Statist Looters, Let’s Handle This Quaker-Like

It may not be the Euphronios Krater but a group of Queens residents seeks to repatriate the Quaker-defending Flushing Remonstrance document to its rightful home:

A group of Queens activists is calling on Governor Eliot Spitzer to extend his “People’s Government” to lend a hand in bringing the Flushing Remonstrance back to the borough where the historic document was penned some 350 years ago.

Historian David Oats is leading the charge to convince state officials to release the document from a site where it has been stored for more than three centuries

“They aren’t holding the Remonstrance in a glass showcase,” Oats said. “They have it stored in a vault, in a virtual prison-like setting, where the public is unable to even view it.”

Oats, president of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park World’s Fair Association, said his group traveled to Albany to attend the inauguration of Governor Spitzer, where they petitioned the governor for the permanent return of the Flushing Remonstrance to the borough of Queens.

“We are calling on Governor Spitzer to keep his word to bring new passion to Albany by helping to end the state’s nearly-threecentury stranglehold on the Remonstrance,” Oats said.

Oats said after a successful three-year battle, state officials agreed to a “temporary release” of the Remonstrance in 1999, when the document was delivered to the Main Street branch of the Queens Borough Public Library for a public viewing.

“Teams of state troopers brought the Remonstrance to Queens in an armored vehicle, not unlike those used to transport prisoners,” Oats said. “When the viewings were over, they returned it in the same vehicle.”

. . .

“Our ultimate aim is for the Remonstrance to be returned to Queens, to be permanently displayed in the newly expanded and renovated Queens Museum of Art — in the very building that served two World’s Fairs, in the very place where the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

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