Adam Fregolle - First Amendment Paper Protecting Religious Freedom Language Arts Mrs.

. Reed March 26, 2013 Page 1

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
When the key founding fathers of the United States: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington met at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention was to create a new government rather than try to fix the inadequate existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention, and the result of the Convention was the development of the United States Constitution, which became the Supreme law of the United States. (taken from Wikipedia) Among its important role in outlining how the U.S. will be governed, the first ten amendments of the Constitution, called the Bill of Rights, establishes the freedoms of our constitutional republic, the first of which is the Freedom of Speech and Religion. The First Amendment says that Congress is prohibited from the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. (Wikipedia) In 2008, my family and I experienced the importance of the First Amendment first hand. In March of 1945, when my Grandfather, John Satawa, was just a little younger than me, only 9 years old, St. Annes Parish was established in the old Village of Warren. At that time, a set of Christmas Statues for a Nativity Scene was donated to the Church, but they were too big to use inside, so the idea was formed to set the manger in the center of the Village at the intersection of Mound and Chicago Roads. The original manger that was built to house the statues to be erected at Christmastime, was handmade by a man named Frank Krause and my Great-Grandfather, Joseph Satawa, in my GreatGrandfathers backyard. That Christmas, my Grandfather, members of his family, friends, and the community of Warren citizens erected the Nativity Scene for the first time. This tradition continued every Christmas for my family until 2008, when at the height of the Christmas season, my Grandfather, John Satawa, of Warren, MI, received a letter from the Macomb County Road Commission requiring him to remove the Creche after receiving a complaint from an unknown person represented by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, WI. He was given until the end of that year to remove it. In 2009, my Grandfather hired the Thomas More Law Center, a legal firm dedicated to protecting and defending the constitutional rights -- including the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment -- of the Citizens of the United States, to represent him in a federal lawsuit that he filed against the Macomb County Road Commission and two individuals. In his lawsuit, he claimed that they had violated his First Amendment right to freely express his religion as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In 2010, a Federal District Court Judge ruled in favor of the County citing a safety issue with the placement of the Creche in the median despite the safety experts on both sides finding no such safety problem. Feeling that his right to freely express his religion had been denied him, not once but twice, my Grandfather, and his Attorney, Mr. Robert Muise, filed an Appeal with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, OH. It would be two more years before they ruled.

Adam Fregolle - First Amendment Paper Protecting Religious Freedom Language Arts Mrs. Reed March 26, 2013 Page 2

My Great Uncle Stan died a few years ago, and my Grandfather had been helping my Great Aunt Sandy handle the sale of her home and property in Dryden, MI. It was on one of the hot August days that Papa was out there helping her that he received the phone call that would not only change our lives but establish for history a legal victory that set precedent for future cases. He almost fell off of her porch when he heard the news that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned the lower courts decision and found that Papas rights had been violated agreeing that the Creche, as discussed is a private religious expression fully protected under the Free Speech Clause. WE HAD WON!!! On Saturday, December 15, 2012, in front of a crowd of supporters and news reporters from television stations to newspapers, the Creche after a 4-year absence was once again erected at the median of Mound and Chicago Roads. The celebration of this victory marked the beginning of a renewed family tradition that I and my cousins will carry on not only in memory of my GreatGrandparents, Joseph and Rose Satawa, but of my Papa, my Aunts Aggie and Betty, and the generation of my Mother who, along with my sister and me, walked onto the floor of the Creche and placed the statues of the holy family Aunt Aggie, the eldest, laying down the Baby Jesus onto their marked spaces in the manger while carolers sang Christmas Carols and held signs that read, Keep Christ in Christmas. Great Grandma and Grandpa Joe and Rose were Polish Americans whose families had come to this Country for the opportunities it offered them and for the freedoms it gave them freedoms that did not exist in communist Poland. I am grateful to them and their families who brought them here so that I, a fourth generation Polish American, may enjoy the rights the Constitution gives me the right to Religious Freedom being, for my family and me, the most important one of all.

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