"Who's your patriot?"

Today, I marched in the Independence Day Parade downtown! I didn't even know it existed. I'm applying to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, and they invited me to march with them.

Marching down Constitution Avenue with the 1812 Star-Spangled Banner

Even after five years in New Orleans, it's still my first time in a real parade. I even got to meet and take a photo with DAR's President-General.

White is definitely fattening and definitely not my color.

Everyone asks, "Where are you from? Who's your patriot?" to see if you're related. Especially cool was meeting another member whose family has lived in Washington since before it was Washington. Pretty exciting stuff for a nerd like me.

happy fourth of July!

Two thoughts for today:

1. Independence has meant different things to different people throughout our nation's history. Frederick Douglass' thoughts on the topic, delivered in an 1852 speech, remain as poignant today as then:

"You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe 'that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,' and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own."

2. Does independence, does freedom, involve the right to voting and legislative representation? If the answer is yes, then "give us us free" in D.C. (Amistad and Glory are my two favorite movies to watch on the 4th of July!)

From the D.C. Flag Day flash mob in Dupont Circle