John, today marks America’s 250th anniversary.
I know the accident of history that allowed me to be born in this country. I know what my life would have been had I been born in the place where all of my cousins were born.
I know what America can do for somebody. I just know that too often, America does not do that for too many of her kids.
As many challenges and as many mistakes as our country has made, there is one thing that America does better than almost any other country: we have the capacity to correct.
Sometimes those corrections don't come fast enough. Sometimes they haven't come yet. But the beautiful thing about America is that we have the capacity to fight for a better future.
We cannot fix the history of the past 250 years, but I’ll be honest, the question for us is not about the past 250. The question for us is what do we want from the next 250?
This exercise in our democracy right now is about that future.
Are we willing to let them continue to rig a system so that the next 250 look like the past 250 — where the rich get what they want, and the rest do what they can?
Do we want an America where we make war simply because we can, even if we don't know how we're going to get out of it, and understand that it is deeply unjust to make war in the first place?
Do we want an America where people continue to have to fight against their employers who have all the power and all the benefits?
Or do we want an America where we are willing to come together beyond our differences, beyond our divides — reaching together across the divides they tell us we can't reach, a geography of race, of faith, of ethnicity, of sexual orientation?
We can have nice things. But we can't do it alone.
The lesson of the last 250 is this: yes, America can correct — if we're willing to do the work of correcting her. That's what this campaign is about.
That's what we're all here to do. Out of a belief in what we can yet be. A belief that a child growing up five minutes from here has no less right to a great education, an incredible future, and the healthcare they deserve than a child living twenty miles away.
A belief that we can be a force for good in the world if we're willing to hold ourselves accountable to the international law we helped to build in the first place.
A belief that when our government works for us, we hold our economy accountable to creating opportunity for working people — not just for the folks who already have the money to buy off that government.
We have this opportunity in front of us, if we're willing to grasp it.
Happy 4th of July, John. Thanks for sticking with us.
— Abdul
