by Mike Russo / Catalyst California – Times of San Diego / July 3, 2025
For a lot of us, this Fourth of July feels impossible to celebrate.
It’s always been complicated. The soaring ideals etched into America’s founding documents have too often come with a silent asterisk, a quiet caveat that “liberty and justice for all” didn’t really mean ALL. Generations of Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other marginalized Americans have carried that contradiction, living with both the broken promises and the undeniable contributions they have made to this country.
But this year, the gap between America’s professed values and lived reality feels more like a chasm.
Across the country, we are watching scenes that belong to an authoritarian state, not a democracy.
Masked men operating under the color of law are snatching our immigrant neighbors off the streets.
Our Supreme Court ignores executive overreach and overturns rulings that protect our rights, in seeming determination to crown the president a king.
California’s own National Guard is under federal control, with active-duty troops deployed to intimidate peaceful protesters.
Congress, by the narrowest margin, just authorized a spending bill that funds border detention camps, guts health care and lines the pockets of oligarchs and regime cronies.
Public universities and federal agencies are being re-segregated in plain sight, while those in power flaunt their corruption with barely a shred of pretense.
Meanwhile, the worst actors in American life wrap themselves in the star-spangled banner, setting off fireworks and declaring that this is, and always has been, the true face of the nation.
It is tempting to let them have the holiday. But we cannot afford that luxury.
Because July 4th was never the only founding of this country. The Constitution, limited and imperfect as it remains, was signed more than a decade after 1776. The Civil War and Reconstruction reimagined freedom through the lens of Black resistance and sacrifice. The Civil Rights Movement forced this nation to reckon, however incompletely, with the meaning of equal protection.
The story of America has been rewritten by Indigenous nations, immigrants, queer organizers and multiracial coalitions struggling not for nostalgia but for justice.
Those battles are not relics. They are unfinished.
And while the poetry of the Declaration of Independence may ring hollow in 2025, its list of grievances feels eerily familiar. Among the charges leveled against King George III:
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone…
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures….
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power… cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world… transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.
The playbook of autocracy is as old as empire itself, and the revolutionary generation, for all its contradictions, knew how to resist it. Being American has always, at its core, been about hating tyranny and standing together to fight it.
This year, if the Fourth of July means anything, it is a reminder that the most patriotic act is not blind ceremony. It’s the resolve to resist those who would reign rather than govern, who would silence dissent rather than solve problems, who would dismantle democracy rather than deliver on its promises.
The story of the United States of America is not yet finished. But the next chapter depends on what we are willing to fight for together.
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Mike Russo is vice president of policy and programs for Catalyst California, a nonprofit that advocates for racial justice. Before joining Catalyst, Russo was director of the federal office of U.S. PIRG, a nationwide federation of state-based public interest advocacy organizations. He led the organization’s work on health care, overseeing campaigns to implement the Affordable Care Act.
Thank You
I borrowed this from today’s Borowitz Report….
A New Declaration of Independence from Tyranny
Effective July 4, 2025
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.
That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.
The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.
* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.
* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.
* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.
* He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.
* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.
* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.
* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.
Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.
Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.
We withdraw our consent.
We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.
We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.
We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.
With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,
We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,
To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,
And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.
Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.
You should have given credit to Judge Luttig and his essay “27 Truths” from where this idea originated. Either way, poignant.