Declaration to Continue
The American Revolution Never Ended
To mark America’s 250th anniversary, I’ve written a three-act declaration with the guidance of brilliant collaborators. This is Act 1. Acts 2 and 3 are coming later this year.
I’m proud of the text. But I urge you to start at wecontinue.us. Valarie Kaur, civil rights leader, my friend, and one of my heroes, gave these words life. With the direction of Adriel Luis and the extraordinary creative work of Fey Marin, we’ve built something that feels transformative. If you haven’t seen it yet, go there first.
If you’ve already watched it and are here to read the full text, you’re in the right place.
Full Text
Twelve score and ten years ago, We the People brought forth upon this continent—a new Nation—conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the Proposition that this Land shall have: no duke or dictator, no earl or emperor, and above all, No King.
That Proposition is now under siege. For the very White House that once led the destruction of fascism is now occupied by its heirs. At its center: a man who Would Be King, who mistakes America for an altar built to hold his name. Who, on the 250th birthday of our Republic, is using the American flag to strangle America.
This could be the end of the line.
Yet we are not here to mourn a Republic.
We are here to renew it. To reimagine how it can finally reach its Dream.
For as we face what may be the death of this Republic, we could do worse than remember the moment of its birth; July 4, 1776. A group of rowdy public intellectuals scratching into parchment:
When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to reject a would-be king, they must.
And we must. We must carry forward a Revolution grounded in its truest charge of We the People defeating All Kings. All Tyranny. All Empire.
Every bit of blood. Every broken body. Every generation that Paid the Price; for one truth held to be self-evident: that All are created Equal. From that, everything. For if all are created equal, then all possess the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
History is littered with nations that lie about their revolutions. That crown their rebels, kings. That claim to continue past military victory. But that is when they ended. The revolution became the state. The bullied outsiders became the bullies. The dream calcified into Tyranny.
America’s lie runs in the opposite direction.
We told ourselves Our Revolution ended not long after the signing. When the Patriots won the war and the Redcoats packed it up. But that—that is when it first continued.
For the Declaration signed 250 years ago was not the final note of a Revolution. It was the first breath of a centuries-long chorus. Each of us both singer and composer. The song still unfinished—for the American Revolution never ended.
It Continued.
Led not by kings but by Us.
By We the People.
By We the Orphans.
Orphaned from our Fatherlands by choice.
Orphaned from our Motherlands by force.
Orphaned from our Great Mother by murder.
It Continued.
Through Fog that does not lift. Past every River that said no. Over every Ridge that said turn back. Through Texan Limestone to Granite where the Atlantic breaks white. From mist-covered Holler to unbroken Prairie. From red Mesa to frozen Tundra to volcanic Fire. From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters. From Sea to shining Sea.
From Trails far older than their given names, worn into Earth by ten thousand years of footsteps. By the only peoples who are not strangers on this Land. Who have known the Beginning before the Beginning. Who have known this Ground as part of their very bodies.
It continued. And continued. And continued.
From conductors who walked the darkness both ways, until the last passenger was free. It continued.
From Black skin forced to build a White House, forced to build the very wall of Wall Street while being walled off from its payments and its promise. And from the Lion who roared: what, to the slave, is your Fourth of July?
Until hundreds of thousands answered with their lives. It continued.
From those who, after so-called “emancipation,” faced terrorists with ropes. Who faced heartbreak after heartbreak, until their hearts broke open into music that freed the world. It continued.
From those who gave the nation weekends, by refusing to work them. Who scrubbed the poison from our food and our factories. And who, in the name of Trust, broke the trusts. It continued.
From women starved of a Voice, who made their hunger the question, until the answer was law. It continued.
From the Strangers who fled Tyranny, crossing Oceans. Who laid the rails and dug the mines and stitched the garments and raised the skylines, yet slept outside the house they built. Whose Children — turned away at every gilded door, invented the humor that taught a nation to laugh at its alleged kings, dreamed caped gods onto newsprint, conjured cities of light on silver screens, and turned exile into remedy. It continued.
From those starved by dust and bread lines, who plunged the rot at the top into alphabet soup, who crossed Oceans to bury Fear, and came home to bury Want beside it. It continued.
From those who carried that freedom into a Dream, across bridges into dogs and batons and hoses. Led by a King with No Crown who made the law answer its own words. It continued.
From nations older than this nation, who mothered our Democracy into being and gave us We the People, only for their children to be stolen in return. Until the mothers gathered into one thunderstorm of mothers, shook the house that called the theft holy, and took their children back. Took their families back. Took the Sacred back. Took their future back, proclaiming: The Children are our Present. It continued.
From those who brought sound back to spring, reminded rain it was Water, gave the Air back to breath, saved America’s bird, and mended a hole in the Sky. It continued.
From women who insisted that the fist behind closed doors was a crime, and made the law admit it. It continued.
From friends of Dorothy, whispering past winged henchmen, all the way Over the Rainbow. It continued.
From bodies the world called broken, who climbed eighty-three marble steps on their hands and knees, and proved it was the house that needed repair. It continued.
