Thomas Paine Day – June 8th – 6pm

MONDAY JUNE 8, 6pm – Thomas Paine Event
DREXEL UNIVERSITY, Mitchell Auditorium
BOSSONE BUILDING – Market Street Between 31st & 32nd

Moonstone Inc. & Drexel University Present

We Have It In Our Power To Begin The World Over Again

A Panel Discussion on the life and influence of Thomas Paine
with ERIC FONER, JACK FRUCHTMAN, Jr. and HARVEY J. KAYE

“The story of Thomas Paine – then and now, for the man and his ideas are very much alive today – stirs the heart, moves the mind, and routs the demon of despair.”
Bill Moyers

ERIC FONER is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America has been recognized as a classic study of the career of the foremost political pamphleteer of the Age of Revolution, and a model of how to integrate the political, intellectual, and social history of the struggle for American independence.

JACK FRUCHTMAN, JR. is Professor of Political Science at Towson University and author of Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, which is both a biography of the controversial Founding Father and an analysis of his works. His other books include Atlantic Cousins: Benjamin Franklin and His Visionary Friends.

HARVEY J. KAYE is Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. His books include Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History? and Other Questions, The British Marxist Historians, Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution, and Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.

Moderated by Michael Coard, Esquire, an adjunct professor in the African Studies Department and the Urban Studies Department at Temple University, a volunteer instructor of Criminal Justice in the university’s Pan African Studies Program, a recipient of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s prestigious Thurgood Marshall Award, a founding member of the ACLU, and a founding member of Judging The Judges, as well as a member of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Philadelphia Bar Association, and the NAACP.

Councilmember Blackwell will present City Council Resolution 090448, Recognizing June 8, 2009 as Thomas Paine Day in Philadelphia in Appreciation of the Tremendous Influence of Paine’s Life and Words upon the City of Philadelphia and the Nation on the Occasion of the 200th Anniversary of His Death.

Mast Community Charter School students Torri A. Yeargins and Rebecca Nathan will read their essay which won the Thomas Paine Essay Contest.

Steve Gulick will perform several of Paine’s writings.

A reception will follow.

Paine championed representative democracy, argued that government should act for the public good and influenced American rebels and reformers from William Lloyd Garrison and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs. He was quoted by Ronald Reagan in 1980: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” and by Barack Obama in 2009: “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at the common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it.”

For more information please go to our website: forgottenfoundingfather.net

This project is made possible by a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities council. Additional support for Moonstone comes from the Barra Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Samuel S. Fels Fund, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and the William Penn Foundation.