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Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down Florida’s “Stop WOKE” Law

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2026 //
0

In a stunning victory for the First Amendent’s guarantee of free speech, a federal appeals court overturned Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” act. A district court judge had previously issued a preliminary injunction on the law, calling it “positively dystopian.”

The state contended that it paid the professors’ salaries and had the authority to tell them what to teach. The appeals court decision disagreed, by a 2-1 vote. The dissenting judge–Barbara Lagoa– was appointed by Trump.

The opinion said:

“Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth,”

The dissenting judge wrote:

“We need not agree or disagree with Florida that the viewpoints at issue here constitute racial discrimination,” Lagoa wrote. “We need only acknowledge that the state is allowed to decide what is endorsed by its professors in its own classrooms.”

The American Civil Liberties Union announced:

TALLAHASSEE, FL – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit today struck down the higher education provisions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, a classroom censorship law in Florida that severely restricted educators from teaching about race and gender in schools and workplaces. The court ruled the higher education provision of the law was unconstitutional, saying: “Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry—classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

The court goes on to say it does not matter if the State of Florida agrees or disagrees with the ideas. “Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”

“This ruling sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited to the whims of politicians,” said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “All students and educators deserve to have a free and open exchange about ideas without government control. Students can’t fight racial discrimination that they don’t see; training and instruction is key to empowering future leaders to pursue racial justice.”

The decision comes in Pernell v. Lamb, a 2022 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and the law firm Ballard Spahr on behalf of a group of Florida professors at public universities whose teaching has been impacted by this law.

“We are thrilled the court has stopped the erasure of topics that have real implications for our students, allowing them to learn, discuss, and develop tools for combatting the complex issue of racism in our country without being gagged by those who would dictate that only state-approved thought may be promoted,” said LeRoy Pernell, a Florida A&M University College of Law professor and the named plaintiff in this lawsuit.

Championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, this overreaching law specifically targeted and placed vague restrictions on educators’ ability to teach concepts such as racism, sexism, privilege, and unconscious bias. It also imposed harsh penalties, including ineligibility for millions of dollars in performance funding from the state for colleges and universities and termination for educators who had been found to violate the law.

The court concluded, “[i]f the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

“The Stop W.O.K.E Act is an egregious example of widespread efforts across the country, most notably in Florida, to force the public higher education system to adopt the viewpoints of those in power. Thankfully, we have a judicial system to protect First Amendment rights and ensure that professors have the academic freedom to foster the type of learning environment where all students can learn and thrive,” said Jin Hee Lee, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund. “It is no coincidence that this state law aimed to censor the perspectives of Black people and LGBTQ+ people, the very same people who are currently under attack. With this decision, the federal appeals court has made clear that Florida cannot actively erase their history of discrimination or their lived experiences without running afoul of our Constitution.”

This decision marked the first time an appellate court has considered the constitutionality of this censorship movement, and it will have implications for students and educators across the country who are subject to related laws. Since the Stop W.O.K.E Act went into effect, more than 30 states have moved to introduce and pass higher education classroom censorship bills. In May 2024, a federal court struck down a law in another ACLU lawsuit in New Hampshire, holding that the law’s vagueness violated the 14th Amendment. A similar higher education classroom censorship law was struck down in an ACLU lawsuit in Oklahoma, ruling that many of its provisions were so vague that it was difficult for teachers to know what they could and could not teach in the classroom.

“By upholding the district court’s ruling, the Eleventh Circuit ensured that our system of higher education is guided by the principle of free speech, not government censorship,” said Carrie McNamara, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. “Our classrooms are meant to be rooms of curiosity, creativity, and learning. When we stifle this kind of critical thinking, we risk losing our education system as we know it.”

“The recent legislative efforts to undermine academic freedom and limit the rights of marginalized communities are incredibly harmful,” said Emmy Parsons, a litigator at Ballard Spahr who was a member of the legal team. “We are proud to be part of this historic case and will keep fighting to protect the First Amendment rights of those teaching the next generation of leaders.” 

The opinion can be viewed below.

Documents

Jul 7, 2026

Pernell v. Lamb – Court Order

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Race

Trump Says Ceasefire is Over; Calls the Iranians “Scum”

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2026 //
0

At the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Trump told the press that the ceasefire with Iran is over. He referred to the Iranian leaders as “scum.” Following his remarks, oil prices went up.

Iran has attacked ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The US has bombed Iran. Iran has bombed American bases in Bahrain and Kuwait.

At the summit, Trump assailed our NATO allies for failing to help him in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He also reopened his campaign to compel Denmark to give or sell Greenland to the U.S.

