"Charlottesville's First Amendment Monument made an auspicious debut Thursday, with 400 or so people attending its dedication at the east end of the Downtown Mall.

Local celebrities stood on the monument's slate podium and extolled the importance of free speech.

"I think that it is such a bedrock principle of our lives that it is easy to take it for granted," Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley said, adding that the monument, which includes a slate "community chalkboard," will serve as an "everyday reminder" of that right.

The monument has been 10 years in the making and is a project of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, a nonprofit dedicated to free speech.

The chalkboard concept came out of a design contest held by the center and is the brainchild of architects Robert Winstead and Pete O'Shea.

"It was great to see the public just, on every inch of the wall, write on the monument," said the center's associate director, Josh Wheeler, who has been a driving force behind the monument. "That was the best part of the day for me."

The monument will be one component of Presidents Plaza, which is taking shape in front of City Hall. Other elements of the redevelopment include the Charlottesville Pavilion amphitheater and the Transit Center, a central depot for city buses.

Keynote speaker Dahlia Lithwick, legal correspondent for the online magazine Slate and host of public television's "For the Record," emphasized the importance of listening as well as speaking.

"Without listening, there is no free speech," she said.

The "marketplace of ideas" envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers has morphed into a "supercenter" so full of opinions that a person can spend an entire day listening to AM radio, reading partisan blogs and watching cable television and not encounter a contrary viewpoint, Lithwick said.

"We are in mortal peril of becoming the best-read ignorant people in the history of the United States of America," she said.

Novelist John Grisham recounted the plight of Oriana Fallaci, a journalist living in exile in New York because she is charged with a speech crime in her native Italy for writing "The Force of Reason," which criticizes Islam. It is a crime to vilify a religion in Italy.

"I cannot imagine an American writer thinking about being arrested for criticizing a religion," Grisham said.

After the ceremony, the speakers and the rest of the crowd got their first crack at the chalkboard, which has garnered national and international attention.

It is the first interactive First Amendment monument of its kind in the world, Wheeler said.

When the City Council approved it in 2001, a Boston Globe editorial called the chalkboard "gutsy, scary" and "fascinating," noted Bruce W. Sanford, a media lawyer and chairman of the center's Board of Trustees.

A half-hour after the dedication, no obscenities had been scrawled on the chalkboard, as many skeptics have predicted will happen.

Perhaps reflecting the crowd's enthusiasm, most inscriptions emphasized the importance of the First Amendment:

"Free speech breathes fire. Censorship singes the heart of freedom."

"Thanks for the right of freedom of speech, Founding Fathers!"

"Awesome, I'm free."

Other statements tackled issues, both national and local.

"Whack Bush."

"UVA - Living wage NOW!!"

"County growth: A few profit; We all pay."

There were some classics, too:

"QT wuz here."

"Go Steelers!"

As for what will be written in the future, only time will tell. "We have absolutely no idea what thoughts and ideas will emerge here," Sanford said. (John Yellig, The Daily Progress, April 21, 2006)

Contact John Yellig at (434) 978-7245 or eyellig@dailyprogress.com.