Whose Freedom? Whose Land?

Rethinking the Fourth of July

Here’s a straight-talk, no-frills take on what we’re really celebrating on the Fourth of July:

Let’s cut to the chase: The Fourth of July is complicated. On paper, it’s America’s birthday. The day we broke free from British rule and declared all people "created equal." Sounds beautiful, right? But dig just a little deeper, and you hit some brutal truths.

What’s really in those fireworks? For starters, freedom wasn’t for everyone in 1776. Not even close. When the founders said "all men," they meant land-owning white men. Period. Native Americans? Called "merciless Indian savages" in the very Declaration of Independence. Enslaved Black people? Treated as property, not people. Women? Couldn’t vote or own land. Poor white guys? Shut out too. So yeah, we’re celebrating a freedom that was exclusive, built on stolen land and stolen labor.

And that flag? It’s a global Rorschach test. To some, it’s hope: refugees, dissidents, dreamers. To others, it’s terror. Ask villages in Vietnam, Iraq, or Gaza where U.S. bombs fell. Ask Native families whose ancestors were massacred while that same flag flew over forts. Ask a Black person in 1850, Frederick Douglass said it plain: "What is your Fourth of July to the slave? A sham."

Fast forward to today. We’ve made progress. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, marriage equality, but the foundation is still cracked. Mass incarceration locks up Black bodies. Indigenous land is still under threat. Migrants sleep in cages. And overseas? We back wars and call it "foreign policy." We fund genocide in Gaza, sell bombs to Saudi Arabia for Yemen, and call ourselves liberators.

So what are we celebrating? A dream that hasn’t been fully realized and a nation that too often betrays its own ideals. The fireworks? They look an awful lot like explosions over Baghdad. The parades? They march over unceded Native land.

But here’s the twist: The day can mean something more. It can be about honoring the rebels who fought to expand freedom, the Harriet Tubmans, the Sitting Bulls, the Stonewall rioters. The ones who forced America to face its hypocrisy. It can be about demanding better: Reparations. Land back. Ceasefires. Justice.

So if you grill hot dogs this Fourth, fine. But maybe save a moment to ask: *Who paid for this party? And whose blood is still on the receipt?

Because freedom isn’t free, but it damn well shouldn’t be built on genocide. Until America owns that truth, the Fourth is just a birthday cake with poison inside.

As Assata Shakur, a woman who knew America’s contradictions better than most, put it: "Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."

That’s the real conversation. Let’s have it.