Several Queens students and one from Staten Island sent entries to The Queens Courier in the New York Press Association (NYPA) Foundation’s First Amendment essay contest and Ruxanda Cosma, of Maspeth, a junior at The Bronx High School of Science, has been chosen as our area’s local winner.
The NYPA Foundation is offering the top prize of a $10,000 college scholarship in the statewide essay competition. The second place prize is $250 and the third place prize is $100.
Students were asked to interpret the First Amendment and discuss the role it plays in American life, in a maximum of 500 words, not counting the actual wording of the First Amendment which had to begin each entry.
Cosma’s winning local entry has been forwarded to the NYPA to compete against other local essay winners from around the state. We wish her luck and present her essay below.
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
As I sit on the No. 6 train, I watch across from me, a woman with her son. She is wearing a hijab, which clearly identifies her religion. Next to her, is a young man wearing a yamaka and an older African-American woman in a traditional robe. There are only about seven people in the car, and yet, each one represents a different religion.
That’s when I realized that our Founding Fathers had so much in mind for the future of the United States, and they have managed to make this country what it is today, through the creation of the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment.
The First Amendment plays an important role in limiting the powers of the government, and in giving people the rights they deserve. It guarantees freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly.
Today, 220 years after the ratification of the Constitution, I am sitting on a train with people from all over the world and of different religions, who are communicating freely with no restrictions put upon them.
The First Amendment rights guaranteed by the Constitution leave room for plenty of interpretation. In order to interpret the Constitution the way the Founding Fathers meant it to be, we have to practically go back in time to the moment the Constitution was adopted. Otherwise, no right interpretation of the First Amendment can exist, just a different way of perceiving it. As I sat on the train, I kept wondering about the first amendment and its guarantees.
This country was founded to escape religious persecution and to seek freedom. The First Amendment is intended to keep Congress from passing laws discriminatory to any religious groups in particular.
It is meant to give people the right to talk freely, and criticize the government, and the right to be informed by the press. The press is a large part of people’s power to question and change their government.
Newspapers enforce the idea of the truth as the only means of freedom and consider that there is nothing more powerful. The United States’ freedom of the press has contributed to the growth of the democracy throughout the former Soviet Union, and has led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
However, such freedoms are limited when it comes to obscenity, campaigning, making noise, and supporting violence, which can harm people. When harm can be created, censorship is put into play, which can be best defined as “government’s limits on speech and the press.”
As the woman and her son were ready to get off the train, she dropped her bag and all her papers fell out. It was amazing to see how everyone was so hospitable, helping to pick up her belongings.
In New York City, a city that’s known for its stinginess, a Jewish man, a Greek Orthodox girl, and a Catholic woman were helping an Arabic woman. Throughout the world, wars are fought because of speech, religion and the press, except in the United States, a country that strives for more freedom which each passing day.
