Our God-given Constitutional rights
KrisAnne Hall speaks at Coliseum
KrisAnne Hall talking with people after her presentation.
-SVT Photos by Tami Stevenson
Nearly 100 people attended the presentation by KrisAnne Hall at the Coliseum in Live Oak last Saturday. -SVT Photo
By Tami Stevenson
Constitutional Attorney KrisAnne Hall spoke at the Coliseum in Live Oak last Saturday, January 18, 2025, to a crowd of nearly 100 people.
Hall was invited to speak by the American Patriots of Live Oak. A group founded in 2020 by Donna Long, who is a retiree from the Suwannee County school system.
Long is stepping down as president of the American Patriots and passing that baton to Virginia Smith, along with a new board for the non-profit organization. The group presented Long with an award for her years of dedication and service.
American Patriots of Live Oak’s outgoing president Donna Long, left, receiving an award from incoming president Virginia Smith. -SVT Photo
Long said she felt honored that they were able to have Hall speak at her last meeting as president in light of her ‘beginnings’ in Live Oak.
Hall was a prosecutor in Florida’s Third Circuit for nearly ten years. She was fired for teaching the Constitution to the local people in Suwannee County.
Her job termination lit a fire under her and now, along with husband JC Hall, they have been traveling the country teaching the Constitution for over a decade.
Before COVID they averaged 260 meetings in 22 states every year for seven years.
“And so it is special for me today to be here where I started,” Hall added.
“It was only because people of this community stepped up and really stood behind me, that I had the courage to step out in faith and trust God for our future,” Hall said. “I have to say that I don’t think I would be who I am today if it weren’t for the people in Live Oak.”
Hall said she wants to encourage and inspire those at the meeting to understand that like Donna Long and people like her, it’s not just a matter of meeting once a week or once a month or reading your Constitution and being impassioned. It’s about persistence. It’s about believing in something so wholly and completely, that to stop doing it, you would have to stop being you.
She added, with much applause from the audience, “I know that although Donna is not going to be the leader of this group anymore, there’s no way in high heaven she’s done.”
It is only appropriate to mention some of Hall’s background before she became a prosecuting attorney.
She received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Blackburn College and her Juris Doctor from the University of Florida, College of Law. She served in the US Army as a military intelligence cryptologic linguist. She also worked with a prominent national First Amendment law firm where she traveled the country defending Americans whose Rights were violated by unlawful arrests and prosecutions.
Her husband, JC Hall, is a Christian evangelist and missionary to Haiti. He is also a former Russian instructor for the US Navy. Today, they live in Florida with their adopted son Colton.
KrisAnne Hall is also the author of six books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, a film maker, the host of the KrisAnne Hall show and founder of Liberty First Society.
Today (since 2019) , the Halls serve as professors at River University, in Tampa, at the School of Government and do a lot of consulting with people in government across the country.
They have developed a homeschool curriculum called Liberty Guardians for middle school and high school students that emphasizes a return to foundational principles as America’s founders intended.
During her presentation, Hall stated, “We’ve seen a few victories. We’ve seen some things that give us hope and give us courage, but those same things have a tendency to see the apathy. Those same things have a tendency to make us just want to sort of sit back and take a deep breath and say we could ride the wave for awhile.”
“I don’t say this out of emptiness because I watched this happen eight years ago. The last time Donald Trump was our president, the conservatives and republicans took such a deep sigh of relief that the patriots really stopped working. It was so much of a palpable effect that those of us that do what I do, grass roots leaders, speakers, educators, we literally called it the Trump slump.”
“Because then all of a sudden everybody thought that Donald Trump is going to fix everything. We don’t have to do anything anymore. I’ve seen it happen in Florida. Ron DeSantis is governor, we don’t have to do anything else.”
She said because she is a teacher at heart, she gave everyone a quiz, although not to be answered out loud, because statistically only two percent of Americans know the answers and she didn’t want to embarrass anyone.
Q1: “What five liberties are in the First Amendment?”
A: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Q2: “Who is the first man to give his life for our independence from Great Britain? And it’s not Nathan Hale,” she stated.
A: It was a free, black sailor named Crispus Attucks. He was the first person to die in the American Revolution for trying to stick up for his men. He became a symbol of resistance against British rule. He died in Boston on March 5, 1770, in what became known as the Boston Massacre. He died along with three other men at the hands of the 29th Regiment.
Q3: Who is the first American woman playwright, political advisor and historian?
A: They are all the same woman! Mercy Otis Warren. She wrote Shakespearean style plays in the form of satire to poke fun at the British Government and encourage the liberty movement.
She said, “Name the first founding father that pops in your mind, 95% of us would name someone that wrote to her for advice. The letters are available online,”
She wrote a three volume set called The History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, which Hall said is the single most accurate original source of history available at that period of time.
Hall further went on to say that in a day and age in America where we are supposed to be so pro woman, lifting up women, women of greatness. Why is it that we don’t know about this woman? Why wouldn’t we be championing a woman in American history that holds the title for so many firsts?
Hall said, “I’ll tell you why we’re not. Because you might ask how many more were there like her.”
“The same reason we don’t champion Crispus Attucks. Because we might ask how many more were there like him?”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to go to the universities and learn that the women were weak, irrelevant, victims of their overbearing, chauvinistic, misogynistic men of society, who wrote the constitution. Because you have to degrade the men to degrade the document!”
Hall teaches a course on the Declaration of Independence and says that we need to learn how to properly vet our candidates prior to the vote.
She said you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand the Constitution. Hall even went so far as to say that going to law school is actually detrimental to understanding the Constitution.
“Because they don’t teach the Constitution in law schools anymore. They haven’t since 1830. They teach Constitutional Law, which is their interpretation of what they believe the founding fathers meant.” Which can result in whatever they want to interpret it to be, basically.
She went on to add that according to the Declaration of Independence, the purpose of government has one purpose, to secure the rights that have been given to us by God.
“It’s not the purpose of our government to regulate our rights. It’s not the purpose of government to tell us what we can eat, drink, wear, smoke, ingest in our bodies. It’s not the purpose of government to tell us to put things into our bodies. That is not the purpose of government. The singular purpose of government is to secure our rights and then leave us to heck alone, so we can do it for ourselves.”
Huge applause from the crowd.
“When you’re charting this course for 2025, let us draw some wisdom and some knowledge from the men and women who fought before us. Because these are the inspirations we should be teaching our children.”
Samuel Adams said, “No people will tamely surrender their liberties or be easily subdued when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when the people become universally ignorant, debauched in their manners, they will sink underneath their own weight, without the aid of foreign invaders.”
KrisAnne Hall, left, with Donna Long. -SVT Photo
The 2025 American Patriots of Live Oak incoming board of directors. -SVT Photo
Barbara Gill, left, manning the Suwannee Republican booth and talking with attendees before KrisAnne Hall spoke at the Coliseum last Saturday. -SVT Photo
Jim and Andrea Cannington, of Live Oak, talk with JC Hall after the event. -SVT Photo