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A founding instrument of the Anchorage

The Bergen Charter (2127)

The movement's own founding text — the document that turned a scattering of refusers into the Anchorage, and bound them, in writing, to do no harm to persons. Read it for the conscience the institutions classed as terror, and for the line its own splinters would one day break.

THE BERGEN CHARTER · FOUNDING INSTRUMENT ANCHORAGE PRIMARY SOURCE · PUBLIC · STAVE PRESS

By 2127 the refusers had a name for what they believed and no agreement on what to do about it. The Bergen Charter is the document that settled the second question. It is the Anchorage’s founding instrument — the page that bound a loose tradition of conscience into a movement, and bound that movement, in its own hand, to a single hard rule.

Preamble

We who set our names here hold that the crossing of the Seam is not a triumph but a harm — that the harm is real, that it accumulates, and that it is drawn against a debt our descendants cannot consent to. We have measured what we could measure. We name the harm in our own words — the Drag, the Cost — because the institutions will not name it at all.

We do not ask to be believed on faith. We ask only that the data be opened and the question be heard. Until it is, we refuse.

Articles of the Charter

  1. The refusal. We will not traverse for profit, nor lend our hands to the traffic, nor be quiet while it is called progress.
  2. The harm to no person. No act of this movement shall harm a person. Our argument is with the crossing, never with the crew. A movement that kills to stop a killing has become the thing it opposes. This article is the soul of the Charter and is not amendable.
  3. The open record. We will print what we find and sign what we print. Our presses are public; our names are our own; let the institutions hide — we will not.
  4. The long patience. We may not live to be proven right. We hold the position anyway, for those who come after, who will inherit the bill whether or not they inherit the warning.

The line, and who would break it

The Charter’s second article is the whole of its conscience: harm no person. For a century the movement held it. In the war era that follows, a hard splinter will conclude that non-violence is complicity and break the line the founders drew — and the institutions, who never read the Charter, will blame the whole movement for the few who tore it up.

Founding note, Stave Press: We were right too early to be useful and too quiet to be feared. We chose both on purpose. Let the record show we asked first, and asked in the open, and harmed no one in the asking.

THE BERGEN CHARTER · 2127 · STAVE PRESS · PUBLIC INSTRUMENT · THE ANCHORAGE