From those abandoned to die in silence, whose grief learned to block traffic, until the world could no longer look away. It continued.
It continued. And continued. And continued.
Will it still?
For the Revolution was not the only thing that continued. So too did its nemesis. Empire.
For 250 years, Empire has tried to finish off America. And now its full contempt pours through one empty vessel. The Would-Be King. Empire made flesh.
And on this 250th birthday of the Declaration’s signing, we pick up the Flag.
That may seem strange. Why would we pick up a flag that has been used to spill so — much — blood?
The blood of the Grandmothers who taught the forefathers a song of freedom. Hunted by hands that cut the song from their throats. Hands that snuffed out the music from their unborn granddaughters. Pious hands that shoveled them alive into soil that drank their blood.
The Grandmother’s blood. Her blood. Her soil.
Claimed by foreign hands that claim both while calling the true founders of this nation foreign — the Nations older than this Nation, the Strangers, and the People whom they priced.
Hands that orphaned the orphans, and buried them all — beneath concrete and soil, before burying them again in silence.
Hands that buried their own Mother, and called the murder progress. And all of this cruelty, all of this bloodshed, in the name of this flag.
But those bloodied hands are the hands of Empire. They are not the hands of We the People. What this flag stands for — what our flag stands for is We the People. It is a flag that was not sewn by a servant to serve a king. It was sewn by a working-class widow to serve a Revolution that never ended. It is the only flag on Earth whose own government said: you may burn me, because what I stand for is bigger than what I’m made of.
But even the devil himself can cite scripture for his purpose.
And here comes the Would-Be King, wielding our flag to drive us into the Ground. Into the kind of grave that Empire has always dug for its prey. A nation, buried with our blood and our soil.
A whole nation. Its hard-won promises. Its ongoing Dream. Buried alive.
It is Midnight in America.
And from above — from the lip of the grave — the masked agents peer down.
You are forsaken, they say. You are alone. No one is coming to help you.
They are right. No one is going to show up and help us.
They don’t need to. Help is already here.
For when we squint into the darkness, beyond the warped white noise of this moment, Beyond the schemes and screams, beyond the world sold to us as screens, there is a quiet place. A Silence. Shrouded in shadow. And in the darkest of darkness, a Pulse. Not ours. Older.
The Ones Who Continued.
Their pulse, our pulse. Their breath, our breath. For through us, they continue.
Each one stared into centuries of shadow and let their little light shine. And when we are hurting, they understand, for we carry their wounds. And when we feel weak, they nourish us, for we carry their strength.
And when Empire throws us into the dark, their light continues. And as they continue, we continue.
And in that continuing, something shifts. For the Ones Who Continued show us something about this ground where we are buried. It too continued.
Through Fire and Ice. Through five Great Dyings. Five times, Life continued.
And we are made of Her. And She is made of Us. And all of Us connected — to the Air and the Water and the Earth and the Fire. All the way back to the Stars from which we came.
Starlings. Little stars. Who survived the Great Dyings not by becoming the most powerful, but by becoming the most together. No King commanding the turn. Each one its own. Each one part of the whole.
For Empire must strain to hold what it has stolen. Again and again and again, it must pour the concrete, push back the Wind, and poison the Water. And yet, Life continues. The green shoots still grow, the Wind still blows, and the Algae still rises. And so do We.
Together, we Rise.
Over pharaohs and führers and would-be kings, we Rise. We are not who they thought we were when they fought us. We are not who we thought we were when they taught us. We are mighty. We are the People. This is our promise. This is our Dream.
And in the darkness, the Ones Who Continued ask us, in hushed tones:
What if America is not dying, but waiting to be born?
What if the Would-Be King is one long last gasp of Empire, the Midnight before the Dawn?
What if he and his Empire are not devouring us, but themselves? What If the story of America is one long labor?
What If this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
We may never live to see the labor end. We may never see this Land’s oldest Dream born. But our Descendants will. And when they get there, we will become part of the Ones Who Continued, pushing them further. With all of our love.
And still, We the People continue.
So when they put childhood, faith, and America herself on ICE, we continue. When they kill Good and call good evil, we continue. In the name of all that is decent, all that is right, and all that is good, we continue.
We continue and continue and continue.
So, beloveds, we will breathe. And we will push. In the name of the Ones Who Continued, who bled, grieved, prayed, marched, organized, sung, struck, sat in, stood up, and laid down their lives to make real a promise. A Dream.
And so, however we pray or do not pray, however we speak or remain silent, however we gather, however we sing, however we love, we are all part of this Dream.
And so, let it be said:
We pledge allegiance to the Dream of the United States of Americans.
And to the promise for which it stands: one people, still becoming, dedicated to freedom.
Freedom to speak,
freedom to worship,
freedom from fear,
freedom from want.
One nation, indivisible
With liberty and justice for all.
We pledge to continue.
This project could not have happened without the support of so many people who believed in it before it existed. Thank you.
If this moved you: sign our open letter at wecontinue.us. Then share it with everyone you know who needs it right now. A lot of people are feeling hopeless. We need them with us.
The story is not finished. In fact, it is only getting started.
We continue.