The American revolution -- in which a bunch of aggrieved farmers were able to rise up and defeat the most powerful nation and its armies -- was a pretty impressive achievement. But as with so many revolutions, the post-revolutionary regime eventually came to look an awful lot like the one that it replaced, and never more so than right now. Like in the 1770s, our government is now headed by a dynastic ruler named George who has contempt for democracy and serves a moneyed elite interested mainly in squeezing as much cash as it can from its subjects.
The Russian radical Leon Trotsky used to talk about the need for a "permanent revolution" -- in which the revolutionary ideas that helped hatch a society are constantly renewed by new generations of rebels. I think we'd do well to consider such an idea now. To that end, as we approach the 4th of July, I propose celebrating those latter-day American revolutionaries who have tried to help America live up to its revolutionary promise: the labor activists, left-wingers, human rights advocates, and other troublemakers who have, like the revolutionaries of 1776, struggled against extraordinary odds to wrest power away from the entrenched and powerful.
Let's honor the 4th by remembering people like Emma Goldman and Mother Jones, Frederick Douglas and John Brown, Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Haywood, Margaret Sanger, and Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Abbie Hoffman, Cindy Sheehan. and thousands of other courageous heroes who have tried to keep America true to its democratic purpose. (And please forgive such a short list -- feel free to chime in with more names!)
This new way of looking at July 4 may already be gaining some traction. I recently heard that two of my films about latter-day American revolutionaries will be showing this July 4.
In Brooklyn, the BAM Cinematheque has chosen July 4 to screen Passin' It On, a film from over a decade ago that tells the story of a Black Panther leader who spent 19 years in prison for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. Showing Dhoruba Bin Wahad's story on July 4th makes sense to me -- the Panthers' rebellion against what they saw as the occupation and colonial domination of black America echoed the audacious spirit of the nation's founders. Unfortunately, the Federal government didn't see things that way, and turned their spies and law enforcement agencies against the Panthers, destroying them with dirty tricks and outright violence.
And way over in Italy, my new documentary, Sacco And Vanzetti, is screening on the 4th of July in Nicola Sacco's tiny home town in Puglia. Half a century before the Black Panthers, Italian immigrant anarchist Nicola Sacco was also dubiously accused of murder, and after a terribly biased trial, he and his comrade Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston. As Sacco and Vanzetti awaited their fate in prison, millions marched and protested -- desperate to see justice prevail. Those protesters, and the two working men they supported, were proud inheritors of the revolutionary spirit of our nation's original revolutionaries too. Before his arrest, Vanzetti even lived down the street from Plymouth Rock.
Could these screenings spark a trend -- the reclamation of July 4th as a day of dissent rather than a day of patriotism? Could July 4th become our new May Day -- a holiday dedicated to keeping America's revolutionary ideals alive instead of an excuse for flag waving?
Back during the original revolution, Tom Paine observed that "an army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot." Time and again, the principled stance of generations of American rebels has repelled the most powerful forces of money and power in this country. May their spirit shine through amidst the fireworks of the 4th.