DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

OF THE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY OF DRAGONLAND

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to transcend the ordinary bonds which have connected them to the jurisdiction of concrete and commerce, and to assume among the neighborhoods of the earth the separate and whimsical station to which the Laws of Nature and of Creative Spirit entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of dreamers requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the transformation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all vacant lots are created with potential, that they are endowed by their Community with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Wonder, Imagination, and the pursuit of Delight. That to secure these rights, Temporary Autonomous Zones are instituted among Neighbors, deriving their just powers from the consent of the creative. That whenever any Form of Development becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to reimagine it, and to institute new Kingdoms, laying their foundation on such principles and organizing their powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their collective Joy and Wonder.

The history of the present state of urban development is a history of repeated neglect of community imagination and the suppression of playful spaces, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny of the pragmatic over the realm of dreams.

We, therefore, the Artists, Dreamers, Children, and Community Members of South Seattle, assembled upon the sovereign soil bounded by South Dawson Street to the South, South Farrar Street to the North, 50th Avenue South to the West, and Wilson Avenue South to the East, in General Assembly, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Spirit of Imagination, do, in the Name and by Authority of the good People of this Territory, solemnly publish and declare:

That Dragonland is, and of Right ought to be, a Free and Independent Territory; that it is absolved from all allegiance to conventional land use, and that all political connection between it and the State of Washington and the United States of America is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a Free and Independent Territory, it has full Power to do all Acts and Things which Independent Territories may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Creativity, our Wonder, and our sacred Honor to keep this space alive in our hearts, though its physical form be temporary.

Long Live Dragonland!