Still Marching Toward Freedom in July
Global Black Caucus Community Drum Beat
Top 3 Calls to → Action
- 🗳️ Go to votefromabroad.org to register to vote, request your ballot, and/or help 3 (or why not more?) other overseas voters get sorted.
- 📽️ Get the information from this link on what to say, how to record and submit your Get Out The Vote video. Recruit others. The videos don’t have to be elaborate. For example, here I go again.
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🗓️ Check our online events on our website, and invite others to join.
We love the Fourth of July too. We love the cookouts, the fireworks, the music, the red, white, and blue, and the feeling of gathering with people we love. Many of us living abroad celebrate it just like they do back in America.
But this year, as the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the promise of freedom still rings hollow for too many Black Americans. The country declared liberty while slavery remained alive in the colonies, and Black people have spent every generation since pressing America to live up to its own words.
African Descended Soldier at Fort Schuyler & in the Mohawk Valley,
US Park Service.
A brief timeline tells the story. In 1619, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Point Comfort in Virginia. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery across the United States. Amendments followed, promising citizenship, equal protection, and voting rights.
Now, 250 years later, we are still asking a clear question. What does freedom mean if it depends on your zip code, your race, your income, your paperwork, your polling place, or whether your vote is protected? That is why we celebrate this year with clear eyes. We can love the idea of America and still challenge its current reality. We can honor those who marched before us by continuing to march now.
March 8, 2026, during the 61st anniversary Bloody Sunday commemoration in Selma, Alabama
As we move through the 2026 midterm primaries, let us stay steady and active. Every House seat and 35 Senate seats are on the ballot this November, and the people chosen in these races will shape voting rights, courts, education, health care, democracy, and the daily lives of Black communities at home and abroad–for years to come.
Enjoy the fireworks then check your voter registration, and support candidates who protect democracy. Don’t be afraid to talk to your family, or to help someone request a ballot. Do your best to show up through the primaries, through November, and beyond. That’s all any of us can do – our best. And so we will.
Freedom has never been handed to us. We have always had to move toward it together. So let’s keep moving.
You can download a pdf version of this newsletter here.
For more information, follow us on Facebook. Listen to the Power to the People Podcast.