July 4th has come and gone. The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence turned out to be underwhelming. Neither Trump’s celebration of himself nor various localized MAGA events made much of an impression beyond those immediately involved. Emblematic was the march of a few hundred masked fascists – the “Patriotic Front” — down Pennsylvania Avenue. Simultaneously dangerous and pathetic, their presence underlines the right-wing violence in the air. The fascist July 4th ironically seemed more a repudiation of the American Revolution than a commemoration of it, what with its Confederate flags and rejection of even the notion of political democracy.
Local celebrations, with picnics, barbeques, fireworks and gatherings of friends and families took place as always, most with little reference to national politics or historical narratives. There were some protests as well, but given the importance of upcoming national elections, on-going actions to defend migrant communities, the importance of solidarity with Palestine and opposition to the Iran War, all took precedence. Neither a dominant narrative nor a counter narrative setting contemporary conflicts in relation to a coherent understanding of U.S. history has been a significant part of the semi-quincentennial.
The bicentennial in 1976 also fell flat with no central overarching event, no overall theme promoted by press or government even for local events. A federal commission was unable to agree on much of anything and simply dissolved itself. Like today, there was a momentary vacuum in hegemonic discourse.
National protests, however, did take place. Several friends and I packed ourselves into a car, drove from Milwaukee to Philadelphia and took part in the “Bicentennial Without Colonies” march and rally – joining tens of thousands of others (estimates ranged from 30,000 – 50,000) to uphold a different understanding of our heritage, a different vision for our future. Largely forgotten, re-calling that event in the context of the times may shed some light on current challenges – including the importance of expressions of popular discontent and alternative politics within our contradictory history.
Philadelphia 1976
“It is to assert the long and heroic tradition of our people’s resistance to all forms of tyranny, a tradition which today takes the form of the battle for democratic rights, against the effects of the system’s economic crisis and for an end to colonialism, that we will observe the Bicentennial in Philadelphia on July 4 in protest and in celebration of our unity in struggle.” – The July 4th Coalition Call to Action, 1976.
That call was followed by four central demands — demands that could still serve as demands now for they remain as unfulfilled as they are needed:
A Bicentennial Without Colonies
Freedom for All Oppressed Nations
Full Democracy and Equality
Jobs and a Decent Standard of Living
Chief sponsor of the rally was the Puerto Rican Socialist Party – which also had the largest and (to my eyes) most impressive contingent. In September of 1975, Piri Thomas, author of Down These Mean Streets — a memoir of Spanish Harlem, of life in poverty, prison and Puerto Rican identity in all its complexity – wrote in support of the call for the protest:
“There is no way that the United States can celebrate its Bicentennial without an untroubled conscience, while it holds sway over Puerto Rico. The only honest way it can celebrate its anniversary of freedom and independence from England is by not standing in the way of their right to be free, the right to be free citizens, the right to independence and self-determination, which the U.S. won for itself at such great human sacrifice in 1776. Puerto Rico must be free so that we can come into their own as a people, so that their children can be born into the free Republic.”
Thomas’ perspective underlined the general thrust of the rally, which sought to connect revolutionary demands for systemic changes in the United States to our revolutionary heritage and the promise of liberty made at the nation’s founding, even if denial of liberty domestically and to peoples abroad runs like a red thread through our history. PSP, founded in 1971 as an outgrowth of the Moviemiento Pro-Independencia (MPI), was a political party that saw the struggle for independence as part of the working-class struggle for economic justice and socialism, organizing independent union centers in Puerto Rico alongside work in communities, campuses and in cultural centers.
Though based on the island, PSP also developed substantial strength in Puerto Rican communities in New York City and other East Coast urban areas. Fusing a socialist perspective with popular nationalism, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party saw its struggle as part of the worldwide movement – from Vietnam to Cuba – in struggle for freedom. As PSP chair Juan Mari Bras said in his speech in Philadelphia: “Independence for Puerto Rico is a blow against imperialism and will be a victory for your people as well as us.”
The other principal co-sponsor of the event was the American Indian Movement, joined by other Native American groups. Founded in 1968, AIM took part in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island as a symbolic assertion of Indigenous sovereignty, then, in 1970, occupied a replica of the Mayflower on Thanksgiving, declaring the holiday a national day of mourning. This was followed in 1972 by AIM’s Trail of Broken Treaties caravan that began in California and ended with an occupation of the Department of the Interior in Washington D.C. and, in 1973, an armed occupation of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (site of the Wounded Knee Massacre). Despite FBI and police violence and infiltration, AIM continued to grow after the occupation, inspiring other indigenous occupations and initiatives. By reclaiming a history from which they had been excluded, Native mobilization for the bicentennial protest was part of a wider initiative to reclaim local control over education, policing, health care and housing.
