This is a terrific thread, especially for today.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 5:09 PM
www.popehat.com/p/the-fourth…
— Popehat’s Interests First (@kenwhite.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 11:21 AM
I believe it was Satby who flagged this…
For years, I have retold the story reprinted below every Fourth of July. It describes a formative experience in my life and in my identity as an American. I still feel powerfully many of its sentiments: my fondness and appreciation for the late Judge Lew, my admiration for the courage and fortitude of the Filipino soldiers and their families, my belief in America as a set of aspirational values worth pursuing.
But things change. The brave and patient men who were naturalized that day are dead. Judge Lew passed away several years ago. And every day of 2025 is a reminder that no set of values is guaranteed to endure: that the America those men believed in is no promise, but a hope…
Yet I am still moved to tell this Fourth of July story. It’s become an act of defiance, because the story is contrary to the prevailing values of 2025. I still believe that those Filipinos coming to America and becoming Americans is something to celebrate, in the face of a surge of cruel and ignorant nativism. I still believe that being good American requires recognizing our wrongs and fixing them, in the face of a surge of banal America-is-never-wrong propaganda and censorship. I still believe we can do better. I am just more acutely aware that doing better will not be easy and may not be peaceful, and that doing it will require fighting people just as dedicated to low and ugly values, and that we may lose.
But the story also reminds me I am not entitled to wallow. I am fortunate. I have autonomy, power, a voice. America’s history is the story of people — like those Filipino-Americans — who had much less and faced far more daunting circumstances and kept fighting. It would be shameful to give up that fight. The bullies may win, but they will not win by default, and they will not win without a bloody battle.
THE FOURTH OF JULYNearly thirty-five ago, in the hot summer of 1992, I was working as an extern for Judge Ronald S.W. Lew, a federal judge in Los Angeles. One day in early July he abruptly walked into my office and said without preamble “Get your coat.” …
Judge Lew — the first Chinese-American district court judge in the continental United States — grabbed his robe from the trunk and walked briskly into the VFW hall with his externs and clerks trailing behind him. We paused in the foyer and he introduced us to some of the VFW officers, who greeted him warmly. He donned his robe and peered through a window in a door to see hundreds of people sitting in the main hall, talking excitedly, the children waving small American flags and streamers about. One of the VFW officers whispered in his ear, and he nodded and said “I’ll see them first.” The clerks and my fellow extern were chatting to some immigration officials, and so he beckoned me. I followed him through a doorway to a small anteroom.
There, in a dark and baroquely decorated room, we found eight elderly men. These were too infirm to stand. Three were on stretchers, several were in wheelchairs, two had oxygen tanks. One had no right arm. A few relatives, beaming, stood near each one. One by one, Judge Lew administered the naturalization oath to them — closely, sometimes touching their hands, speaking loudly so they could hear him, like a priest administering extreme unction. They smiled, grasped his hand, spoke the oath as loudly as they could with evident pride. Some wept. I may have as well.
One said, not with anger but with the tone of a dream finally realized, “We’ve waited so long for this.”
And oh, how they had waited. These men, born Filipinos, answered America’s call in World War II and fought for us. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the men of the Philippines to fight, promising them United States citizenship and veterans benefits in return. 200,000 fought. Tens of thousands died. They weathered the brutal conditions under Japanese occupation, fought a valiant guerrilla war, and in some cases survived the Bataan death march.
In 1946, Congress reneged on FDR’s promise. Filipino solders who fought for us and their families were not given their promised citizenship, let alone benefits. Many came here anyway, had children who were born U.S. citizens, and some even became citizens through the process available to any immigrant. But many others, remembering the promise, asked that it be kept. And they waited.
They waited 54 years, until after most of them were dead. It was not until 1990 that Congress finally addressed this particular stain on our honor and granted them citizenship. (Their promised benefits were not even brought to a vote until 2008, when most of the happy men I saw that day were dead.) Hence this July naturalization ceremony.
After Judge Lew naturalized the veterans who were too infirm to stand in the main ceremony, he quickly took the stage in the main room. A frantic, joyous hush descended, and the dozens of veterans stood up and took the oath. Many wept. I kept getting something in my goddam eye. And when Judge Lew declared them citizens, the families whooped and hugged their fathers and grandfathers and the children waved the little flags like maniacs…
Happy 4th of July, Batman.
— They Might Be Giants (@tmbg.bsky.social) July 3, 2025 at 11:44 PM
H.E.Wolf
This is a very moving, and timely, reminiscence by Ken White. Thank you for front-paging it, and thank you to satby for bringing it to your attention.
I will remember this above all [ETA: because it applies to me]: “the story also reminds me I am not entitled to wallow. I am fortunate.”
pat
Dusty in here…. Thank you for this.
Steve LaBonne
Now I understand what I want for America- to become a country worthy of those Filipino veterans. Sadly we’re moving rapidly in the wrong direction.
J. Arthur Crank
It has been relatively quite so far in San Diego. I usually start hearing fireworks 3 to 4 days prior to July 4, and this year that has not been the case, at least in this neighborhood.
