To me, Lady Liberty and the words on her base should be what America strives for.

To me, America should be celebrating the beautiful diversity of our country. It should be celebrating that people come from different backgrounds and experiences. It should be recognizing that people look and act different from each other and being amazed at how wonderful that is.

To me, America should be about facing up to the dark and difficult times in the past. It should be about recognizing that so often our government has and continues to harm people who look and act differently than those in power. It should be about reading the history of how white people treated Black and Indigenous people in the past and continue to treat them and not looking away. It should be about looking those experiences hard in the eye and saying, “Yes, that did happen.” Then committing and acting to change those systems.

To me, America should be about remembering that so many of our relatives came seeking refuge. It should be about embracing our friends, neighbors, and family members who are recent immigrants and put everything on the line to come here. It should be about opening our arms to those who still want to come.

To me, America should be about changing unjust systems even when we ourselves are flawed. Many of the Founding Fathers were downright monstrous and yet wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They argued that they should not be under royal rule even while denying that to so many other people. But they created the founding documents of our country with a way to change them over and over again as we learn and grow as a people.

To me, America should be about constantly striving to live up to our own ideals. It should be about failing and then getting back up and trying do better. It should be about finding new and better and more just ways to do things.

This Independence Day, this is the America I want to teach my children to build.

People may say because I protest some of our government’s policies, that I’m not patriotic. People may say because I disagree mightily with the President that I’m not patriotic. People may say because I talk about the horrible things our government and people have done to others in the past and present that I’m not patriotic.

But I do what I do because I’m patriotic. I love my country and want it to be so much better than it could be. I believe it could be so much better than it is.

This is what America should be to me. It is not what we are now and definitely have not been in the past, but it’s what we could be in the future.

Painting by Brittany M. Noriega at Artwork by Brittany M Noriega. She is selling prints of it through her website: https://www.artworkbmnoriega.com/?fbclid=IwAR1INr8jIeAXFHHl70pgwN9BGiGZRGg1vCSFeYURsGkI0u6JiEBDa4YppEY