On July 4 hundreds of millions of Americans will celebrate all that is good in the history of the United States of America. Even though progressives know there is much to criticize about America (including the use of the word “America” as synonymous with the United States, thereby ignoring Canada, Mexico, Central and South America) there is also much to celebrate.
This is particularly important to do when we are seeking to get a majority of Americans to back major structural changes not only in how the police brutalize, selectively target for arrest, and, almost daily somewhere in the U.S., murder African Americans and other people of color, and also homeless or extremely poor people, but also in the economic structures of our society that create huge disparities between the top wealth holders and all the rest of us. I’ve found in my research as director of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health that many people whose economic interests are best served by liberal and progressive causes sometimes vote against those interests because they feel that we look down upon them, their culture, their religion and their intelligence–and suspect us of never seeing any good in America. That’s why I propose we celebrate July 4th, but transform it from a celebration of “independence” and make it a celebration of our interdependence with all people on the planet and with the earth.
Immediate caution: I do not suggest that we play down the horrors of American racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, antiSemitism, etc. Acknowledging them must be an important part of our celebration, as we affirm that Black Lives Matter to us. I propose that every celebration of interdependence day read aloud the article “How To Overcome Racism,” many of its points taken from the program of Black Lives Matter. Our celebration also needs a place to grieve all that has gone wrong (beginning with America’s genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of African Americans).
And if we want to actually win the level of support among our fellow Americans that would make it possible for us to pass constitutional amendments that could actually change the oppressive racist and classist institutions not just in a few progressives states, but for all of the U.S., then our mourning all the evil entrenched in America’s economic and racist institutions needs to be coupled with an affirmation of what is good, and a conscious attempt to bring our neighbors into this kind of celebration of July 4th.
That’s why we want to urge you to turn this holiday into something more meaningful than just a picnic watching bombs bursting in air during the evening fireworks.
Bring your friends together at a Zoom based picnic or luncheon or dinner, or in person please keep your masks on and keep 6 foot distance from each other. Take turns reading the following and singing the songs at the end—and help us re-focus this celebration from one that reinforces the militaristic version of American “exceptionalism” by replacing that with a commitment to the wellbeing of everyone else on the planet and the wellbeing of the planet itself. Turn this day into a celebration of our inter-dependence with all others on the planet, and inter-dependence with the planet itself.
Some of the distortions in the U.S. Constitution eventually got somewhat repaired in the ensuing two hundred plus years, though many remain and are an ingredient in American life. We can celebrate the instinct toward democracy, even as we witness how the anti-democratic, violent, and oppressive inclinations of some are now being championed and advanced by the U.S. President. As many have said in the past, democracy is the best possible political system if you can keep it, but we want to add that even democratic forms can serve oppressive purposes if enough people get misled into believing that others deserve to be victimized. Only a full democratization of our economic lives coupled with a sustained multi-generational transformation of consciousness away from every form of “othering” of those with less power can make democracy survive. There have been advances, most recently for women and for gays and lesbians, that can be built upon and extended. It is important to see what advances have been made so that we do not go into despair when the current set of demonstrations against racism does not immediately produce the kinds of changes that our call to overcome racism calls for.
The truth is, though, that much of what we love about America was created by ordinary citizens. Often they encountered resistance from those in power, their messages distorted by the media that has mostly been controlled by the rich and powerful, their activists sometimes beaten, jailed or even killed, their employment put in danger, their families suffering. On some occasions sometimes for struggles that did not threaten the class structure but only sought to widen the opportunities for people to compete in the marketplace, they found allies in some of the powerful who joined in the struggle. But we do so with caution. We saw last week how a majority of self-described “moderates” in the House of Representatives Democratic majority managed to outvote the progressives in the Democratic party and endorse a bill to send $4.5 billion to the Administration for border aid, voting down the attempt by close to a hundred Democratic Party progressives who attempted to put strict restrictions on how that money would be used, including ending the incarceration of children under horrendous and inhumane conditions. The Bible warns us “Do not trust in the powerful”—and so we want to celebrate our democracy but reject those who always put being “realistic” above being principled even while congratulating those in both houses of Congress who rejected the Senate Republican “aid” package.
At this celebration, let’s give thanks for the ordinary and extraordinary Americans whose struggles brought about those changes.
WE ARE GRATEFUL:
- To the waves of immigrants from all parts of the world who struggled to accept each other and find a place in this country {raise fork}
- To the escaped slaves and their allies, particularly Quakers, evangelical Christians, and freedom-loving secularists, who build the underground railroad and helped countless people to freedom {raise fork}
- To the coalitions of religious and secular people–women and men, black and white–who built popular support for the emancipation of the slaves {raise fork}
- To the African Americans and allies who went to prison, lost their livelihoods, and were savagely beaten in the struggle for civil rights {raise fork}
- To the working people who championed protections like the eight-hour day, minimum wage, workers’ compensation, and the right to organize, often at great personal cost to them {raise fork}
- To the immigrants who fought against “nativist” tendencies and refused to close the borders of this country to new groups of immigrants, and who continue to support a policy of “welcoming the stranger” just as this country opened its gates to their ancestors when they were the immigrants and strangers
- To the women who risked family, job security, and their own constructed identities to shift our collective consciousness about men and women and raise awareness of the effects of patriarchy {raise fork}
- To gays and lesbians who fought and won the right to marry and who continue to struggle for full rights in housing, employment, and other arenas.
