What Are We Really Celebrating?
On the 249th anniversary of “No kings,” I’m pressing pause on fireworks — and telling the truth about who freedom was built for.
It’s the 4th of July
I have fond memories of celebrating the 4th of July. I love this idea of freedom that our country was founded on. Some of my favorite memories are with family and a glorious fireworks display that created oohs and aahs. But, as I got older, and I learned the more nuanced pieces of our nation’s history, I often wonder, “Who was that freedom really for and who is it for now?” My friends who are women, like me, have just over 100 years of being able to vote. My Black and Brown friends have less than 100 years since they could vote. So, who is this celebration really for?
Working-class people have always been on the back burner of our recent history. From feudalism to now, working-class people are the ones who literally make things work while other people profit off of our ideas and our labor. And, we are pitted against each other to keep us from uniting. Ultra greedy rich people have always found ways to keep the cookies for themselves while we fight for the crumbs1. They divide us by shaming education. They divide us by class. They divide us because our skin color is different or where we were born wasn’t right.
Our stories of freedom
We are told a story of religious freedom, that people came here because they wanted to pray how they wanted to pray without being persecuted for it. What ensued was years of murder and genocide against the Native people who lived on this land. Later, as more people came, and crops needed tending too, to keep the capital at the top, the method of using enslaved people thrived. To get that technique to be morally justified, the elite wove stories about how light-skinned people were good and dark skinned people were bad. They used the bible to support their claims that the enslaved people were less than human.
I think about my young self in various classes in middle and high school, reading about these histories — I didn’t even get a “woke history2” lesson — and I could never understand how people could just accept this. And, we still do today. We pause our critical thinking, somehow agree that one human might be less human than another, and we use that justification to make it okay for our evil deeds.
Who is really free then?
No one! Not the person who suffers from the persecution, and not the person who executes it.
Our most cherished ideals have always been conditional, weaponized, or denied altogether.
Celebration on Pause
So, this Fourth of July, I am pausing any celebration. This is my celebration. This piece asks you to claim your critical thinking and really consider who is free in this so-called land of the great.
I’m pausing my celebration, as my celebration, because when I started writing this, the terrible, no good, brutal bill had passed the Senate. Now, as I finish formulating my words, it has passed the house. We have taken one further step into a nation where governance means catering to the ultra-greedy and wealthy while letting normal, working-class people suffer.
What’s happening
Did you read my piece on framing how motherhood is being weaponized as a tool of fascism? I was so angry about yet another injustice this administration pushed through several weeks ago that I had to go down the rabbit trail of pattern seeking. You can download that here.
While I was in Las Vegas, for work, I learned about our president’s typical play — to buy things cheap and broken to make his fortune. While standing in the hot Vegas afternoon sun, a man shared with us that our current president wrote about this play — buying the thing at rock bottom prices — years ago in his 1987 book, Art of the Deal3. (Look, I haven’t read the book, and I don’t intend to.) This man explained that the best thing to do was to buy something super cheap and decrepit, because property values always rise.
This is what feels like is happening right now. Our country, the USA, is being gutted. We are being worn down. We are being worn down to the cheap, decrepit thing. So, who can swoop in and do what? My dystopian fears are on high alert.
As such, I cannot celebrate in a traditional fashion this 4th of July. We are one year shy of our 250-year celebration. And this year, we will usher in more suffering for the poor and working class. They built a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades in eight days!!!4 We can’t house people, but we can enprison them by bringing in more state violence, more dehumanization, and expanding the carceral system.
I pray to the gods I believe in that this really is the tantrum of the patriarchy in this late stage capitlistic shit show. Meaning, it’s their final shot before we right this ship.
If you are of the camp that things aren’t that bad, I get curious — what makes you think so? I get curious — what would things have to look like, then, to be really bad?
Abortion is banned in 13 states5. I’m not going to qualify the horrors of medical necessity because abortion is healthcare, and we need to hear that on repeat.
Voter suppression continues6, whether by trying to remove people from the voter rolls or make it harder for people to vote, it’s happening in real time.
Public television and radio are being defunded7. Access to news that is relatively unbiased is a crucial piece to living in a world where democracy can thrive. When people lose access (free) to news, they lose access to what’s happening, hearing varied viewpoints, and the ability to be an informed electorate.
But that’s probably what the current administration wants. If no one is questioning the terrible things happening, there is no one to resist when he turns it into the cheap, decrepit thing, ripe for takeover.
When people found out about the big, terrible bill, they were opposed.
