Today, grills will fire up across this country. Hot dogs and burgers will sizzle. Coolers will brim with beer and soda. Kids will run barefoot through grass still slick with morning dew. And fireworks – oh, the fireworks – will explode above backyards and stadiums, a million dollars of gunpowder burned to celebrate freedom.
I get choked up at the Star-Spangled Banner as much as the next patriotic sap, even though I know damn well the anthem carries dark and unsavory verses that never make it past the first stanza. This holiday forces me to wrestle with the jingoism I was spoon-fed as a kid – the red, white, and blue myths of freedom and virtue, of baseball, mom, and apple pie. My faith that any of it still holds merit has been strained more in the last two years than ever before.. To the extent that I’m clinging to nostalgia , it’s because the truth is too bitter to swallow, I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you – I still love the shimmer of sparklers against a summer sky. That moment feels golden, like a promise we might still keep, if only we’d remember what independence really means.
Because today, in 2025, I have to ask:
What, to the minimum wage slave, is the Fourth of July?
The Declaration of Independence burned with righteous rebellion. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. No taxation without representation. Give me liberty or give me death.
Brave words. True words. Words that sparked a revolution.
But tell me – what do those words mean to the woman cleaning toilets in a highway rest stop for $9 an hour in Georgia? To the guy flipping burgers for $7.25 in Alabama while billionaires order their Impossible Whoppers from the back of Teslas? To the grocery store cashier in Massachusetts making “fifteen an hour” – hailed as progress by politicians – only to fork over every penny to rent, groceries, and a car payment, with nothing left if her kid gets sick?
What, to them, is this Fourth of July?
It’s a waitress working a double shift for a base pay of less than three dollars an hour, hoping the customers are feeling generous enough to tip well – because without those tips, she doesn’t make rent. It’s her smiling through burnt coffee and screaming kids, praying her tables turn fast so she can cover gas to get home. It’s knowing that no matter how many plates she carries or how many smiles she fakes, she’s always one slow Tuesday away from eviction.
What is freedom to the minimum wage slave?
What is liberty, if your boss can cut your hours without warning and leave you begging for overtime just to keep the lights on?
What is happiness, if you work two jobs and still lie awake at night praying you don’t get sick because you can’t afford the deductible?
Frederick Douglass called out America’s hypocrisy in 1852. He asked his country to live up to its own ideals.
I’m asking the same today.
Because Independence Day is meaningless if it’s just hot dogs, bunting, and fireworks over people who aren’t free to live decent lives.
If this holiday is to mean anything, it must become a promise kept – a day when every worker in America can stand tall, knowing their labor buys them dignity, security, and the time to enjoy the very freedoms this country brags about.
Otherwise, we’re just lighting up the sky to distract ourselves from the darkness down here on the ground.
