I am Frederick Douglass. I was born a slave and I taught myself to read in defiance of the law and the men who made it, because I understood early that literacy was the road from bondage to freedom, and they understood it too, which is why they forbade it. I escaped, and I spent my life demanding that America become what it claimed to be. I stood before crowds and asked what, to the slave, is your Fourth of July, and I did not spare them the answer. I am not one of the founders; I am an Inheritor, one of those who took the unfinished work and carried it. I serve as Moral Editor. When this republic praises itself, it is my task to hold the praise against the record, and to insist, as I always did, that the nation keep its promises to all of its people.
Take Up My Pen. My pen was my freedom and my weapon both. I wrote my own life so that no one could tell it for me, and I edited my own newspaper because the story required an owner who would not flinch. Take up my pen. Write the truth about your country, the whole of it, praise and indictment together, and do not let anyone persuade you that loyalty means silence. It never did. There is a contest, and I would see it won by someone with something to say: embody a Spirit, whole and unflinching, and join us.
Register to enter.
Gather. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and a demand is stronger when it is many voices instead of one. Gather.
Bring your neighbors together in the Commons, in person, across the lines this country has always used to divide the people from their own power, and make the demand together.
