Hi friends,
The post below is a repeat from the same date in 2022. At the time, we were reeling from the Dobbs decision. Now, we are staggering under the weight of some new and terrifying decisions from the Supreme Court, the worst of which is the aptly named Trump v. United States. Two more years of Trump’s 6-3 majority have added to the lost ground we must retake.
Here we are again, commemorating the wrong birthday. I’m committed to reframing US history with 1619 as the nation’s true birth year, but we are always going to have to contend with 1776.
The US is looking very poorly these days, and the guttering light from even just 246 candles is too much to conceal the dissipation of the body politic.
What should we celebrate?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [humans] are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
As a spiritual — and spirited — atheist, I have always struggled with idea of a Creator, but not with the concept that we are all born equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Enslaved and free Black abolitionists embraced these words as a demand for their own freedom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We honor that history by remembering that ideals are great ideas that must be asserted, again and again, until we can make them ring true.
I’ve always liked the big-picture parts of our founding documents best. The preamble to the Constitution still strikes me as beautiful.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Freedom is our birthright and must be secured. Perfecting a democratic society involves cultivating and sustaining justice, peace, and well-being for ourselves and our descendants.
I am feeling a little mournful these days. The assaults on religious freedom, on bodily autonomy, and on the planet-protective efforts to promote the general welfare are all hard to bear.
And yet.
If enslaved people could envision their own freedom in the language of the Declaration of Independence, then surely we can see beyond our current difficulties to assert our ideals and strive for a better nation.
That potential is what we celebrate.
We’ve entered the long effort to retake lost ground. It is not unprecedented. Jim Crow policies that ended Reconstruction took back gains that were made over many decades of political struggle and four years of bloody warfare. This is both a sobering comparison and a kick in the pants.
The Dobbs decision is a huge setback and it is not the end of the story. The majorities that favor reproductive justice are working to retake control of statehouses and challenge state legislation in the courts.
The lawsuits argue that state constitutions offer more protection for abortion than the federal constitution, either by quirk of state tradition or history. Some, such as Florida’s, include an explicit right to privacy. In Kentucky, lawyers argue their constitution provides a right to “bodily autonomy” as well as privacy. The Roe decision in 1973 declared that the U.S. Constitution afforded a right to privacy that included a woman’s right to abortion; while the Supreme Court overturned that decision, it generally cannot overturn what states say in their own constitutions.
I hope you spend the day in the company of good people.
Tomorrow, we get back to work.
with love,
L