The Citizens Council on Immigration held its fourth and final meeting yesterday, as a public forum. It was the kick-off for Democracy Week, and as Nielsen opened a second folding table in the auditorium of the downtown library he looked at the meager turnout and noted, deadpan: "We just want to make sure we have as many people up here as we do out there before we start."

"You want to make each day count, but also you realize that one day you'll be dead," Nielsen told the Citizens Council on Immigration at one point in the monthlong process. "So I want to make a difference but not take myself too seriously."

Yeah, he knows that this year's Democracy Week wasn't publicized or funded and that his hopes for a city full of people reading the Preamble to the Constitution are a bit idealistic. "My big idea," he calls it with a hint of self-deprecation. But he hopes Democracy Week is at least a start, maybe even the beginning of a tradition.

On the net: www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters.html

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com