The Fourth of July is a time to remember the revolutionary spirit of the United States, the long and difficult fight that has been waged to realize a just society true to the founding principles of this nation — and to re-commit to the ongoing struggle for America to be.
This Independence Day, watch the first episode of America Will Be, an ongoing documentary film series produced by Dara Kell and the Kairos Center, which highlights the struggles breaking out all over this country to spark a “revolution of values” that will end poverty, racism, and militarism forever:
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As Langston Hughes wrote in 1935:
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!