freedom ...

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   I have mixed feelings about the 4th of July this year after the killings and events of the past several years, and news in my feed this morning.  I know that the day is meant to celebrate "our" freedom from the rule of England.  But at the same time, I feel that there really weren't that many freedoms won in the past 245 years.

  Slavery for blacks in this country ended just 155 years ago, a fact that I find discouraging because there is still so much slavery going on here and around the world.  And even though they were recognized as "free men," blacks were still segregated until the 1960s ~ in my lifetime!  It took 102 years for this country to recognize those free men as "equal men."

   Yet this morning my newsfeed had the story of a white man getting caught putting a KKK note on the coat of a black man, and I feel like there was nothing learned or gained in those 155 years.

  Our history doesn't speak of the First People forced from their lands for white man's advances, their children ripped from their arms to be "saved" by the white man's religions.  We don't mention the thousands of Chinese slaves used to build the railroads.  We don't speak of the illegal immigrants from Mexico or other countries who are "enslaved" by the threat of calling INS and forced to work and live in horrible conditions, for wages that no "American" would accept.

  Little is said most of the time in the news about the slaves in other countries.  We are a society more interested in the love lives of our celebrities than the conditions of people in the world.  People.  Humans.  Just like us, who are enslaved by others.  We care more about social media influencers and "flash-in-the-pan" wannabe celebrities than our neighbors.

   Why should we celebrate a day in which there were really no freedoms gained?  The Independence Day I would really want to celebrate is a day when ALL people are free, and ALL people are considered equal.  Can't we strive for that?