Also supporting the march was the Black Panther Party with Elaine Bown, the BPP’s national chair, giving one of the keynote speeches at the rally — running down the litany of crimes committed by the United States against people of African descent from the days of slavery up to contemporary police violence. Since their founding in 1966, the Panthers projected their aims as being consistent with the right to revolution proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence. In 1970 they organized a “Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention” in Philadelphia that drew about 10,000 people which served to critique oppressive conditions in the present based on unfulfilled proclamations made at the time of the United States’ birth. Freedom and equality, democracy and self-determination were seen as inseparable while unity amongst various liberation struggles was seen as central to victory. Though – like AIM — much weakened under the weight of government repression and disruption, the Panthers were still influential within the African American community and the broad left with health clinics, food banks, community schools, surviving locally, notwithstanding arrest after arrest, trial after trial.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, founded in 1967, was another organization that endorsed the July 4 call. In 1970, VVAW – together with Nurses for Peace — organized a march from Morristown, New Jersey to Valley Forge, with guerilla theatre performed along the way replicating “search and destroy” missions of occupying armies, be it the British in the 18th century or the United States in Southeast Asia. Over 100 soldiers home from war testified about atrocities they witnessed or committed in Vietnam as part of VVAW’s “Winter Soldier” hearing in Detroit in 1971 – the phrase a reference to Thomas Paine’s denunciation of “sunshine patriots and summertime soldiers” who deserted the cause of the American Revolution when the course ahead was difficult, the outcome unclear. This was a prelude to a larger event in which veterans threw their medals and discharge papers at the Capitol Building in DC. Occupations of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill in Massachusetts, of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, of the Statue of Liberty in New York, all drew attention to how the U.S. foreign policy was a betrayal of national ideals. Although divided about its direction after U.S. troops came home in 1973 and the war itself ended in 1975, VVAW continued to work with vets to overcome combat-induced trauma, to get the medical attention those injured in combat needed, organized around the demand for jobs as well as amnesty for draft resistors.
Many other organizations endorsed the call and worked to mobilize attendance at it. Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the aboveground organization emerging out of the Weather Underground by way of its Hard Times Conference in Chicago earlier that year, actively promoted the march and rally. Though unable to thread the needle between its rhetoric and practice, its underground and open work, PFOC appealed to left counter-cultural communities, an inchoate radicalism that survived on the margins of campuses and run down neighborhoods across the country. A large crowd attended the Milwaukee screening of Underground (directed by Emile D’Antonio) which was presented as part of their attempt to surface. Many years – well 50 years – have passed, but if memory serves me right there was a fair amount of discussion of the Philadelphia march after the screening.
Reflecting a different, more substantive politics of the time, the Guardian, a radical left independent news weekly, broadly promoted the event nationally (it’s where I first read about it) while also promoting discussion about the July 4th Coalition’s demands. Founded in 1948 to support Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential campaign, by the 1970s the Guardian was part of an initiative to create a non-sectarian communist organization out of various formations that emerged out of the collapse of SDS six years previous – part of a wider search amongst many who had been part of the New Left to build multi-racial organizations rooted in the working class.
Other organizations and groups signed on as well while a parallel march was held in San Francisco (which drew about 10,000 people). No doubt most who joined the march were not part of any national delegation, often marching with groups from their own state or city. That at least is what my friends and I did. Our main call was “Justice for Ray Mendoza,” a Chicano youth in Milwaukee who in 1974 shot two off-duty policemen who were beating him, then was denied counsel when arrested. His case was taken up by the local chapter of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an organization which grew out of the movement to free Angela Davis.
Walking up and along the march, we could hear slogans chanted by people from other localities similarly keyed to an issue close to home, reinforcing the sense of multiple movements organizing around local issues within the framework of the four overarching demands of the July 4th Coalition. It was a moment of heightened activism in labor with wildcat strikes, union reform movements and organizing drives seemingly everywhere, of the women’s movement seemingly on the verge of passing the Equal Rights Amendment, the Gay Liberation movement a public presence including at the march, while the environmental movement was slowly growing. And alongside domestic struggles, solidarity was expressed for Cuba, Chile, South Africa, Palestine.
