When I was 11 or 12 years old, my family started a tradition. On the morning of Independence Day, after breakfast and before we left for any cookout, we would read “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” by Fredrick Douglass.
On the day of this country’s founding, the black people who worked our soil and built our nation were only considered to be 3/5ths of a person – to be frank, even that fraction is generous. Indigenous communities were raped, stolen from, pillaged. Freedom was not the same for all of us. As I’m writing this post from the relative safety of my home, military tanks are lining up in the in our nation’s capital and concentration camps are holding human beings hostage at our border. Freedom is still not the same for all of us.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – that’s the American promise. It’s one we’ve never accomplished, an ever drifting horizon. Still, I believe in the work. I believe that every one of us has the responsibility to do our part and fix what’s broken. I believe in the unfinished project of America – its struggle, its activism.
I will not celebrate Freedom on the Fourth of July because American Freedom For All is a myth at best, an outright lie at worst. Instead, today I honor those who do the thankless labor of pushing our country towards being a better version of itself. Those who have been spat on, arrested, ignored, called despicable. Those who have felt the brunt of American violence and still choose to believe in an America that has yet to believe in them.
James Baldwin once said, “”I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” That’s what inspired this project. Queer and trans people of color know more about the ugliness of America than most. But we’re still here. We’re still fighting for our liberation.
Let us lift up those voices today.
James Baldwin, Writer
Gloria Anzaldúa, Writer
Audre Lorde, Writer
Beth Brant, Writer
Barbara Jordan, Politician and US House of Representatives
Cherríe Moraga, Writer
Barbara Smith, Scholar and Activist
Marsha P. Johnson, Trans Rights Activist
Cecelia Chung, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Transgender Law Center
Ocean Vuong, Poet
Chrystos, Poet
Sylvia Rivera, Trans Rights Activist
