“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy— a thin veil to cover up crimes.”
–speech by Frederick Douglas, July 5, 1852, Rochester, NY
“[The 1775-1787 US revolution] led to the expansion of European American settlement across the continent in the decades afterwards, a process which nearly wiped out the Indigenous peoples who have lived here for many thousands of years. Estimates are that 90% or more were killed either by disease or violent military action to force the survivors onto reservations so that the Europeans could take the land and the resources underneath it.
“Like so much else about this country, this 250th anniversary of the beginnings of what became the United States is a decidedly mixed bag.
“On balance, though, I see value to connecting the political uprising against the Trumpfascists with the uprising by revolutionary European Americans 250 years ago. Not by coincidence, the success of this revolution was followed by the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Bolivar-led South American Revolution and eventually, in the USA, the Civil War that led to the end of the legal enslavement of African people. It led to the success of the women’s suffrage movement over 100 years ago, the rise of industrial unionism, the Black Freedom movement in the 60’s which forced an end to Jim Crow segregation, anti-colonial revolutions throughout the world, the rise of Indigenous resistance and societal leadership, the LGBTQ+ movement, an environmental protection movement and more.”
–Revolution?, a March 22, 2025 Future Hope column
Is it right to connect what happened 250-plus years ago with what is happening right now, in 2026, as a broad cross-section of US society resists the Trumpfascist efforts to impose repressive dictatorial rule? Yes, there are many similarities. Indeed, the US pro-democracy forces, if successful, will have much more immediate impacts worldwide.
The world is seeing that we in the USA are alive and well and rapidly becoming a mass movement that has the potential to bring about major, internationally-welcomed, desperately-needed changes in the USA at this turning point moment for human societies and all life forms on earth.
Some who are participating in this movement do not see themselves as “revolutionaries.” More accurate for them would be something like, “patriots” or “democracy lovers.” And some are involved primarily because of the personal and family impacts of Trump regime policies which have made their lives materially more difficult.
But IMHO, the word “revolutionary” best describes what this pro-democracy movement is developing into, in part because it has been building for many years–it is not a “flash in the pan”–and in part because the Trumpists are so destructive in their efforts to turn the clock back to the 1950’s or even further that many millions of us have risen up in a whole variety of ways.
The changes needed are clearly systemic, not some reforms here and there that have little effect on who runs the country today: the “billionaire class”, the “Epstein class,” the “corporate elite,” the “ruling class,” etc.
It’s very simple, actually. What this revolutionary movement is about is the creation of a US government and society truly “of the people, by the people and for the people.” In such a society we would be about racial and gender justice and equal rights; for the right to organize and unionize on the job; against militarism and for a justice-based peace; for detoxification and protection of our natural environment and a rapid shift from dirty and dangerous fossil fuels and nukes to clean, renewable energy sources; for immigrant rights, reproductive rights and an end to mass incarceration; for a Green New Deal; for quality medical care for all no matter what their age; for a true living wage for work done; for tuition-free public higher education and student debt cancellation; for substantive taxes on the billionaires and multi-multi-millionaires and major cuts in the US military budget with conversion of war industry production to peaceful purposes; and more.
Love, that’s the word. We need a government and society which makes love for the earth and its peoples central. That is what this 250th anniversary of the USA has to be about for those of us in the pro-democracy movement. Not should be about, but has to be about. This is our time!
Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of two books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, published in 2020 and 2021 and both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com
Ted Glick has devoted his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973, he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation. Since late 2003, Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a renewable energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006, he began working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and was CCAN National Campaign Coordinator until his retirement in October 2015. He is a co-founder (2014) and one of the leaders of the group Beyond Extreme Energy. He is President of the group 350NJ/Rockland, on the steering committee of the DivestNJ Coalition and on the leadership group of the Climate Reality Check network.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
