Celebrating Independence During a Rise in Fascism

Reflections on July 4th and What it Means to Black Folks

Dear Friends,

We are living in a strange, scary world as we celebrate this country’s independence. While we see American flags flying around our cities and towns and even emblazoned on swim suits and cakes, we’re also experiencing a democratic crisis where our current government is making movements towards a fascist takeover. We’re also seeing residents of our cities disappeared and incarcerated merely for the color of their skin.

This is not new to our country’s history. And given that our country was founded on the enslavement of Black people, the moment feels uncanny. Yet, I do feel love towards this country and what I feel it could be. So I take this time of year to reflect on Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” – the truest reflection on this holiday that feels as resonant today as it did when he delivered it in 1852.

Douglass declared that for the enslaved Black person, Independence Day was not a celebration, but a mockery. “Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us,” he declares.

Today I feel he’s articulating a similarly painful truth: the distance between the American ideal and Black reality has not been closed—it has only shifted forms. Through Biking While Black, we document and challenge the lethal neglect, policing, and structural abandonment that Black bodies still endure on the streets. That labor, like Douglass’s oration, is a radical act of truth-telling.

We are in a humanitarian crisis—not simply political but deeply moral and spiritual. The violence towards Black, Brown, immigrant, queer, and poor people across this country; the rollback of civil rights protections; the weaponization of police and policy; the environmental violence; and the calculated sowing of chaos by those in power—including from the White House—are all modern manifestations of what Douglass condemned as “the gross injustice and cruelty to which [Black people] are the constant victims.”

We are under deadly siege. Just as Douglass challenged his white audience to confront their complicity and cowardice, our work invites the same: Who gets to move freely? Who is allowed to rest? Who is celebrated—and who is criminalized simply for existing in public space?

This is the beating heart of our activism and storytelling.

Douglass dreamed of a day when America would become what it promised. I believe that as well and that is what we are doing through our Biking While Black movement by reclaiming public space for Black and Indigenous People of Color on bikes, walking, on transit, in movement - by creating sacred spaces of memory and justice. That is restorative, not in the soft sense, but in the revolutionary, reparation-rooted sense: of making whole what was broken, returning dignity where it was stolen.

We are taking agency over our own independence. In that spirit, I wish you a happy, joyful independence day.

In solidarity and love,

Yolanda