- To transgendered people who are beginning a similar battle for respect, dignity, and equal rights
- To all of those who risk scorn and violence and often lose their families to lead the struggle against homophobia and for the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people
- To those who continue to work for equal access for people with disabilities
- To those who advocate for sensitivity to animals and refuse to kill them
- To all of the innovators and artists who have brought so much of beauty and usefulness into our lives
- To those who fought to extend democratic principles not only in politics but also in the workplace and in the economy
- To those who developed innovations in science and technology, in literature and art, in music and dance, in film and in computer science, in medical and communication technologies, and in methods to protect ourselves from the destructive impacts of some of these new technologies.
- To those who developed psychological insights and increased our ability to be sensitive to our impact on others.
- To those who developed ecological awareness and are now building strategies to replace a system that privileges growth and consumption over preservation of the life support system of the planet
- To those who brought the insights of their own particular religious or spiritual traditions which emphasized love and caring for others and generosity towards those who had been impoverished—and sought to turn those ideas not only into a call for personal charity but also into a mission to transform our economic and political systems in ways that would reflect those values.
- To those who fought for peace and non-violence, and who helped stop many wars
Adding to the difficulty of the struggles listed above was the sad fact that groups who were struggling for their own rights and liberation did not identify with or give adequate support to other groups who were struggling for their own liberation and rights. Sometimes people in oppressed groups would say, “My suffering is more intense or more important than your suffering” to each other, undermining rather than building solidarity. Sometimes one oppressed group was used by the people with the power to fight against another oppressed group. Some people in each previously oppressed group would seize their hard-won power and turn their backs on the needs of others, even discriminating against or looking down on others whose struggles had not yet been won.
It was sad and shocking when people struggling for peace found that some of their allies were racist or sexist or homophobic or anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic or anti-Christian or held hateful views about all religious people or about all secular people or about all white people or about all men. Sometimes that would lead oppressed people to give up in despair not just about the difficulties of overcoming the obstacles that the powerful set in place, but out of disillusionment with groups that rightly should have been their allies.
Luckily, many others did not give up, and so the struggles for human freedom dignity, human rights, economic security, and civil liberties were not abandoned. Those struggles continue today, and it could easily take many more decades before they are fully realized.
The good news is that many people have retained their basic decency and caring for others. We are surrounded by people who care about others and who have never lost their capacity to be loving and generous.
True, it’s often hard to show that. When first approached, many people express indifference to the well-being of others. Our economic system encourages selfishness, me-first-ism, “looking out for number one,” and indifference to the ecological and ethical impacts of our activities, and acting counter to those attitudes feels not only unfamiliar but risky.
And in 2019 America, hate and violence is rearing its ugly head in random acts of violence against gays, Jews, African Americans, Muslims, women, and immigrants. That hatred has also found a place in the midst of our national politics through politicians who manipulate people’s legitimate anger at the way their needs for economic security have been ignored.
Instead of addressing the inequality in our economic system and its role in generating selfishness, materialism and self-blaming on the part of people who haven’t (in their own eyes) “made it” in the competitive marketplace of global capitalism, political opportunists in the U.S., the U.K., and other countries around the world manipulate the pain generated by our economic and political system and misdirect it against the most vulnerable in our world—refugees, minority groups, or previously demeaned “others.”
The vote in the UK to exit the European Union was explained by some as a product of anti-immigrant sentiment, yet that sentiment has been fostered for decades by right-wing forces who recognize the pain that people are in, but refuse to blame that on the unfairness of our economic system and instead blame it on the demeaned others of the society. Yet this strategy to relieve fear, pain and suffering never works, so even in cases in the past where people have turned to fascistic and racist movements in their moments of despair eventually turn back to their own highest selves if there is a community of people that can validate the possibility of a different and more loving world.
Most people yearn for a different kind of world, but they think it is “unrealistic” to struggle for what they really believe in, since they are convinced that nobody else shares that desire with them. This is part of the reason we’ve created our interfaith as well as secular-humanist-and-atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives (please check it out at www.spiritualprogressvies.org—you’ll see that you don’t have to believe in God or be a spiritual person in any respect except believing in the possibility of a world based on love, kindness, and justice). Please join us to support each other in building a world that really does reflect our highest values.
If peace, social justice, ecological sensitivity, full implementation of human rights and a society based on love is “unrealistic,” then we say “screw realism”—being realistic in a deeper sense is not accepting “reality” as it is presently presented to us. Most people dismissed the civil rights movement when it began as “unrealistic” in its attempts to end segregation, dismissed the early consciousness raising feminists in the second wave of women’s liberation when it began in the 1960s, dismissed the struggle against apartheid, dismissed the idea that gays and lesbians could achieve the right to legally recognized marriage in the U.S., dismissed the possibility that a black man or a woman could ever get elected president. The truth is that the realists have almost always been proven wrong when people fight for their highest ideals and ignore the messages from media, political leaders, and the elites of wealth and power as they preach to us to accept “what is” as the criterion of “what can be.”
We want a different kind of world, and we have to engage in non-violent struggles to build it. And that has always been the way we have won the battles for precisely the things that make us proud of the victories of the American people: it was always people who were told that what they wanted was “unrealistic” and who essentially said “screw realism—we’re going to fight for what is right” who became the real heroes of the American story. Of course, the powerful often obscure that history, and teach us to think that all the human rights and liberties and freedoms were “given to us,” but actually it was precisely the little people like us who made the big changes that have made this country worthy of celebration.
Please continue this essay by Rabbi Lerner here: https://www.tikkun.org/interdependence-day?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=c29f7c7f-5a85-40f3-b7c0-ff316fc7becf
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