A wholly separate event was held in Washington DC, organized by the People’s Bicentennial Committee (which other friends from Milwaukee attended). Founded in 1971, the PBC attempted to use the heritage of the American Revolution to posit a tradition of political and economic democracy undermined by corporate wealth and political corruption. To that end they organized disruptive actions at anniversary events celebrating the Boston Tea Party in 1973, and the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1975 as building blocks to a rally in Washington DC in 1976.
Attacked by the press as the political mood in the country shifted to the right and attacked in Congress where any challenge to a narrow telling of U.S. history – then as now – raised the ire of the right, the PBC event in DC drew fewer participants than their prior actions and fewer than the July 4th Coalition events. Although ignoring the destructive legacies of the Revolution, the People’s Bicentennial Committee did reflect a deep-seated understanding that the power of concentrated wealth was a betrayal of the American Revolution. They posited the need to rebuild forms of “town hall,” community-based participatory democracy.
The July 4th Coalition, the People’s Bicentennial Committee, local collectives and national organizations, all sought a political meaning for the present in the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The denunciation of U.S. racism and militarism, poverty amidst wealth, workplace exploitation and insecurity, was countered by local and national demands for justice, democracy and equality for all; a proclamation of what the Declaration of Independence and American Revolution could stand for, should inspire – without forgetting the violence, plunder and exploitation of land and labor here and abroad that was simultaneously part of that history.
Shifting Winds
It seemed to me at the time that the march marked a new beginning. While the heyday of left radicalism had crested by around 1972 or 73, there was a sense that the radical upsurge of the prior decade had reached a certain maturation and that the “movement” would emerge stronger and more stable than it had been. There was an instability in society that seemed to be creating openings for transformative politics.
To get a sense of that instability, we should recall that from 1960 – 1980 no US president served two consecutive full terms of office. Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson refused to run for a second term under mass pressure, Nixon resigned rather than being removed from office, Ford was defeated for re-election, Carter was defeated for re-election. What was occurring at the top of the political system was the tip of the iceberg, uncertainty prevailed everywhere.
That instability was due to the inability of the political system to contain or respond to popular movements organizing to build upon the social gains of the New Deal era in the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the early 60s, and the substantive critique of U.S. foreign policy that emerged in the mid-60s out of the anti-Vietnam War movement. At the same time, pressure came from the other side, as business demands for retrenchment, to turn back the clock on labor rights, joined with a growing racist right in opposition to the Black freedom and Women’s Liberation, to once again give the military and intelligence agencies a free hand to run our informal but all too real empire.
The dominant hegemonic discourse of the Cold War years was in tatters – part of the reason for the federal government’s inability to hold a national bicentennial celebration. Initiatives such as those embodied by the July 4th Coalition reflected a sensibility that out of the chaos it might be possible to establish a counter-narrative around which transformative politics could be built.
But that was not to be. It soon became clear that we were entering a period of endings not new beginnings. Although Nixon’s attempted coup aimed at creating an imperial presidency unbounded by the rule of law was halted by mass resistance combined with sufficient elite opposition, his so-called War on Drugs and Southern Strategy, set the stage for mass incarceration and the mainstreaming of racist reaction.
Alongside this between 1969 and 1976 about 15 million jobs were destroyed in the United States via plant closings. Though the full effect was masked by the economic “benefits” of building our killing machine in Vietnam, the destruction of U.S. manufacturing was underway. Nixon’s decision to remove the US from the gold standard in 1971 and end the system of fixed currency exchange rates in 1973 – moves made with the support of banks and key corporate sectors — was the opening step to undermining the economy’s industrial base through financialization. Significantly, that move was made unilaterally – for all the talk of “our alliances,” Nixon (just as prior and subsequent Administrations) had little use for the fiction of cooperation when it came to advancing corporate power and military might.
Policies of U.S. global domination and a broad domestic consensus based on economic growth were thereby replaced by a new paradigm: dominance based on austerity – neo-liberalism/corporate globalization were taking place, the half-fought war on poverty turned into a war on the poor, the stage set for union-busting campaigns that began in the mid-70s and took off like a thunderbolt throughout the 1980s and 90s was underway. The resulting job loss led to insecurity, loss of hope, and intensified workplace pressure, it also disrupted communities, put pressure on families, undermined social life where working-class power could express itself.
