The 4th of July: My Country 'Tis of WE

The Fourth of July commemorates the day a group of ordinary people turned radicals risked everything to break from tyranny and chart a course for a nation governed by the people. This holiday isn’t about fireworks or a barbecue; it is grounded in the audacity to declare that no ruler, no government, no oppressive hand has the right to dictate the destiny of a free people.

As we mark this Independence Day, we are staring down threats to freedom that would make those early patriots’ shudder. The dangerous and destructive policies of the Trump administration are hollowing out the very promises that brought this nation into being. Across America, families live in fear of sudden detention and deportation. Women’s bodies have become battlegrounds, stripped of autonomy by politicians who see their lives as pawns in ideological wars. Members of the LGBTQ+ community — and trans people in particular — face relentless attacks on their right to live openly, safely, and with dignity. None however is as grave and intolerable as the systematic dismantling of our public education system because all the others depend on this to survive.

Education is not just another social service. It is the mechanism by which a democracy sustains itself. Through education we learn not merely to read and compute, but to question, to analyze, to discern fact from propaganda. Public education provides every child, regardless of wealth or origin, the tools to participate in civic life, to hold leaders accountable, to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens.

Public schools are the crucibles in which democratic societies are forged.

Stripping away education by starving it of funding, replacing it with innocuous sounding privatized schemes that serve sanitized myths and partisan dogma — and we undermine the very foundation upon which this country rests. An uneducated, unquestioning populace is easy to manipulate. It is ill-equipped to challenge abuses of power, and more willing to accept tyranny disguised as patriotism. That is why autocrats throughout history have feared free and robust education: because it breeds citizens, not subjects.

A child who grows up curious and learning to think critically will grow into an adult who demands reproductive freedom, who stands up for immigrant neighbors, who defends the right of every person to live and love openly.

On this Fourth of July, let us honor the revolutionary spirit of 1776 with a renewed commitment to safeguarding the most radical idea our founders put forth: that power derives from an informed, engaged, and empowered people. That starts — and quite literally ends — with education.

Without a public education system that meets the needs of every child we are merely spectators, watching the last embers of liberty flicker out. And that is something no true patriot should ever accept.