Categories Trump

Graham Platner Must Step Aside. Maine Democrats Should Act Quickly to Replace Him

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
8

I strongly supported Graham Platner as the likeliest candidate to beat Senator Susan Collins in November. I was wrong, as were many others who took him at his word.

I didn’t care about his tattoo. He told us that he had gone through PTSD after four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many others, I forgave him his trespasses because he was a viable progressive candidate who had energized a large following in Maine. He held town halls all over the state, and his popularity grew. Bernie Sanders endorsed him, as did other prominent Democrats.

The latest allegation against him was the last straw. A woman he dated said he raped her. She had corroboration, from friends and her therapist. Rape is a bright red line.

Platner is finished. It’s over. He was not honest with the voters.

Susan Collins is running for her sixth term in the Senate. She has already served in the Senate for 30 years. She should have retired and let someone else take her place. It’s time for a change.

Collins should never be forgiven her endorsement of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. He told her he would never overturn Roe v. Wade. She believed him. He lied. Other Republicans would have voted no if she had voted no.

There are other well-qualified people ready to join the race. The Senate should not be a gerontocracy.

Maine Democrats must choose a replacement for Platner by July 27. Can they do it? Of course they can.

David Dayen, editor of The American Prospect, wrote previously about Platner’s character flaws and Collins’ corruption. He believes that Maine Democrats should hold a snap election. He calls it a “lighthouse primary.”

Good luck to Maine Democrats in picking someone who can defeat Collins and help create a Democratic majority in the Senate.

The stakes are high.

Categories Maine, Politics, Scandals

Trump Tries to Win Midterms by Mimicking Joe McCarthy

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
4

Trump has a new line of malarkey to peddle. He has decided that Democrats are not only “Dumbocrats,” they are Communists.

Trump does not know anything about bipartisanship. He knows nothing about the tradition of treating the other party with respect. He knows only how to dish out insults and ridicule.

He always has to stir up his base by having someone to hate. Communists are a good target.

When he spoke at Mount Rushmore on July 3, he warned about a “communist menace,” a threat posed by the election of two Democratic Socialists in New York City and one in Denver, Colorado.

  • He said, “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land.”  
  • He added, “You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”  
  • He described communism as “a mortal threat to American liberty,” and argued that Americans must defend the country’s founding principles against it.  

Again, at his late-night speech on July 4, he warned about the danger of the Communist threat.

Among his statements were:

  • “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America.”  
  • He added, “It’s like a cancer, you got to cut it out.”  
  • He also declared that America “will never be a communist country“.

Democrats are not Communists.

Democratic Socialists are not Communists. They are Democratic Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and like the parties in Northern European nations such as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. These are nations that spend generously for the health, education, and welfare of their citizens.

Does Trump know the distinction between Democratic Socialists and Communists? It’s hard to know since his knowledge is not expansive.

But he has his target. He will use smear tactics. He will fulminate about the “communist menace,” and about others who “don’t love America” as he allegedly does.

After all these years, we know who he is and we know he will lie without hesitation.

Be prepared. He is desperate.

Categories Education Reform

FBI’s Top Priority: Finding Proof That Trump Won in 2020!

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
3

The FBI has assigned 200 agents to pore through the ballots cast in the Presidential election in Georgia in 2020. You may recall that in 2020, Georgia was controlled by Republicans. In January 2, 2021, Trump called Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and asked him to find 11,780 votes, which was one more than Joe Biden had. Raffensberger wouldn’t do it. The Georgia votes were counted and recounted three times, once by hand. In all three recounts, Trump lost. But Trump is still searching for proof that he won.

What a sore loser!

The Associated Press reported:

ATLANTA (AP) — The FBI has asked its field offices across the country to dedicate more than 200 staffers to its investigation of the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County.

A memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press calls for the FBI to “surge” 260 investigative analysts and staff operations specialists to the effort, which it described as a “priority investigation.”

It said each of them is to conduct a check of an estimated 708 records by July 17. While the memo does not describe the investigation, people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal decision-making confirmed the request was to help with the Georgia 2020 election investigation.

FBI agents in January seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of Atlanta. A Fulton County spokesperson declined to comment citing a pending investigation. The contents of the memo were first reported by MS NOW.

President Donald Trump and his allies have made false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election. Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The Justice Department has previously said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Georgia, Trump

Why Ohio Got a Terrible Grade on the NPE Report

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2026 //
0

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, was the author of the recent report Public Schooling in America: Our 2026 Report Card on the States. The subtitle: THE BEST AND THE WORST STATEHOUSES FOR SUPPORTING PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THEIR STUDENTS.

