By July 4th is a celebration of an act of treason. An act of dissent. The original event, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was only one such act. The colonies had already been at war with their sovereign for some time. They had already convened a Continental Congress once to bring the colonies together and lay down plans for governance and to bring grievances from the colonies to the ear of the king, among other things.
The second congress was convened and from that congress came the Declaration of Independence, essentially a written FU to the king. These Americans were fed up, done with being the king’s dogs. So they rioted.
They started a damn war. They felt cornered, like they had no choice.
Sound familiar?
Sound like anything going on in our country today?
I keep hearing people saying that the Black Lives Matter movement is not going to get the changes they want unless they are “polite” and “protest the right way”…whatever that way is. But that isn’t how the world actually gets changed. We’ve spent two hundred years treating black and brown people far, far worse than old King George treated the colonies.
You think they don’t deserve to rise up and make their own declaration? You think they don’t have reason to destroy the property of the overlords? Is it going to take a war? A revolution?
Think that’s unAmerican? Think that’s treasonous? They aren’t even looking to create their own country, they just want to be treated like people, equal to and considered the same as white folks, by white folks.
That kind of treason is where we come from. An act of treason should not be necessary, a war should not be necessary, for us to recognize the problem inherent in our history and our present so that we can forge a better future.
And those are my thinky thoughts on this July 3rd. “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“
All men are created equal and entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. All men. All.
And on that note, I shall leave you and head out to the living room to start work on Job #2. Have a nice long weekend, Readers. And contemplate the rights which are unalienable.
Natalie J Case 