Jimmy Carter was elected president with a large majority in the House and a veto-proof majority in the Senate, in 1976, proved to be a thin reed of opposition. Accepting the premises of neo-liberalism, Carter opened the door to Clinton and the Democratic Party’s jettisoning of FDR’s policy framework, within less than a decade. The way was now clear for Reagan. The 1980 election marked an end to the establishment’s crisis – austerity and indebtedness followed, social policy was balkanized, while a new “common sense” emerged in support of free trade, reduced federal social spending, growing police power domestically, and embrace of the U.S. role U.S. as the world’s policeman globally.
A Vision Lost
Instead of a new beginning we were on the cusp of an ideological, political, socio-economic offensive for which neither the organized left, labor and social movements, nor the communities in which they were rooted were prepared.
The fate of the co-sponsoring organizations reflects that transition. Within less than ten years the national impact and organizational capacity of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, which dissolved in 1983), American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party (which disbanded in 1982), and the American Indian Movement – still surviving albeit diminished after a plit and localized in its work. Divisions in VVAW led to a sectarian takeover followed by a bitter split; the organization survived but was no longer the galvanizing force it had once been. Prairie Fire’s attempt at a broad public outreach proved stillborn while the Guardian ceased publication in 1991 – by which time the impetus to form a new communist movement that it promoted, had also collapsed.
Repression was partly to blame, so too were internal divisions that external pressure exacerbated. But taking a step back, what undermined radical left groupings lay in losing connection with the social base in which they had been rooted. The mixture of hope and anger within the Puerto Rican, Native American, African American (and Chicano and Asian American) communities that was the basis for popular upheavals was beginning to give way to desperation and despair as job loss and social welfare cuts took their toll. So too brief uptick of labor radicalism and union militancy, was undone by the destruction of manufacturing. The youth culture that was the milieu within which Prairie Fire and other organizations operated was disintegrating. The same can be said for the political left, the generation radicalized by the civil rights movement and Vietnam was losing a sense of cohesiveness. Individuals were increasingly looking toward individual solutions to social problems as collective action struck many as a dead end. As the 1980s turned into the 90s, the prospective of transformative change, which had seemed graspable, appeared ever further away.
Many of the organizations responded to the sense of changing times by turning inward, becoming narrower organizationally or ideologically – a self-destructive process, removing those so engaged further from the communities from which they sprung or within which they were engaged. The democratic spirit essential to the working-class movement, essential to socialism, needs to be maintained within radical organizations that seek to bring about popular power. Repression is best fought by finding ways to be as open as possible, to retain the confidence and support of the communities in which a movement lives – absent that, the oppressors gain the upper hand. So too is the more subtle form of repression when culture and “common sense” change, turning inspiring words into deadened language even as being spoken. A critical, challenging perspective of the dominant outlook or structures becomes meaningless when isolated; the “correct” position becomes false if it stands outside daily life and experience. Most of the organizations and movements around the July 4th coalition understood that at their origins but were unable to sustain them over time when forward progress was halted, when the national mood shifted.
Activism remained as witness to the flowering of the Jackson campaign and the Rainbow in the 1980s. Resistance, organizing, kept alive the belief that radical change is possible. Most people who were active in the various movements and organizations that were part of the Bicentennial Without Colonies held onto their values – fifty years later and none of the folks I was close to back had surrendered their convictions. And the destructiveness of the assault on popular rights and living standards Reagan initiated created new generations who would look for answers beyond what was on offer.. Nonetheless, the setback in the movement for a true democratization of the country was substantial. Radical change requires a sense of the past that recognizes that injustice can be overcome, alongside a utopian vision of what the future may hold, as part of popular discourse that lives on in popular imagination and is brought together by work at every level in society – be it electoral and legislative, be it rooted in communities or workplaces, be it on the streets or in academia. Once pieces of the collective project are torn asunder, the project as a whole starts spiraling downward.
Looking Ahead
Reaction’s solution has run its course – the financial crisis in 2008 marked the end of the neo-liberal consensus, the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s unrestrained armed assaults on Palestinians and on neighboring countries broke the myth of the U.S. as a disinterested enforcer of “rules based” global order. The inability to construct a popular historical narrative around the 250th celebration of the Declaration of Independence is a reflection of the absence of an elite consensus about our country’s path to the present, the absence of a dominant discourse that would echo through society, just as was the case for the 200th.
We saw this on display during the 2024 presidential election campaign – competing versions of history to defend political programs unmoored from the realities of most people’s lives.
