These people in Chicago are related to the first immigrants in this country and hundreds of years later, we all celebrate their pact to work together and form a new community. - - Donna Poisl
Mayflower Compact gets its due from those who had ancestors at Plymouth Rock
By Ron Grossman Tribune reporter
Cutting the turkey and spooning out the cranberry sauce, most people -- if remembering the Pilgrims at all -- will credit them with setting the Thanksgiving Day menu. But Don Sherman will thank them for a more profound legacy, what he calls "their fierce, you could say fanatical, devotion to freedom."
Sherman is among a number of Chicagoans who have discovered they are Pilgrim descendants and who gather on the weekend before Thanksgiving for a luncheon (yes, turkey). Someone reads the Mayflower Compact, a kind of mini-constitution the Pilgrims wrote just before landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Then the list of its signers is recited:
William Bradford, Myles Standish, John Alden ...
As each Pilgrim's name is called out, his descendants rise.
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This country was built by immigrants, it will continue to attract and need immigrants. Some people think there are enough people here now -- people have been saying this since the 1700s and it still is not true. They are needed to make up for our aging population and low birthrate. Immigrants often are entrepreneurs, creating jobs. We must help them become Americans and not just people who live here and think of themselves as visitors. When immigrants succeed here, the whole country benefits.
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