This week, my colleague Johanna alerted me to a poem written by Langston Hughes. It reads, in part:

I swear to the Lord
I still can’t see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.

It reminded me of a speech from Frederick Douglass that I am quite familiar with, in which he asks “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?”

I recently began watching the news again, which, while not a mistake, proved to be less than ideal for my mental health. Yet, it is important to pay attention to what is happening in our nations and in our world. 

It is time to take care of one another. The world will not be kinder, or gentler, or fairer in the weeks and months to come. It will not be catered to our hopes and dreams. We have to be the hope. We have to be the dream. Nobody is coming to save us, and there will be no supernatural or extraterrestrial event that will make life better.

We who have more must give more to those with less. We who can speak, must shout for those whose voices are hoarse and who have been muted from history.

It’s Independence Day in the United States of America. It is not time to complain. It is time to fight.

In Friendship,

Rashid Darden

Associate Secretary for Communications and Outreach