And yet it passed.
Despite calls to Congress, despite, despite, despite.
Who’s at risk and why this is happening
I know many people who rely on Medicare and programs in Medicaid. I have used Medicaid — that’s how I birthed my son. We needed SNAP for the first 2 years of our son’s life. I rely on NPR for free access to news reporting. It’s never behind a paywall. I changed my name when I got married to unify our family.
Everything about my life is at risk because the people in charge only care about making more money. They do not care about normal, work-class people. They do not care about poor people. They do not care about people coming here to try to make a better life for themselves.
I’m sorry I haven’t been bolder in sharing my story, how we have literally survived because governance cared that we could eat, have shelter, and have healthcare.
I did not tell this story well. We did not talk about the things that matter to us.
So, we let this happen. And, we’ve let it happen for generations. From everyone who didn’t speak up when we had enslaved people, through the Civil Rights movement, to now — we let this happen.
We let this happen every time we refused to talk about our values, what is important to us, politics, and everything in between. We let this happen when we forgot the definition of terms like socialism and fascism. We let this happen when we minimize the impact because it’s the “lesser of two evils”. We let this happen when the busy-ness of life gets in the way of our participating in decisions by going to meetings, reading articles, or just talking to each other. When the busy-ness of life gets in the way, and we can’t attend meetings. It’s easier to fight over crumbs when the greedy few have already stolen the cookies — and we’ve been taught to blame each other, not the bakers.
But we can come together, now. Let every new thing this administration does be a wake-up call for us to center on what’s important to us.
Our path forward
Let every moment, every sunrise and sunset, and the clean air we have left to breathe be a reminder that we deserve a good life and so do our neighbors, no matter what they look like or where they called home before they came here. Our children, and their children, deserve a life where they can pursue their own bit of happiness, as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of another. We can build this together. We can resist together. We can heal together. We can care for each other, together.
We need to decide. And, I pray we choose to do that today, on this 249th anniversary of our country saying, “No kings.”
If you haven’t yet, download my free guide on how authoritarian regimes weaponize motherhood. This can be your tool for conversation starters this week.
A note on astrology
If you’re looking for cosmic confirmation that this moment demands attention… look no further.
Mercury entered its shadow on June 30th. So we are entering the time of redoing communication, and the trickster god is at play. We are in Cancer Sun season — which has themes of feeling and family. Our moon has entered the Waxing Crescent phase, which has themes of preparing. Uranus is in Taurus for the next few years, and it has themes of equalizing property and disrupting stability. Neptune is in Aries through 2039, and it has themes that all men are created equal, but also reminds us that wars don’t necessarily make anyone free or equal.
Egan, Matt, and Tami Luhby. “Here’s Who Stands to Gain from the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ And Who May Struggle.” CNN, July 3, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/03/business/trump-big-beautiful-bill-business-economy.
Merritt, Tyler. “Stay Woke.” Reel. Instagram, July 3, 2025.
Tecotzky, Alice. “I Read ‘The Art of the Deal.’ Here Are 6 Lessons from Trump’s Book We’re Seeing Play out with Tariffs.” AOL, April 10, 2025. https://www.aol.com/news/read-art-deal-7-lessons-171258666.html.
Bailey, Chelsea, and Isabel Rosales. “‘Alligator Alcatraz’: What to Know about New Controversial Migrant Detention Facility.” CNN, July 2, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/us/what-is-alligator-alcatraz-florida.
Choi, Annette, and Devan Cole. “See Where Abortions Are Banned and Legal — and Where It’s Still in Limbo.” CNN, June 26, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/us/abortion-access-restrictions-bans-us-dg.
Berman, Ari. “House Republicans Just Passed a Voter Suppression Bill That Would Disenfranchise Millions.” Mother Jones, April 10, 2025. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/save-act-voter-suppression-trump/.
Berman, Ari. “Trump Is Weaponizing the Justice Department to Advance His Voter Suppression Plans.” Mother Jones, May 29, 2025. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/donald-trump-justice-department-voting-rights-north-carolina/.
Kim, Juliana. “Will the SAVE Act Make It Harder for Married Women to Vote? We Ask Legal Experts.” NPR, April 13, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/g-s1-59684/save-act-married-women-vote-rights-explained.
Walsh, Deirdre, and David Folkenflik. “House Votes to Kill Funding for Public Media.” NPR, June 12, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/12/g-s1-72223/public-media-funding-up-in-the-air-as-house-prepares-to-vote-on-claw-backs.