MAGA relies on the old reactionary playbook of contrasting an idealized version of the past with the present and seeing the United States in perpetual decline – be that idealized past the pre-civil rights 1950s, or the pre-New Deal 1920s, or even pre-Civil War/Reconstruction America. That decline is identified with every step toward racial and gender equality, every step away from the role of Christianity and the church in daily life. Since the United States has always been multi-racial and multi-ethnic, since demands for equality have been an insistent presence in political and communal life since the country’s founding and since disestablishment of the church was part and parcel of the American revolution, MAGA history is based on a set of lies – or, more to the point, an abstract ideal (an ugly ideal) is superimposed on the past to rationalize a current political program.
Liberalism relies on a celebration of continual progress, past wrongs acknowledged but only as wrongs of the past. Thus the Harris campaign theme of “joy,” of celebration. Progress can be impeded by bad individuals, but our political and economic system are never to blame. Therefore progress has been gained due to courageous heroes and heroines whose selfless acts reflect the virtues of our democracy, never by collective action that challenges the causes of oppressive acts or policies. The multi-racial, multi-national character of the U.S., our diverse cultural heritage, the diverse religious backgrounds, are – importantly — recognized as part of our history, but the systemic inequalities that never go away are left out of the picture.
This is a different kind of abstraction, imposed on the past to justify a current political project. Ignored are the millions of people who live paycheck to paycheck, the millions in our prisons and jails, those weighed down by student debt, medical debt, housing costs, precarious jobs – or are simply worried about what the future holds for themselves or their families. The systemic roadblocks that always place profit before people, that privileges the few over the many, and that reproduces fragmentations and layers of inequality is written out.
The differences between these two outlooks are profound yet they also share a framework that is equally significant: a belief in American exceptionalism which dovetails closely with a belief in the need for the U.S. to exert global economic and military dominance. And, for the most part, workers, unions, labor struggles are all shunted to the sidelines.
Today’s instability runs deeper than that of the 1970s; Trump’s fascism more dangerous than Nixon’s authoritarianism, the disconnect and alienation of broad sectors of society from our political system more widespread. Today’s left is rooted in sections of the population stuck in precarious work, experiencing downward mobility, a sense of not being needed by a society that seems bent on self-destruction. As multiple forms of activism take shape, there is a need to learn from our country’s past – which includes the past of social struggle. The need for self-determination, for freedom and equality, for jobs and economic security, for an end to war are as important today as in 1976, even as people learn and give greater depth to an understanding of our national history. If we – if I – learned anything as the 1970s came to an end, it is that if revolutionary aspirations, the dream of a people-centered world in harmony with nature, are to flourish then programs and demands must come out of popular engagement, and not serve as impositions upon it.
Final Thoughts: Solidarity and Love
The Democratic National Convention in 2024 was an event of contradictions galore. Superficiality won the day, but there was substance as well – and that substance is worth noting when looking back to 1976 or 1776 (or 1876 for that matter). UAW President Shawn Fain expressed the importance of the working-class struggle against corporate power by highlighting solidarity across the board:
“Trump is pushing the divide and conquer tactics of the rich. It’s the oldest trick in the book. They want to blame the frustrations of working-class people. They want to take those frustrations; they want to blame it on race. They want to blame it on LGBTQ plus people. They want to blame it on some destitute and desperate person at the border. They do that because they want working class people to be divided and keep the focus off the one true enemy, corporate greed.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed a similar call for unity in difference by highlighting the work that workers perform:
“You cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business. To love this country is to fight for its people, all people, working people, every day Americans like bartenders and factory workers, and fast food cashiers who punch a clock and are on their feet all day in some of the toughest jobs out there.”
As we confront our challenges now, perhaps we can honor the sentiment that all are equally endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by putting these sentiments together with Piri Thomas’ 1975 article:
“The freedom and independence of any country is an inalienable right. We seek freedom born of dignity and understanding, consideration for each other, a true blending of our hearts and minds in a solidarity that creates a true unity of humanity. All humans, hand in hand, liberating ourselves from ignorance and hate.
But we all know that freedom is not won without struggle, that progress is born in pain. No revolution can succeed unless it is built on the firm foundation of love and understanding, a unity among all the colors.”
Kurt Stand has been a member of DSA since 1983, and has been long active in the labor movement in various capacities. He spent 15 years in federal custody and after his release, he worked as a bookseller for 10 years. A Portside Moderator, his articles have appeared in ZNetwork.org, the Washington Socialist, Stansbury Forum, Socialism & Democracy, Socialist Project and elsewhere.Email
