A Black man stands in a dark room where an American flag is projected over his body. He leans his head to the side with his hand atop his head. A star frames his eye as he looks at the camera.
Image Credit: cottonbro studio on Pexels

This year marks the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, and our country is at an unprecedented crossroads. At a time when the United States should be coming together to celebrate all that we are, how far we’ve come, and commit to finishing the work to make America a place where freedom and equality are truly for all, a White supremacist faction is pushing our country in the opposite direction, whitewashing our past so they can whitewash our future.

On the eve of our country’s 250th birthday, and just 60 years into becoming anything close to a real democracy, we’re now in the grips of the greatest rollback of civil rights in generations.

What we fail to repair, we repeat.

Who controls the story of the past controls the future. So, it comes as no surprise that MAGA’s attempts to erase the history of enslavement and genocide are coupled with the rolling back of hard-won civil rights victories and the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. From their iconography and propaganda to the ethnic cleansing campaign of Black and immigrant Americans, with the notable exception of White South Africans, the Trump administration is attempting to turn America back to a time when only wealthy White men had power, or the protections of citizenship.

To be clear, we’ve been here before this regressive campaign—and these tactics aren’t new.

Throughout United States history, there have been efforts to justify an order where a select few were allowed to exploit others for their own gain. From the Reconstruction after the Civil War, when White supremacists developed the Lost Cause narrative to lend cover for southern states to impose Jim Crow, to the development of the pseudoscience of phrenology to scientifically justify racial, class, and gender hierarchies, what’s happening on the federal level right now are the recycled tactics of the Confederacy of old.

By knowing our history, we can also learn the playbook to defeat the fascist agenda once and for all.

But public acknowledgement of the truth of our country’s history is a threat to the status quo. Because the truth of our past contains explanations for our present. The ongoing legacy of enslavement explains the origins of inequality and exploitation in the United States. The legacy of Indigenous genocide and removal explains the United States’ ongoing imperial maneuvers and expansionist project. The preferences toward the moneyed and elite in our Constitution explain the disproportionate power and influence that billionaires and corporations have today.

These legacies echo through our current society, and they have never been fully reckoned with or rectified. What we fail to repair, we repeat.

But there is yet another reason why US history is under attack: because by knowing our history, we can also learn the playbook to defeat the fascist agenda once and for all. All we need to look to are the abolitionists who, through their brave organizing of mass refusals to comply with injustice, were able to defeat an explicitly White supremacist movement and lay the foundation for a multiracial democracy through constitutional amendments like the 14th Amendment or birthright citizenship.

Or we can look to the Civil Rights movement, which built a race-conscious effort to realize political equality and shake the foundations of economic exploitation to its core, advancing and winning a Great Society that cut the United States poverty rate in half in just a few years.

These movements teach us two truths: that American democracy is a byproduct of mass movements, and that in this country, the struggles for racial equality, economic justice, and true democracy can only succeed when they work intertwined and in tandem.

It is this legacy we must step into today. As our country turns 250, the hard-won victories our predecessors have fought and died for are under threat like never before. Where we go in the next 250 years comes down to what we do right at this moment.

Now is the time for young people to turn away from cynicism and step into the shoes of our forebears who pushed America forward. Already, organized young people are turning the tide of politics in our country—coming together to rise up for racial justice in 2020 and, more recently, to drive the massive grassroots campaign to elect millennial Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City.

Where we go in the next 250 years comes down to what we do right at this moment.

This country has only just begun to see the impact that millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha can make as they come of age. The tide is already turning, and the future of this country is ours to create if we meet the moment.

That’s why youth-led Get Free, 50501, and Next 250 are calling on all Americans who want us to live up to our country’s promise to take a stand and reclaim our future. Join All of U.S. 250 rallies, marches, and community events across the nation on a day of action on June 27 to reckon with our full history rather than whitewash it, to put us on a path of repair to make equality real, and commit to finishing the work yet to be done to make a United States of, by, and for all of us.