Birthday parties don’t tend to be controversial. Caloric, yes. Contrived, at times. But taking time to celebrate the birth of someone, or something, feels like generally safe territory. Unless the one being celebrated happens to be named the United States of America.
As we head into the season of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, I’m struck by how differently people are approaching this milestone. For some, it’s a moment of genuine celebration — a chance to honor America’s founding and recommit to its enduring principles. For others, it’s a sore point, a reminder of the hypocrisy baked into a declaration of freedom written by slaveholding men. For most of us, I suspect, it’s a complicated blend of both: pride in what this country aspires to be, mixed with a sense of disappointment with how far we still have to go.
That tension — between aspiration and actualization, between the founding ideal and the lived reality — was exactly what we wrestled with at a recent gathering of the Colorado Civic Collaboratory, a space where civic practitioners from across the state come together to think, reflect, and push each other forward.
My colleague Morgan Schmehl opened the day staking out one side of the tension. They shared a personal and vulnerable reflection on tracing their family’s history, with its likely slaveholding roots, and what it means to carry that history into a moment of national commemoration. In a later session, I tried to lean into the other side of the tension with words from my mentor, Dr. Vincent Harding, who challenged all of us to remember that we are citizens of a country that does not yet exist, but which we are obligated to bring into being through our continued work toward a more perfect union.
These two reflections didn’t cancel each other out. They named the poles of a genuine dialectic: the thesis of our founding aspiration, the antithesis of our historical failure, and the hoped-for synthesis our moment demands. Not a compromise that splits the difference, not a tug-of-war where one side grudgingly concedes ground to the other, but a new and compelling vision that grabs hold of both poles and pulls us forward toward something we all build together.
The question the group kept returning to felt like the right one for the moment: what do you actually do with this tension? Do you pick a side — good versus evil, patriots versus critics — and dig in, using history as ammunition to prove yourself right? Or do you take seriously the pole you are least inclined to notice? Do you hold space for those who feel aggrieved by our shortcomings and those who feel grateful for our accomplishments — and insist that both of them belong in the same “We the People”?
I believe that is the only path forward. Not as a feel-good compromise, but as a genuine act of civic courage. This anniversary can mark a much-needed next chapter — one in which we let ourselves be pulled forward by the potential encoded in our founding principles of freedom, equality, and justice. These three are themselves a dialectic: the claims of the individual, the claims of the collective, and the ongoing, never-finished work of holding both together.
I know how abstract this can sound, but the stakes are not abstract for millions of people. What does a better balance of freedom, equality, and justice mean for a family spending 50% of their income on housing — if they can find any? Why should founding principles matter when you’re relying on a food pantry to afford both food and medicine on your monthly wages? These are not rhetorical questions. They are the exact questions our founding texts were trying to answer — badly and incompletely, in many cases, but boldly enough to plant a seed that generations have been watering ever since.
Our nation’s founding proclaimed — imperfectly, hypocritically, but audaciously — that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not privileges of the elite but the birthright of all. That government exists not to protect the powerful but to preserve these blessings for everyone. We have grown so accustomed to the gap between that promise and the daily experience of too many of our neighbors that we’ve lost the urgency that animated those founding words. But that strikes me as less a reason for cynicism than a call to renewal. The gap is not proof that the vision was wrong. It is proof that the work is unfinished.
So where do we begin? Thankfully, Colorado is full of civic innovators who are creating exactly these kinds of opportunities right now.
Warm Cookies of the Revolution — a “civic health club” that has become an inspiring national model — is hosting a Declaration of In(ter)dependence celebration that honors our founding spirit with play, reflection, and problem-solving, along with Futuretown visioning gatherings happening across the state. Find one near you here.
Reimagine Colorado is running a Vision 2076 campaign, inviting 10,000 Coloradans to weigh in on what they want our state to look like in 50 years — and using that shared vision to align action across divides.
Living Room Conversations and Braver Angels offer structured, facilitated dialogue across political difference — starting with listening before problem-solving.
And the National Civic League — a civic treasure founded by Teddy Roosevelt that still calls Denver home — has mapped the broader ecosystem of organizations doing this work across the state on their Democracy Ecosystem map here.
Wherever you fall on the spectrum from grieving to celebrating, I hope we can each find our way to contribute toward creating the version of America we need for the future. The country that could exist is not inevitable. It requires us — all of us — to do the work of bringing it into being. That is what Dr. Harding meant. That is what our founding aspired to. And that, improbably and stubbornly, is what gives me hope.