Like many of you, the team at CARE Rockbridge has been worried about the state of democracy in the United States in recent years. We have followed with horror as people of color have been targeted as “presumed illegals,” and recoiled at the treatment of immigrants and the violence meted out to our fellow citizens trying to protect them. We vigorously oppose the corrosion of the rights of LGBTQ+ people. We have grave concerns about the effects of the Supreme Court’s dismantling of most protections of the Voting Rights Act.
250 years ago, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, the communities that became our nation lived in the midst of uncertainty and violence. The moment of the signing was hardly one that lived up to the signers’ claim that “all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” From the very beginning, the exclusion of all women, enslaved persons, and indigenous peoples has troubled any reading of the Declaration.
Nonetheless, at the moment of their writing, these were beautiful values to proclaim as the organizing aims of a revolutionary, new political community; values that have encouraged people over the last two and a half centuries to organize and demand a nation to match. The fact is that, as we in CARE work together with our community toward the revolutionary combination of Justice, Love, and Equality, we are honoring the best of a shared political project that is now 250 years old.
Happy Fourth! Let’s be proud of our grand political dreams, and undaunted by the challenges that surround us.
