (in
the Borough of Queens) and the subsequent Flushing Remonstrance
concluded the settlers' efforts for toleration as an express legal
right in New Netherland. We can therefore state that the first
struggle for American toleration was fought on Manhattan Island.
It resulted in the most religiously diverse group outside the
Dutch Republic; unique at a time when anywhere else it was unpopular,
and even unlawful, to respect the rights and opinions of others
in matters of religion.
As we stand here together today, 350 years
after the transformation of the town of New Amsterdam into a city
with municipal rights and its own legislature - on the very sacred
ground which signals the right of people to govern themselves,
a right born of struggle that all men are truly created equal
under God - we note that the combination of the initial settlers'
legal right to seek redress of grievance-and-to-toleration, assured
the continuation of these principles to become the framework for
eventual American greatness. It was New Netherland's last Director,
Pieter Stuyvesant, who handed the territory to the English on
the condition that its citizens "shall enjoy the liberty
of their consciences".
Toleration as a precondition to individual
liberty, thus planted first on Manhattan Island in 1625, is identical
with the first article of the Bill-of-Rights and now a fundamental
part of the American heritage: that government "shall not
abridge the right of people to petition the government for a redress
of grievances" and "shall make no law respecting the
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
So let us all - gathered here today, where
Pieter Minuit stood on May 4, 1626, to secure the settlers' use
of Manhattan in perpetuity, an action subsequently to be replicated
in millions of real estate transactions to become the world's
most valuable land and most diverse City – proclaim that
the community of " tolerance, diversity and inclusion"
which our City represented more than any other from those earliest
days, is an indispensable realization for all free men in a pluralistic
society. That beginning with this 350th anniversary year of our
City's self-government, "harmony-in-difference" will
continue to be our most cherished goal until
all Americans embrace it as their own, now and forever.
Again, thank you all for joining us and
now allow me the honor to introduce our distinguished guest speakers
from a variety of religious communities who will give true meaning
to this day and are gathering here with their words..........
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1525--
Estaban Gomez explore bay, working for Charles V of Spain