Still Ours to Save

An American Patriot’s Reflection on Independence Day

I love my country. I always have. I hope I always will.

Not blindly. Not easily. But wholly, totally, and utterly - Like one might love a wayward parent, or a troubled child, or the soil that raised you even when it cuts your feet.

I was born into the heat and dust of a border town in southern Arizona, formed in the unique crucible of so many overlapping stories and histories: Indigenous, immigrant, Mexican, American. My ancestors were strivers and survivors, blue collar workers and small-time merchants, artists and artisans, defenders of traditions, and seekers of opportunity. I was raised to respect this country not as a fairy tale, but as a struggle - An aspiration, a promise scribbled in a combination of ink and blood, one not yet fully kept.

When the twin towers fell on September 11, 2001, I was just coming of age. That day did not make me patriotic, it reminded me why I already was. I had always known that service was noble. That giving back was a duty. That citizenship was more than paperwork, that it was participation. And so, for more than two decades since then, I gave back as best I could: As a public servant, a civic advocate, a neighbor, a helper. I still do to this day and hope to for many more.

But I ask myself more and more lately: What has my country given me?

How does one sustain love for a nation that seems to have forgotten how to love its own people?

How do we celebrate a republic that now threatens the very concept of representation?

How do we wave the flag of freedom when that freedom is being slowly, deliberately taken away, especially from the most vulnerable?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the ache of modern patriotism. They are what it means to celebrate Independence Day in the shadow of injustice, in the era of the unraveling superpower, under a government hijacked by cruelty, callousness, and contempt for working people.

Photo by Dennis Drenner

The Cost of Betrayal

I watch in disbelief, like so many do, as billionaires buy elections and politicians sell their souls for power. I see the widening cracks in our democratic experiment: Immigrant children alone in court defending themselves, voting rights gutted, press freedoms eroded, protests criminalized; the rights of women, queer people, people of color, all under siege.

I see a government so bloated by war, handouts for billionaires, and corporate corruption that it cannot provide healthcare for all, or housing for the poor, or clean air and water for every child and family on its native soil.

I see the rich grow richer. The working class squeezed dry. And I ask again: What does Independence mean in a country where fewer and fewer of us are truly free?

Yet I am still here. Still writing. Still serving. Still talking. Still hoping. Still standing. Not because of who leads us now, but because of who walks beside me in this ongoing struggle, and those who came before all of us.

The America I Still Believe In

I believe in the America of laborers and learners. Of organizers and teachers. Of immigrants and dreamers. Of veterans and volunteers. Of journalists and poets and protestors and preachers and parents like mine doing their damndest to raise good kids in hard times, under the direst of circumstances.

I believe in the America of John Lewis and Dolores Huerta, of Bayard Rustin and Frances Perkins, of the Lakota Water Protectors and the students who still march for their lives.

I believe in the America that sings and speaks and shouts in many tongues, worships in many ways, and still reaches out at a moment’s notice across those artificial lines to help a neighbor in need even when they’ve got little left to give.

That is the America I’ve always worked for and believed in. That is the America worth saving.

What Independence Demands of Us Now

This year, as fireworks crackle above communities drowning in poverty, fear, persecution, and disinformation, let us remember this: Independence Day is not just a glorified birthday party. It is a recommitment.

The white men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not saints. Many were enslavers, patriarchs, and colonizers. But they were also visionaries in one crucial regard: They built a blueprint for a better future, based on an ever-changing experiment that was meant to be continuously altered according to the times. We, the citizens who have inherited this project since, have always been the builders. Generation by generation, we’ve laid bricks of justice and equity on a foundation they deliberately and by design, never finished.

We cannot stop now. Not when the forces of tyranny wear the same red, white, and blue my father proudly displayed every national holiday without question. Not when our enemies claim the flag as theirs and theirs alone. Not when children are still in cages, books are being banned, journalists are being harassed, and citizenship and the right to vote is being systematically whittled to dust.

You see, Independence is not a relic. It is a task. It is the unfinished work of freedom.

And this is our moment to pick up the tools of democracy - Not just the ballot, but the bullhorn, the boycott, the blog, the small business, the school board, the picket line, the meeting house, the dinner table.

A New Birth of Freedom Is Still Possible

They want us to believe it's too late. That America has fallen into their hands and theirs alone. That there's nothing left to fight for.

But I don't buy it.

Not while we still have breath and backbone.

Not while we still have solidarity.

Not while we remember that democracy is not the possession of a single party, or a single president, or a single court - It is ours. All of ours. And it always has been.

This Independence Day, Choose Resistance and Rebirth

So light your fireworks. Fly your flags. But also do more than that - Fly your banner of protest. Speak your truth. Feed, clothe, and house your neighbor. Help register voters. Challenge the bigot and the phobic. Call your representatives. Write the essay. Join the movement.

Because if America is to survive, let alone thrive, it will not be because of what we celebrate, it will be because of what we do.

We, the People.

Still sovereign. Still rising. Still the only hope of this grand, imperfect, unfinished union.

Let us be patriots in the truest sense.

Let us declare independence from despair, corruption, and autocracy - And let’s get to work.

Happy Fourth of July.