This Isn't that 4th of July

When celebration becomes mourning, and memory becomes protest

We used to rise,
hand to heart,
eyes to flag,
a chorus of small voices pledging liberty and justice for all.

But liberty for who?
Justice for what?
And who among us still believes the “for all” was ever meant for all of us?

I’m married to a man who gave over two decades of his life to this country.
Flew across oceans.
Stood on foreign soil.
Risked body and soul for a promise this nation made to him;
and is now breaking in broad daylight.

He fought for freedom.
And now we watch as that freedom is stripped,
slice by careful slice,
by those who wave the flag with one hand
and pass laws with the other that silence, control, erase.

This year, we don’t celebrate.
We mourn.

We lay flags not in front yards but at headstones.
We whisper apologies to the dead.
Forgive us - for losing what you bled for.
Forgive us - for not screaming louder.
Forgive us - for letting this happen on our watch.

This isn’t just fear I carry.
It’s fury.
It’s grief.
It’s the weight of knowing that being different in this America
is considered a risk,
a threat,
a reason to deny you the rights we once called “unalienable.”

Stay silent, they say.
Don’t rock the boat.
Keep your head down.
But that’s not who I am.

I am the disruptor.
The black sheep.
The five-year-old who asked why the emperor had no clothes.
The woman who refuses to sit quiet while the ship sinks.

I look at my children,
my students,
my grandchildren
and I am terrified.

Terrified that they will inherit a nation
where curiosity is criminal,
where inclusion is controversial,
where truth is treason.

I teach them to think, to speak, to rise.
And yet this country keeps showing them
that rising makes you a target.

So no, I will not celebrate this Fourth.
I will not dress in red, white, and blue while the red runs down our rights,
while the whitewashed history books erase the truth,
while the blue lights flash in neighborhoods that never see justice.

Instead, I light a candle.
For the dream we once believed in.
For the freedoms we still deserve.
For the hope that maybe, just maybe,
the disruptors will outlast the deceivers.

Let the sky stay quiet tonight.
Let the echoes of what should have been
settle heavy in our bones.
And when dawn comes,
may we wake not to celebration,
but to the sacred work of restoration.