She wrote recently to explain why Ohio received a low grade:

Ohio lost more points on privatization in the NPE Report Card than any other state — more than Florida, more than Arizona. Its charter and voucher policies are among the most expansive and least accountable in the nation. The only reason Ohio does not rank at the very bottom is that it continues to fund its public schools at a relatively adequate level. That margin is shrinking.

The charter sector tells a particularly troubling story. Half of all charter schools in Ohio are operated by for-profit companies — an unusually high share even by national standards. Yet nearly half of all charter schools that have ever opened with enrollment in the state have since closed, a closure rate of 49 percent. These are not isolated failures. They reflect a system designed with too few guardrails and too little accountability.

A significant portion of these for-profit schools are credit recovery operations and online schools — low-cost, maximum-profit models held to lower academic standards than traditional public schools. Nearly one in three charter students in Ohio — 30 percent — attends a virtual school or an institution where instruction is delivered primarily online.

What explains so much low-quality supply? Ohio’s authorizing structure is a central culprit. The state permits multiple authorizers, including nonprofits that collect millions in authorizing fees and have a financial incentive to approve and retain schools regardless of performance.

Ohio also has more voucher programs than any other state in the country — eight in total — further diverting public dollars away from the students and communities that depend on public schools.

If Ohio continues on its current trajectory, the consequences are predictable: further erosion of public school funding, further decline in the rankings, and fewer educational options as the neighborhood public school choice disappears. 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

John Thompson: The Absurd Attacks on Randi After She Criticized Tech in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
7

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, thought that AFT President Randi Weingarten’s recent speech on the dangers of technology in the classroom was balanced and thoughtful. Yet the Trump administration attacker for raising valid questions. Trump and McMahon have such a knee-jerk aversion to unions, especially the teachers’ unions, that they had to attack her, even if what she said made sense.

Thompson wrote:

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave an impressive speech at the National Press Club, explaining that students are “drowning in tech,” and they “need their teachers, real human beings, not robots and not chatbots.”

As I will explain, Weingarten’s presentation synthesized both – scholarly research and communication with diverse groups of educators and AI users. It was a perfect example of bridging political differences. When I first read the transcript of her plan, I thought it would be hard to understand how anyone who wants to improve education would not want to join her team effort to make life better for young people in the 21st century.   

But, not surprisingly, I was wrong. The Trump administration then attacked Weingarten because early in the Covid pandemic, the AFT pushed for safety measures before reopening schools.  It ignored her research and recommendations, and claimed that Weingarten “is the last person who should be weighing in about what is best for American students.”

When NewsMax interviewed Linda McMahon after Weingarten’s presentation, McMahon first criticized Weingarten for closing schools during the Covid pandemic (although the truth was that she proposed science-based protections to facilitate safe school openings.) Then, McMahon effusively praised AI in classrooms. Then the discussion returned to condemning unions for suposedly placing the good of teachers over that of students.

And Weingarten’s speech on AI was also condemned as a part of an AFT policy that “lines up perfectly with the ‘China First’ agenda.” And the AFT was accused on Substack for “evolving into some type of content-policing organization.”

But, getting back to Weingarten’s speech, NBC reported that she called for blocking most students from using computers in class until they reach third grade, and controlling Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs that are designed to act like real people. She would thus prohibit “student-facing AI in elementary schools” and ban “social companion (chatbots) until age 16.”

Weingarten further explained, “I’m  wary of the dangers of AI, but it is here to stay.” 

NBC News also reported that Weingarten proposed an “independent research consortium to study the effects of AI and screens on student learning.” She explained, “I am not calling for an AI ban or a Chromebook bonfire,” … “What I am calling for is getting the balance right to harness the benefits of technology while mitigating the harm.”

NBC further explained that “some states recently began limiting school-issued devices for the youngest students, and a handful of school districts crafted policies this year to scale back technology in the classroom.” But, “many states and districts are also rushing to require AI literacy education for students, and AI in schools is rising.”

That reporting connects with Dana Goldstein’s recent reporting that “across the educational landscape, from suburban districts and urban charter schools to community colleges and the Ivy League,” schools are pushing back against misuse of A.I. Unfortunately, though, “schools serving low-income students … are often under the most pressure to show that they are embracing innovative technology and preparing students for the working world, where it may soon be standard to rely on generative AI.”

Weingarten’s narrative was also consistent with what the Washington Post recently reported, “Most teachers use artificial intelligence, but relatively few — just 18 percent — have received any formal guidance on how to use it.”

