Today is a good day to declare independence…from fear. I’m declaring mine.
History has always been a thriller for me, full of suspense and high stakes, full of emotion. I’ve never just read the stories; I’ve lived them on the page. And I’ve always wondered, What would I do? Would I do the right thing?
I wanted to believe I would do the right thing – that I’d be a Revolutionary, that I’d be a New England mother who would hang a quilt on the clothesline stitched with a code that signaled my home was a safe haven on the Underground Railroad, or that I’d be someone who would organize passage to rush children out of Hitler’s way.
Now I’m a 61-year-old white woman living in the age an American president who would stand in an American concentration camp and laugh at the thought of immigrants being chased by alligators. An American president who did that this week.
I feel so helpless.
Those immigrants came here to be free, as my ancestors once did and maybe yours too. The crime rate among immigrants is lower than among citizens in general, and yet this craven man would have us all cower in fear of what they are doing to our county, fear of what the protestors are doing to our cities. They are burning this country to the ground, he would have us believe.
He is burning it to the ground. He is.
We must free ourselves of the fear he wants us to feel: What is the purpose of all those new concentration camps and the hired thugs who will police our country to fill them? Is this police state not meant to make us afraid, keep us quiet?
No matter: I declare my independence and my commitment to carry the promise of this country. Whatever our society gets wrong, or our government itself perverts in this moment, the ideas underpinning our nation were engineered that we might ever and always find new ways in which to work together to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I commit to that protection.
Though we struggle, we are not helpless. There are things we can do, must do, are doing.
We are already laboring toward the birth of the future and must struggle on:
We must summon radical, active compassion to help those who will lose food and healthcare.
We must protect elections.
We must show love to those subjected to hate.
We must build bonds of trust.
We must seek out independent news sources that will speak the truth and not speak for those in power. And then we must speak that truth to those who trust us.
We must buy less and make better choices when we do buy; our spending power is one of our superpowers.
We must begin to plan for how humans will live with purpose in a world where tech oligarchs are deploying bots to take our jobs and to abandon us to starvation and horrible deaths – and where our government is aiding and abetting that process by stripping away Medicaid, health insurance, and food programs for children and families.
We must find ways to make our society work for all of us. It’s already happening with governors and mayors who are centering people in the policies that run states and cities: Mundane housing policy and transportation policy can change lives.
We can imagine better for our country. We are imagining better. Even as we live through terrible times.
I am just one individual. But I am filled with light. I am incandescent today not with rage but with conviction: I know I am a Revolutionary, and I have work to do.
Please read this update of the Declaration of Independence by Judge J. Michael Luttig. A call and response between the original document and our moment, his work serves as a bridge between the beginning of our revolution and our call to action now. Twenty-seven truths about freedom – and tyranny -- echo across two-hundred-fifty years. Please read it. Please share it.
The Revolution is ours now.
On this Fourth of July, I declare my independence. What good shall we do together to save the United States of America from tyranny?