Opinion: Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances feels eerily familiar in 2025

For a lot of us this Fourth of July feels impossible to celebrate It s unfailingly 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 boundary detention camps guts vitality care and lines the pockets of oligarchs and regime cronies Populace 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 inevitably 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 th was never the only founding of this country The Constitution limited and imperfect as it remains was signed more than a decade after 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 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 Arrangement 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 inevitably 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 majority 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 Mike Russo is vice president of guidelines 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 general interest advocacy organizations He led the organization s work on strength care overseeing campaigns to implement the Affordable Care Act