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On a day of barbecued burgers (meat and veggie) and fun in the sun in the United States, MWU! celebrates the ideals that most Americans proclaim, but we also note that Independence Day has never stood for liberty for all.
For Native Americans living in their reservations and recalling their massacred ancestors and their lost land, or the now fatherless child of a secretly detained immigrant dealing with the emptiness in her heart, or the 33 million or so Americans who fall below the official poverty line struggling to make ends meet, the Fourth of July takes on a different, more complicated meaning.
The words of Frederick Douglass, 19th century escaped slave and human rights leader, when he was asked to speak at an Independence Day celebration in 1852, have as much resonance today.
Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
For Native Americans living in their reservations and recalling their massacred ancestors and their lost land, or the now fatherless child of a secretly detained immigrant dealing with the emptiness in her heart, or the 33 million or so Americans who fall below the 