July 4th is always problematic for me. Yes, I know there is also Louis Armstrong to remember and celebrate, and Ted Joans too. And Thomas Jefferson died on this day, a day his children by Sally Hemmings could celebrated as the day of their legal emancipation from father’s slave to free. So what to celebrate of America and its birthing. It is more possible in the USA, than in many other places in the world, for a person, a family to actually fulfill a dream. My grandparents on my fathers side, great-grandparents on my mother’s were immigrants to this country and testimony to that reality. They cleared road for each generation to move a little more forward. I am part of that dream and I see it replicated in the cooperative where I live, the Ethiopians on the corner, the Koreans on the other side, the Ukrainians up the street, the Filipinos next to them and we African Americans, often recently come from the South or Midwest or East coast immigrating still and holding on tightly. Also, in terms of the significance of the day in the American politic, I’ve traveled out of United States boundaries and appreciate the standard of living some, but truly not all Americans, have and the room we have, if too often do not take, to speak freely-

Although, this July 4th seems a good time to look at how current government covenants slice away at these rights:

Privacy rights have been limited in a recent Youtube decision that allows Viacom to see what you watch on Youtube:

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6575660.html?industryid=47171

The FBI can investigate Americans “even in the absence of evidence or other compelling indications that the person was breaking a law... http://www.privacydigest.com/2008/07/03/doj+policy+would+sanction+racial...

Passed HR 6304 Domestic SPY AMENDMENTS—choke 1st Amendment Rights-

Perhaps the only thing that has stopped U.S. Government from broadly using telecom assisted wiretap evidence against Americans and corporations was that Telecoms haven’t had immunity from being sued by charged criminal and civil asset forfeiture defendants they spy on. That may change after the Senate passes THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008
http://calabria.indymedia.org/article/2401

So, as flags wave and fire crackers explode and as grills are loaded with charcoal and watermelons split open I can’t fit July 4th into that neat a package. For me the morning started thinking about the Native peoples, the ones who first walked to and settled on this land and though decimated have pushed back genocide and grow stronger each year in voice and substance. What is July 4th to them? http://www.republicoflakotah.com/

Then too my ancestors (though my African comes from the Carribean not the American southern states and northern climes of USA) still we are linked in experience as slave and the July 4ths that were celebrated then still lay the whip full hand on today- Frederick Douglass said it best in his 4th of July speech “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? 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?” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040719/foner
Or for a fuller presentation:
1852 http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162

And I look at today, the hungry, the homeless, the incarcerated, the ill, the mis-educated in what remains the richest country in the world-

Then comes this posting (thank you wonderful poet and gifted essayist and Red Room author Evie Shockley http://www.redroom.com/author/evie-shockley) on one of my email lists.

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080704-denver-sing-black-nati...

I click on the link to see and hear a singing of as Evie put it “‘our’ national anthem.” Until this posting I had not even known there was an issue of how many National Anthem existed in the United States, or that Obama had taken a position.

Please go see this for yourself before you read further:
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080704-denver-sing-black-nati....

As I watched the singer sing a song I knew so well, sing it with skill and purpose, and a clear love for the spirit of the song- beyond being amazed at how well she could make it work in the spangled anthem’s scales- I wondered what would this nation be if this was the nation’s anthem. If we all could and would (http://www.africanamericans.com/NegroNationalAnthem.htm)
“Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;”

That is to say if, what could this nation become if we learned from the lessons of our past, corrected the errors of our present, and created a bountiful future not just for some of we people, but for all of we people and sang about as we built that road.