With Liberty and Justice For All*

“With Liberty and Justice for All” is how we end the pledge of allegiance every single day at school since we were kindergarteners.

In 6th grade Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. By 7th grade most of us stopped standing for the pledge, by 8th grade we just stopped reciting it.

In our liberal circle, patriotism became something to ridicule, a sign of someone aligned with what Trump believed. We sat for the pledge because we didn’t believe in it anymore. After all if it was “Liberty and Justice For All” why was he president.

I would like to think that no matter how apathetic some people were that was their first small act of protest.

Of course there were people who knew Liberty and Justice For All was not “For All” very early. Before Trump.

It wasn’t for all when you get stared at for speaking a different language

People know it hasn’t been for all since the conception of what we call “the United States”

All* means White Cisgender Straight Men; don’t get it twisted that’s what it always has meant

All men. Of course unless your a woman, or unless you’re not considered “man” or human. When peopel enslaved other people, were they not included in that “all”?

Justice for all, now remind me what happened to the dozens of young Black boys lynched for crimes they did not commit? Were they not included in the all? Or were just those who were the accusers covered in the “all”?

Liberty for all but yet tell me when the right to vote was granted to white women? Now Black women? Now Indigenous Women? Sure doesn’t seem like “all” were granted those rights.

“All” is a farce. Etched in a pledge we are made to recite to swear our allegiance to a country that swears on paper to protect us. But where is the proof? So many of us feel abandoned, so many people I surround myself with felt abandoned at 12 by the presidential election, just to sit down at the prospect of “Liberty and Justice For All” because we knew that wasn’t true. We laughed at patriotism because we associated it which a political party vying for power and for the ability to take away things we knew were just our rights as people. It semed lilly to go agaisnt what was common sense. Now we see patrotism, blind patriotism, as dangerous. We know that the words that we heard every day are more and more false. With more knowledge came less faifth.

Liberty and Justice For All*

*unless you’re, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latino, an Immigrant, Disabled, Imprisoned, a woman, a person with the ability to get pregnant

Did I miss any?

I haven’t stood for the pledge, I haven’t spoken it, I take a slight knee at the anthem, and I don’t particularly call myself patriotic.

My allegiance is with the people, not the ones who claimed that we “all” have liberty and “all” will be given justice. I don’t appreciate false promises.

So I will stand and recite, when liberty and justice is for all of us not just the few.

Happy 4th of July. To those included in the “all”.