today is the anniversary of the day the future United States declared its independence

I have two rituals for this day. Watch 1776, and read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in original and amended form. In light of recent events, I think today I am adding a third ritual.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that everyone is equal, and that everyone has certain rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government founded on such principles and organized in such a form as shall seem most likely to effect their liberty, safety, and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light or transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Now, Thomas Jefferson (the author in large part of the words above; I have in a few places altered them to my satisfaction) was not a good man. Two words: Sally Hemings. But on the subject of achieving freedom from dominion, he knew what he was talking about. I won't borrow his words any further, because they are specific to the situation of 1770s white men in what would become the original thirteen United States, but consider this:

The wealthiest one percent of the United States population possess forty percent of the country's wealth. The least wealthy eighty percent of the United States population possess seven percent of the country's wealth.

The median wealth of white households is twenty times that of black households and eighteen times that of Latina households.

Two words: Glass ceiling.

Two words: Hobby Lobby.

( tw: forced sterilization, rape, murder )

It is not possible for an off-binary trans person to get ID that correctly identifies or that does not identify their gender. It is in many places not possible for an on-binary trans person to get ID that correctly identifies their gender.

It is still legal to pay disabled employees less than minimum wage.

Minimum wage is still not a living wage.

There is still no mechanism in place for descendants of slaveowners and colonizers to recompense descendants of enslaved peoples and colonized peoples for the injuries done and continuing to be done to these peoples.

I could go on. And on. And on. Instead I will close with words from the Combahee River Collective:

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation.

[...]

If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.

And Martina McBride:

Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day

It's time for a new Declaration of Independence.