A Semiquincentennial Declaration

Note: I wrote this poem as a way of reflecting on and grappling with this country's 250th anniversary and the time of existential crisis we are in, both as a nation and a species. It is a poem of rage but also of love and aspiration. It is an offering and a declaration about this country's history, our present moment, and our potential. I offer this poem-essay as part of what I hope will become a new declaration of independence and interdependence.

One

On your two hundred and fiftieth birthday, let us speak openly.

Oh, say something nice, you say.

Don’t rain on this flash-bang parade.

Some things nice:

You contain multitudes of fine, decent people.

Folks who will pick you up when you’re broken down.

Who’ll rescue you from a flood or a fire.

Who’ll give you a buck or the shirt off their back.

They’ll welcome you into their homes, share their food.

They’ll help you raise a barn or put out a fire.

Friendly, good-hearted folk.

Then there’s this land, our land, erupting in soul-stirring beauty.

Towering mountain crags thrusting into horizon-splitting skies.

Canyons painted in sediments of red, orange, sienna, and crimson.

Ancient ridges hued in purple and blue, sloping and slouching into infinity.

Oceans of grain prairies, their amber waves swaying.

A resplendent and bountiful terrain fruiting more than enough for everyone.

Come to America, its vast cornucopias will seed and feed you.

Give us your tired, your poor, and we will raise them from the floor.

Two

You told us to stand up, take off our hats, put our little right hands on our chests, and “pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

You commanded us to love the flag, the God, the country.

Broad stripes, bright stars, and perilous fights.

You insisted we are free and brave, uniquely blessed with happiness and liberty.

Bombs bursting in air from dawn’s early light to twilight’s last gleaming.

We are the best, the greatest, the most exceptional, you said.

We are blessed and fortunate to be Americans, you said.

Nobody is like us. Everybody wants to be like us.

Three

You speak of freedom. Of liberty.

Are we free yet?

Are we free of wars, of racism, of sexism, and homophobia?

Are we freed by your bombs bursting across the world’s airs?

Does that star-spangled flag wave proudly for all your global slaying?

Did America become free and brave by decimating Vietnam?

Did we become liberated by eviscerating Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran?

Have your unrivaled invasions and coups set us free?

Or maybe liberty arrived back in 1776 like you keep reminding us,

When we were free at last, thank god almighty, from kings and colonizers,

All those liberating muskets, canons, and armies powered by genocide and slavery.

America, your gold and your flag are soaked in centuries of blood.

In 1852, Frederick Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” He answered: “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

Four

America, how many victims will you claim in your fraudulent name?

How many victims does it take to purchase our “freedom”?

Did your endless wars buy freedom for all of us?

This truth is self-evident: Not all freedoms are created equal.

Our freedoms are separate and unequal.

Our ballots and dollars germinated by bullets and bombs.

We are free to speak, shout, howl, or wail into the wind.

We are free to buy whatever we can afford.

We are free to vote at the polls and with your dollars.

Billionaires and millionaires are free to buy the votes.

Dollars are people, too, they say.

Those dollars have purchased our democracy and sold it

down the river flowing with ancestral bones and tears.

Five

The "America" I love is the land of dissenters, resisters, and persisters

The nation I love is in a perilous fight for justice and equality.

The America I love is the country of Martin Luther King, Jr., country of Malcolm X, of Shirley Chisolm, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Jesse Jackson; country of farmworkers marching, of Chicano rights and Brown Power; nation of women’s liberation and rights and rising power; of queer rights and queer love and queer existence; I love the land of Black Power, Black Joy, and Black resilience; country of the American Indian Movement, Indigenous rights and justice; land of all the unnamed nurses, teachers, farmers, janitors, garbage workers, tenants’ rights activists, all the unnamed soldiers for peace who never fired a bullet, all the unnamed marchers and masses of protesters, all the unnamed, unaccounted lovers and tenders of beauty, all the stewards and shepherds of this land, our land.

I love all the unnamed, unaccounted souls who are brave enough to care for other souls.

America, this misnamed and misguided land, contains multitudes of soulful, spirited love in spite of itself.

Six

On your 250th birthday, it is long past time

For a new declaration of independence and interdependence.

A declaration of love and mutual care and respect over hatred, fear, and division.

Maybe it begins, simply:

We declare our steadfast and fierce independence

From racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, imperialism, colonialism, settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and endlessly voracious and avaricious capitalism.

We declare our loving, passionate, unwavering commitment to a society based on care, mutual aid, and interdependence.

We declare that all living beings have those inalienable rights you spoke of so long ago—every living thing.

We have the right to freedom and liberation.

We have the right to housing, food, water, education, and healthcare.

We have the right to a decent and dignified existence in a world defined by humanity and mutual respect.

We declare our steadfast and unapologetic love for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We have the right to not be replaced, displaced, or eradicated by deified digitized beasts and virtual machines.

We declare the right to be and love whomever we damn well please.

We declare the right to love and care for and tend the Earth, this planet that makes us and everything possible.

At last, we declare, simply:

We will love and care for one another.

We will put love and care before everything else.

We will empower joy and beauty across this land, our land.

We will build a society based on love, care, and respect for all living beings.

We will not stop loving. And love will win. And you, America, will love it.