In addition to my job at Family Values @ Work, I lead restorative conflict resolution circles for people in my community. This week, I sat with a group of colleagues as they struggled to address concerns about sexual harassment in their organization. As one circle participant, a white man, sought words to defend behavior that were clearly offensive to the others, another white man jumped in.
“Dude, the jig is up,” he said, pointing out the ways that women and people of color are signaling the urgent need for transformation in institutions, systems, and ourselves. “We have to change the way we are in the world.”
I keep thinking about that phrase, “The jig is up.” According to Merriam-Webster, it’s used “to say that a dishonest plan or activity has been discovered and will not be allowed to continue.” I think that’s the perfect phrase to describe where we find ourselves as a nation this 4th of July. All across the country, people are finally waking up to the barriers that keep us from fulfilling our stated ideals of equality and justice for all, like our racist criminal justice system or economic policies that keep working families in crisis.
This year’s annual celebration of the United States’ independence from British domination is happening amidst moves to make the country “a more perfect union”: an international uprising for Black lives and racial justice, a national reckoning with the real meaning of the Confederate legacy and its symbols, victories at the Supreme Court affirming the rights of LGBTQ people at work and access to reproductive healthcare, and more.
These are “independence days,” when many of us are working to liberate ourselves and our communities from racism, anti-Blackness, transphobia, and misogyny—and winning real change.
The nation feels productively unsettled. It’s the kind of moment I look for when I’m leading a restorative circle—when the scales fall from people’s eyes and suddenly they can see what needs to change. I’m looking forward to the new future we are building together, one in which we have won real independence from all systems of oppression.
