4th of July Message: I'm Still Fighting the "American Revolution"

My father Alfonso came to the United States in 1956 with high hopes. He came from Mexico with three of his four children from my mother Maria Estela (the last one born in East L.A.’s General Hospital in 1958). I was two years old at the time of our arrival. My dad also had four other children, one who passed as an infant, and two whom he left in Mexico. The third, my half-sister, twenty years older than me, also came to the United States around the time I did and has lived here ever since. Now around 92 years old, she’s the current matriarch of the family.

My father and mother sacrificed so much to come here. I don’t doubt they did this to better our lives.

I love my family, most of whom have left California for many reasons, including the high cost of living here, a ridiculous place to rent and buy a home. My siblings and many of my nieces and nephews (and their kids) are mostly working class, faithful Christians, and good Americans. They will tell you they love this country.

Unfortunately, I’ve now lost four of my siblings, including that one who passed as a child. When my father was married to his first wife, the girl happened upon my father’s basket of chicharrones (Mexican-style pork rinds) he used to sell down the street. She ate one and ended up with diarrhea, which was then a death sentence for babies in Mexico. I understand he was blamed for her death, even losing his wife and ostracized from the family.

That’s another story.

All my three brothers are now gone: one from cancer, one from Alzheimer’s, and the last one from issues related to dementia. May they rest in peace. My three sisters are wonderful and good-hearted people. But we are not close. Much of this is because of the divisive politics in this country, perpetrated mostly by Trump, his administration, and many within the MAGA movement. They are at war with other Americans, including me.

I can’t speak for my remaining family, again whom I love no matter what. I can only speak for myself. On this 4th of July, I’m angry at the state of this country and this government. I have been since I was a teenager.

At age thirteen, barely becoming conscious of the social justice struggles of the time, I walked out of my middle-school as part of the larger East Los Angeles student walkouts in 1968, then known as the “Blow Outs.” School districts were failing Chicano students, who were being tracked into “industrial” classes and mostly blocked from higher education; East L.A. also had some of the highest dropout rates in the country. Two years later, I took part in the largest anti-war protest in a community of color at the time: The Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. Chicanos were some six percent of the population but 22 percent of the war’s casualties. In the police attack on peaceful demonstrators and supporters that ensued, I was beaten and arrested (“disappeared” for several days and nights until activists and family finally found me).

I joined the ongoing American Revolution at that time. I’ve been a revolutionary ever since.

I recall having arguments with my dad about being a member of the working class, a Chicano, and taking part in marches and demonstrations. By then Alfonso had totally bought into the illusions of the so-called American Dream. He became a Republican, loved Nixon, and supported the wasteful Vietnam War. Entitled to his views, nonetheless Dad was wrong: Nixon was a crook and the Vietnam War was a waste of lives and tax dollars.

The United States declared its independence from England at a time when it maintained chattel slavery of Africans and thrived on the monumental theft and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Yet the words “liberty and justice for all” from the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance did not initially include women, Indigenous people, Blacks, or migrants, particularly those of color like Chinese, Mexicans, and others (the final version of that pledge appeared in a magazine promoting the World’s Colombian Exposition for the 400th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ grievous “discovery of the Americas”).

The U.S. has undergone many battles, strikes, marches, court decisions, and even a civil war to extend these sentiments to more and more people. That’s why I’m still arguing with my father, although he passed more thirty-four years ago, Why I’m still taking on MAGA and those who continue to perpetuate lies and Christian Nationalist ideologies that unleash ICE raids and other injustices at home while pushing wars like in Iran and the genocide of peoples like in Gaza.

Sorry, Dad. They are wrong like you were wrong. I’m still fighting that “good fight.”

Today, 250 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, we are still in a revolution. As I wrote this, white supremacist Patriot Front members marched in Washington D.C. with U.S. and Confederate flags, emboldened by the Trump Administration’s anti-migrant, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-women, and anti-Queer/Trans positions. These “patriots” have again raised their ugly heads, once hooded now with face coverings and red hats. This kind is also in the government with the likes of Stephen Miller and others in the Trump Cabinet.

Crooks and crazies are running things, without impunity.

No sense seeing the past as a static and unmoving thing. We continue to wage an ongoing American revolution. We are still in the throes of making the sentiments in the Declaration of Independence belong to everyone… not just the wealthiest, the most powerful, or the most racist, misogynist, and homophobic.

We aren’t just commemorating history but making history.

I don’t celebrate the 4th of July like others. I’m still in the struggle I began at age thirteen. It ain’t over till it’s over: when we are all free, healthy, safe, and fully human in accord with nature and our own individual natures.

Someone may say I don’t love the country. This is not true. The reason I keep writing, speaking, and organizing, even if it blocks me from positions and spaces to be heard, is because I love the country. I love the people, all the people. It’s because I love the land, the many languages, and the legacies of freedom warriors from Thomas Paine, to Frederick Douglass, to Crazy Horse, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Dolores Huerta. And those yet to be named with even greater imaginations and strategically realizable aims. I do this for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I do this for the thousands behind bars in ICE detention camps, in mass incarceration institutions, in exploitative workplaces, in unhoused encampments, or dying spiritually inside classrooms or darkened bedrooms of gated communities.

Join me in this revolution. Let’s make history together. We have nothing to lose but our chains.