Last week, we celebrated our independence as a nation from the colonial rule of the British. Just two weeks before, for the first time, we celebrated Juneteenth, a day significant for the liberation of Black people in our nation, and a poignant reminder that not everyone won freedom at the same time. For Black, Indigenous, Latinx and immigrant communities, who experience disproportionate levels of incarceration, internment camps, and detention centers to this day, some of whom are afraid to walk down the streets without being accosted or fear a life-saving vaccine could be used as a weapon against them, freedom has been an elusive American dream, more mirage than reality.
That mirage made manifest in the last year in the context of the loss of so many Black and Brown lives is beginning to change the way we talk about and with one another, the way we see one another, the way we see America and its possibility as a nation that welcomes everyone, is strong because of its diversity, because of our ability to create “out of many, one.” If we lose that dream, when we lose our belief and narrative that we are all in this together, that we gain from and need one another—that’s when we truly lose not only our personal independence, but the possibility of who we could be together as a nation.
I hope each of us to become founders of a new America—one that creates the conditions for everyone to thrive together and to realize who we can be to one another. We don’t need to be in a Constitutional Convention to do that. We need to build bridges within our communities, with the people we know. From Tyler Norris and Michael McAfee’s powerful dialogue about what whiteness means in America to Yolanda Roary’s powerful poem, this WIN Digest issue is about the conversations we need to have with one another to restore a nation on a foundation of belonging, civic muscle, equity, and racial justice.
Today as I write this piece, sitting within a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die”, I can’t help but hope that someday, we will choose to also celebrate an Interdependence day. One which celebrates who we are to one another, which invites us to be in relationship, to hear each other’s stories and truths, to acknowledge, to restore, and to strengthen our personal and civic bonds and our shared dream of an America for everyone.