Seeking multiple perspectives, Weingarten had recently visited a school where they used Sal Kahn’s AI for teaching. Khan once predicted it would be a “revolution” in learning, but now he acknowledges, “So far, the revolution hasn’t happened,” and AI tutoring “doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

Kahn concluded, “I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

An educator at that school also explained, “there’s been more enthusiasm for the product among administrators than teachers in her school.” Moreover, some of the “most advanced students have taken advantage of AI to learn new topics. But, as far as she can tell, more students are using it to just find answers, which has created a massive headache for teachers.”

Weingarten  also drew on research funded by the AFT, and supported by Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI showing that:

Critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

And Weingarten challenged a number of Democrats, saying that “too many want to resurrect the failures of high-stakes testing, [and] are pushing privatization.” 

After following the AFT’s footnotes, learning from the evidence Weingarten drew upon, and the insights she gained from educators, I agree with Diane Ravitch, who wrote, “Randi has given many speeches. This is one of her best.” 

I see no way we can deny that AI is dangerous, especially for children, and that we must come together in a nonpartisan way to reduce its harms, while building on its strengths. I see no rationale for seeking simple solutions. And any solutions require listening to a broad spectrum of outlooks.

Regardless of what others see as other causes of the decline of meaningful learning, what sense does it make to attack Weingarten’s efforts to address this rapidly emerging crisis?

I’d argue that today’s attacks make no more sense than the rightwing’s refusal to work with Weingarten’s to build the infrastructure necessary for opening schools during Covid. 

Categories Education Industry, Students, Technology, Trump, Unions

Why LAUSD Chose an Insider as Its New Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
6

The elected board of the Los Angeles Unified School District recently chose Andres Chait, a veteran educator, as its new superintendent, succeeding Alberto Carvalho, who is under investigation in relation to an AI contract.

Chait has served in the LAUSD for nearly three decades. He started as a kindergarten teacher and rose through the ranks. His own children are students in the district.

From my experience, I think this is a wise decision. Many big-city districts went through a long period of disruptive reform, in which they selected inexperienced outsiders to “shake up” and “reform” the district. Most of these disruptions failed, as the outsider fired experienced educators and spent at least one year learning what educators do. Alan Bersin in San Diego, Joel Klein in New York City, and Michelle Rhee in the District of Columbia come to mind, though there were many more. The Broad Superintendent’s Academy was dedicated to churning out such superintendents, indoctrinated in the belief that schools with low scores should be closed, not helped, that state takeovers were a cure, not a harsh and futile measure, that veteran teachers were slackers.

Choosing a respected insider guarantees stability, not disruption.

The Los Angeles Daily News told the story. Open the link to read it.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, California, Education Reform, Los Angeles

White House Criticizes Smithsonian Museum for “Extreme Political Activism”

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
7

A new report was released over the weekend lambasting the Smithsonian Institution for political bias. In its desire to have federal museums teach “patriotic history,” the Trump administration is intent on gaining control of the Smithsonian, cutting its budget, and firing leaders who insist on telling both the good and the bad parts of the nation’s story.

The New York Times tells the story in this gift article, free to you.

In a broadside posted to its website just as Fourth of July fireworks were lighting up skies around the country on Saturday, the White House faulted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to properly celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing that it had become a tool of political activism intent on denigrating the American story.

The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history. It is the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure the Smithsonian into conforming to what President Trump has described as “patriotic” history.

While the report concludes that the Smithsonian Institution — which oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo — “has not met its obligations to the American people,” it places particular blame on the National Museum of American History.

That museum has been the subject of “ideological capture,” the report says, accusing it of an anti-white bias and, in particular, of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. Those actions, the report asserts, have “moved the museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

The report, titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” says the museum does not recount U.S. history “clearly and fairly.”

“Our central finding is not that the museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors or broadened its historical scope,” it says. “Rather, it is that museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”

Categories Education Reform

Timothy Snyder: “On Tyranny” and Our 250th Birthday

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
3

Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of Europe. He was a professor at Yale University. Last year, he accepted a professorship and chair at the University of Toronto, because he feared that Trump was taking the U.S. into a fascist future.

He wrote this post for publication today. It includes a video, which you may watch by opening the link.

He writes:

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate a rebellion…

We are told today, by the men who would humiliate us, that America was founded in a spirit of innocence, that its leaders never did anything wrong, and that patriotism means insisting on our own blamelessness and assigning all evil to others. 

If we accept that offer, we not only get history wrong, but we cede our own power to change things for the better. We let the oligarchs steal our money and the fascists rob the greater treasure of our liberty.

