These Woke Amendments · ask your reps

These are constitutional amendments worth fighting for, written in plain language. Read one in twenty seconds, copy it, and send it to the people who are supposed to represent you.

1. Read it plainly. 2. Demand your candidate back it.
1

Good Labor

In plain words

People from Florida don't need the government's permission to get a job in Denver. Someone from abroad shouldn't either. If you're already here and willing to do honest work, no permission slip should stand between you and feeding your family.

The amendment

Section 1. The right of every individual present within the United States to engage in any occupation that would be lawful if engaged in by a citizen, and to earn a living thereby, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of immigration or citizenship status.

Section 2. Nothing in this article shall (a) restrict the power of the United States or any State to require citizenship, nationality, or security eligibility for public office, government employment, military service, access to classified information, or work directly affecting national defense or foreign affairs; or (b) confer any right to enter, remain in, or avoid removal from the United States, or limit the power to regulate the admission, presence, or removal of noncitizens.

Section 3. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

› "But what about…?" Read the objections.
Someone asks

Doesn't this just mean anyone can show up and take a job?

The answer

People from Florida don't need anyone's permission to get a job in Denver. Why should it be different for someone from Venezuela? Who gets let into the country is a separate question. This is about the people already here: if you're willing to do honest work, you shouldn't need a permission slip to feed your family.

Someone asks

Won't this take jobs away from citizens?

The answer

Jobs aren't a fixed pile that runs out. More people working means more building, more hiring, more business, and luckily that gets easier with more workers, not harder. What actually drags everyone's wages down is keeping people in the shadows, where no rules protect anybody.

Someone asks

Why should someone who isn't a citizen have the same right to work?

The answer

People aren't given rights by a piece of paper. They're born with them, no matter where they're from. The people already here working, raising kids, and part of our community ARE our neighbors, whatever their paperwork says. Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them disappear. It just keeps them in the shadows.

Someone asks

So a foreign national gets a constitutional right to a job at a nuclear plant or a defense lab?

The answer

No. The citizenship rules for security clearances, classified work, the military, and government jobs all stay right where they are. That's written into the amendment itself. And nobody can demand a job anyway. This is a right not to be shut out of honest work over your paperwork, not a right to be handed a position. It's about the person who wants to lay tile and feed their kids, not the launch codes. Someone from Florida can't walk into Los Alamos and demand a clearance either.

Someone asks

So once someone gets a job, you can never deport them?

The answer

No. This is permission to work, not permission to stay, and the amendment says so directly: it doesn't touch who gets to enter, remain, or be removed. Whether someone can stay still runs through immigration court and due process, exactly like today. All it says is that while you're here, feeding your family with honest work isn't itself a crime. Working and staying are two different doors.

Draft objections. In the finished site each amendment links out to its own deeper conversation. This is the seed of that.

5

More Homes

In plain words

If you own a piece of land, you should be allowed to build homes on it. Right now a handful of people who already own homes use zoning laws to block new housing, not for safety, but to keep their own property values high and their neighborhoods exclusive. That's a big reason a place to live costs what it does. Housing should be legal to build, not something the lucky few get to ban.

The amendment

Section 1. Every person has the right to construct housing upon land they lawfully own, lease, or otherwise hold a possessory interest in. Whether a person lawfully owns or controls land is determined by the law of property and contract, without reference to whether the land-use regulation being challenged permits housing on that land. "Housing" means any structure designed for human residential occupancy, of any density, including multifamily and accessory dwellings.

Section 2. No government may deny, abridge, or condition this right except by a regulation that (a) is of general application, (b) sets objective standards, and (c) is the least housing-restrictive means of serving a specific and substantial public-health or public-safety interest demonstrated by the government on the evidence. Generalized invocations of traffic, water, fire-access, school, or emergency-service capacity do not satisfy this section absent such a demonstration.

Section 3. No law or regulation shall have the purpose, or the predominant effect, of preserving the property values, scarcity, or exclusivity enjoyed by existing residents or owners. Minimum-lot-size, density, height, unit-count, floor-area, or parking requirements that reduce permissible housing below what the codes preserved in Section 4 would allow are presumptively within this section; the government bears the burden of rebuttal. This section governs over any contrary application of Sections 2 or 4.

Section 4. This article does not invalidate building, fire, structural, sanitation, environmental, flood-protection, or historic-preservation codes of general application that establish objective construction standards, nor laws protecting existing tenants, governing demolition of occupied housing, or requiring relocation assistance, provided no such code or law is applied for a purpose or with a predominant effect described in Section 3.

Section 5. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

› "But what about…?" Read the objections.
Someone asks

So a developer can throw up a skyscraper next to my house or bulldoze the neighborhood?

The answer

No. Real safety rules still apply, fire codes, building standards, flood and wildfire limits, all of it. What this stops is banning homes just to protect property values or keep a neighborhood exclusive. The test is simple: is the rule about keeping people safe, or about keeping people out?

Someone asks

Won't this just build luxury condos, not housing regular people can afford?

The answer

More homes at any price level bring prices down for everyone. When a wealthier family moves into a new build, they free up the older place they left, and that ripples all the way down. The reason rent is brutal isn't too much building, it's decades of too little. You can't make housing cheap by making it illegal.

Someone asks

Doesn't this gut local control over our own neighborhoods?

The answer

Your town can still decide plenty, safety, infrastructure, real planning. What it can't do is use those powers as a cover story to ban housing so existing owners' property values keep climbing. A home is supposed to be shelter first. Letting a few people lock everyone else out of the market isn't local control, it's a gate.

Draft objections. In the finished site each amendment links out to its own deeper conversation. This is the seed of that.

More amendments coming. These are two of the slate's seven.

Who and How Do I Ask?

These are constitutional amendments, so your city council can't pass them. Aim where the power actually is, then use everyone else to make them answer for it.

Start here: the people who can actually move it

Then make it a litmus test

How to actually do it

Send it to them. Email it, call it in, or say it out loud at a town hall or candidate forum.
Ask them to commit: co-sponsor it (Congress), pass a resolution for it (city or state), or just say yes, on the record.