Our Country 'Tis of Thee

We are not a Sweet Land of Liberty. We never have been.

I want to find the will to celebrate our country, but it has been a difficult few years around here, a difficult few weeks. 

States’ rights to force birth now mean more than a woman’s bodily autonomy. 

We have more rights to own a gun than we do to own our own body. 

We’ve lost the division between church and state; we now uphold a man’s right to publicly pray to a Christian god on center field with his high school team at a public school football game under the guise of free speech. Guns and Prayers. 'Murica.

18% of the country controls 52 senate seats.

It’s hard to find things to celebrate today. 

Highland Park, celebrated home of Ferris Bueller and Kevin McAllister, tried to celebrate today, but another white guy with a gun (or 4) decided that, once again, people needed to die. A Fourth of July parade turned to chaos when 7 people were murdered and another 45 were wounded by a white guy with a gun.

Purchased legally, of course.

This was what the Founding Fathers wanted, right?

Liberty and Justice for All.

If I hear Lee Greenwood sing his anthem one more time, I might vomit. Because, until I know that I’m free — free from being murdered at a parade by yet another guy with a gun…free to take care of my own body as I see fit…free to love who I want and how I want...free from being murdered in my classroom…free to speak the truth in that classroom about the history of our country and the institutionalized racism and misogyny that continues to destroy us all…

Until I know that I am free and that we all are free — I am not proud to be an American today.