What Are You Actually Celebrating This Fourth of July?
What if the entire system — elections, protections, legislation, adjudication, militarization, all of it — were rigged beyond the people’s ability to reform it?
What if the entire system — elections, protections, legislation, adjudication, militarization, all of it — were rigged beyond the people’s ability to reform it?
teleSUR spoke to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Konrad Aderer, Ron Gochez and Ameena Qazi to gather their thoughts on the U.S. holiday.
By
Elliott Gabriel
and
Julian Cola
On the 4th of July, the United States – a nation in the midst of doing all it can to preserve its hegemony and waning global dominance – gears up to celebrate its independence from former empire Britain. Ambitions on such a day, even for a country whose political class routinely touts self-indulgent precepts of “exceptionalism,” run high.
Elliott Gabriel is a former staff writer for teleSUR English and MintPress News based in Quito, Ecuador. He has taken extensive part in advocacy and organizing in the pro-labor, migrant justice and police accountability movements of Southern California and the state's Central Coast.
Julian Cola is a translator (Brazilian-Portuguese to English). A former staff writer at the pan-Latin American news outlet, teleSUR, his articles and essays also appear in Africa is a Country, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, Counterpunch and elsewhere.