F*ck the 4th of July
Fuck the 4th of July.
For 248 years, July 4th has been celebrated as “Independence Day” in the US. However, in the Bronx, this day is not marked by a celebration of US patriotism. Instead, we rebel. We play loud music, launch fireworks, and hold BBQs in defiance of the NYPD, rejecting and denouncing the racist, classist laws of this imperialist state.
The US, like much of the West, is a barbaric blight on this earth. It exists solely as an apartheid regime, a colonialist project sustained through racial capitalism, liberal democracy, and white supremacy. We echo Frederick Douglass, who 172 years ago asked, “What to the [Enslaved] is the Fourth of July?” Today, we ask: "What to the oppressed and colonized is the 4th of July?”
Our answer is clear: the 4th of July is a bourgeois celebration, a reminder of a commodified farce of democracy that has never existed for Afro-Indigenous and colonized people in this corrupt, imperialist nation. It is a day that underscores the relentless expansion of capitalism, even as Bronxites are displaced from their homes for luxury developments, even as the NYPD continues to kill our neighbors extrajudicially, and even as the genocide in Gaza persists. We have never had a reason to celebrate this prisonhouse of nations.
The so-called "exceptional" nature of the US is fundamentally rooted in the government's self-ordained power to surveil, invade, exploit, and kill, internally and externally, under the guise of “defending liberty, democracy, and freedom." This power is materially derived from US global military and political hegemony, a meticulous construct of white supremacy.
By this point, it should be obvious to all that Biden is not running this empire. Instead, a cabal of billionaires and corporations hold the reins, demonstrating that the Presidency is inconsequential. Whether it's Biden, Trump, or anyone else, imperialist domination and the exploitation of the colonized global working class persists. That is what the country’s “founding fathers” designed it to do.
We focus on building revolutionary power in the Bronx and creating a mass movement of people ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. Our faith in liberation lies in the people of the Bronx and long-term struggle over bourgeois electoral reformism. We will always prioritize doing the work necessary to seize power by force and providing materially for our people who demand clean air, water, guaranteed jobs and housing, fulfilling rest and ample leisure time over liberal demands for "visibiility" or “feeling seen.” No one should aspire to assimilate into this empire, which requires attaining whiteness. In a society dominated by white supremacy, the concept of 'whiteness' is inherently tied to the existence of a racial 'Other,' specifically Afro-Indigenous individuals. People who identify as ‘white’ are fully aware that their racial identity and the privileges it affords them are dependent on the existence and subjugation of Afro-Indigenous people.
We are committed to a revolutionary overturning of these economic and racial social structures through endless organizing, healing, and education. We believe in sustained resistance, in self-sacrifice, and we challenge each individual to consider how they are actively resisting and utilizing all forms of sustained revolutionary practice in their daily lives.
In the words of Frederick Douglass, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham.”
We do not celebrate imperialism, death, and destruction; instead, we organize for liberation from it.
We reject the colonizers' so-called “Independence Day” and propose that July 4th be recognized as an International Day of Struggle Against US Imperialism.