If the republic has lasted so long, it is because it was radical in its beginnings. Insofar as it has thrived, it has been through successful and continual struggles against its own limits. 

And that has only been possible because Americans have seen those limits, because they have chosen to see the truth about their history and themselves. I was thinking of self-recognition and self-correction ten years ago when I wrote On Tyranny; today, as a small part of a celebration our two hundred and fifty years, some friends of freedom have joined me to read its lessons aloud.

On Tyranny (the book)

On Tyranny (free resources)

In On Tyranny, I wrote that “the precedent set by the founders demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny.” The truth on which this country was founded is not that people are perfect, but that they are not. They — we — are vulnerable to those who amass wealth and deploy propaganda. We can be turned against one another. Because we are imperfect, said the founders, we place our trust not in any one person — no kings, no tyrants — but in a system of laws, checks and balances, and civic representation by voting that allows us to live in the dignified understanding that power arises from consent.

The rebellion of 1776, in other words, arose from ideas of what was right — “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness“ — but no one thought that those good things could be established once and for all. The point was to create conditions under which we could see, at every moment, the problems that we tend to create ourselves, and under which we could find solutions to those problems. This included — with time, with work, with suffering, with pain borne by some more than others — the ability to see the humanity in one another, to see the horror of slavery for what it was, and to recognize that we all deserve an unhindered voice and an unhindered vote.

On the Fourth of July, 1776, nothing was completed. Something was undertaken, at great peril and risk. The founders did not think of themselves as great men whose faces should be on mountains, as demigods whose stone faces should invite us to submit to future tyrants. When, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, they pledged to one another “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” it was in a cause that they believed was right, but it was also in a cause that was difficult, even desperate.

After victory in the Revolutionary War, the founders debated how to found a republic, conscious of the failures of liberty in history. They knew from the ancient Greeks that oligarchies — rule by a few wealthy men — easily coalesce. They understood from the Roman Stoics that freedom requires a self-discipline that defied the immediate circumstances. They saw from the failed republics of their own times that wealth easily captures institutions. And so in a second moment of insight, they added a Constitution to the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, those who lead our official celebration today represent every threat to liberty that the founders named: arbitrary rule; indifference to law; undue accumulation of wealth; corruption of the government to attain that wealth; collusion with foreign powers to attain power. And we confront a spirit that is contrary to freedom, one that tells us that we should trade a history of freedom for the smoke of fireworks and a face mirrored on a mountain. The past is being used to tell us that we have no choice but to accept the present.

As Frederick Douglass reminds us, in a great speech on another Fourth of July, “the cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers.” That is, sadly, exactly what is happening today. That is the essence of today’s official commemoration. As he understood, the founders, though wrong about many things, were rebels in their own time, people who took risks. To celebrate them justly is not to wish that the past return, or to worship them as flawless, or least of all to accept the aspiring tyrant who is undoing the best of their work.

To celebrate a rebellion means not to obey in advance, not to accept any of this as normal: not the lies told about the history by the people destroying our future, not the saccharine veneration of the Constitution by people who violate it every day, not the seizure of the mantle of revolution by a band of reactionary oligarchs. It is to be as courageous as you can: to speak the truth, to protect the elections we still have, and above all to organize in a great a joyful coalition.

History is not something that our oligarchs and fascists can take, try though they will today. History is what we make. It does not come to us. We come to it — with what we know, what we say, and what we do. Nothing in history dooms us; and nothing in history saves us. In the months between now and the next elections, there will be much forecasting, speculating, and worrying. None of that matters. All that matters is organizing a great and joyful coalition.

All that matters is the work. If my words are useful, if the beautiful reading here of my words is useful, it is only because those words bring you to act.

To celebrate a rebellion is to know that, from a flawed world, we can make new things. We can hold on, we can find each other, and not just imagine but create a much better America.

PS: The lessons: (1) Do not obey in advance; (2) Defend institutions; (3) Beware the one-party state; (4) Take responsibility for the face of the world; (5) Remember professional ethics; (6) Be wary of paramilitaries; (7) Be reflective if you must be armed; (8) Stand out; (9) Be kind to our language; (10) Believe in truth; (11) Investigate; (12) Make eye contact and small talk; (13) Practice corporeal politics; (14) Establish a private life; (15) Contribute to good causes; (16) Learn from peers in other countries; (17) Listen for dangerous words; (18) Be calm when the unthinkable arrives; (19) Be a patriot; (20) Be as courageous as you can.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump, Tyranny
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