Also too, if you follow the top link there is a clip of James Earl Jones reading the Douglass speech.
Miki
“We all do better when we all do better.” – Senator Paul Wellstone.
schrodingers_cat
I love this country. It hurts me to see the damage being done to it by people who don’t understand what makes America great. What makes America unique is its openness.
A confident country that welcomed people and ideas with open arms. That’s what the Fortress America people fear the most.
Gloria DryGarden
There’s a new app, info circulating on bsky, for locating, pinpointing any sightings of ice and probable ice. Apparently it’s the hottest new app in the App Store.
someone is on the ball.
M31
was remembering today that Independence Day isn’t when we got independence, it’s just when the war started and it was years before any actual independence happened and it was a brutal struggle the whole time
and even then it wasn’t liberty for a whole lot of people for a whole lot of time
satby
I love that remembrance by Ken White. If those elderly veterans could persevere, so can we.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
We have to learn to become the country within the country for a while.
Bill Arnold
@Gloria DryGarden:
ICEBlock. I installed it mainly to bump up their download counter. Didn’t (yet) allow it many permissions, because paranoid.
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: Could be a fishing expedition by Bondi and Patel.
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
IceBlock for IOs is secure and legit.
IceBlock for Android, is not by IceBlock and insecure.
ICE Track for Android is legit, but not secure because it’s Android.
satby
On a link roll.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat:
Well said. I could not agree more
prostratedragon
Thanks for the Wasow thread, which I just saw elsewhere.
Sure Lurkalot
Went to an annual art festival today…it’s a prestigious, juried show…and it’s always interesting to chat with artists about their work and processes. Many more than one shared sad thoughts on the state of the union this Independence Day. Passive resistance included one artist hoping that a certain someone departs the mortal coil soon, preferably choking on a chicken wing to another showing me his wallet filled with small flag stickers on which he drew swastikas that he posts on toilet paper rolls far and wide.
mrmoshpotato
Feels appropriate for this day.
Donald Dump is a shitc*** who sucks Kremlin ass!
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Hey Gloria, I saw an article in Rudaw English I thought you might appreciate:
Tahar Sakli, formerly a local mayor, noted that the library had significance beyond books:
Rudaw English is published out of Erbil, Iraq which is tbe capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region. The publication covers news of the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iran and Syria as well as Iraq.
A big story there is the ongoing peace process between the PKK and the Turkish state that was kicked off last December with an open letter PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan released from prison.
A lawmaker from the ruling AKP party spoke at the library opening and praised Ocalan and the others working to make the process succeed:
This link might work:
http://Rudaw.net https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/04072025
mayim
@J. Arthur Crank:
When Maine legalized fireworks a few years ago, towns could opt out, which mine did.
Yet I’ve still been hearing them for the last hour….
Gloria DryGarden
@Sure Lurkalot: the Cherry Creek arts festival?
I used to work at a facial salon in cherry creek, (massages in the basement) We always closed down for the festival, and I used to hoof it up to Yellowstone for magical camping, a mating pair of cranes on a lake, geysers that were better than fireworks, terraced hot spring seeps and muddy paint pots, inscrutable bison, sacred land, and everywhere, signs of miraculous recovery from massive fires.
Gloria DryGarden
@mayim: not legal in Denver, but they don’t enforce it. I suspect it would be nearly impossible. It’s been trickling in for days, but tonight’s the big night. Folks have little respect for normal sleeping times. It’s starting up..lots of distant and semi distant booms. It’s after midnight, sudden bottle rockets next door, that truly bother me.
mayim
@Geminid:
Thanks for posting this! Glad to see some places value libraries, unlike the current federal government.
I became a librarian because libraries do mean culture, development, and education, which is why the Huge Ugly Bill pretty much cuts all federal funding for them [and most museum funds, as well]. The libraries in the U.S. that are going to be hurt the worst are likely to be those in red areas ~ small towns and rural areas, plus mid-sized cities in areas that aren’t doing well economically.
Kathleen
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks to you, satby and AL for sharing this. Beautiful story.
Sure Lurkalot
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, that’s the one, and way too many people who think bringing their dogs to an uber crowded venue is fun for the pooches and everyone else. I thought I saw it all when I passed a carriage for twins and it contained dogs. At least they didn’t suffer walking on the hot asphalt for hours. Am I wrong to think some dogs deserve better people?
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: They’re so afraid that if others benefit they won’t. That’s what motivates their hostility.
Gloria DryGarden
@schrodingers_cat: it hurts.
i wish it became a thing to have getting-to-knew-people-“different”-than-you events. Panels, lunch parties at the libraries and rec centers. My life was always enriched by knowing people from other places, eating food from different countries, learning about places my mom had traveled when her dad was in the army. And then growing up and working with diverse people, diverse children, getting to know people.
whatever our differences are, everyone eats, sleeps, has usually five fingers and toes, And usually a caring heart, and a light within. Along with a liver, kidneys. We’re more the same than not, and the differences are places of learning, curious learning, and acceptance.
except for really stupid or judgemental people, and rigidified religious people. I have a hard time when there’s no common ground, or too many lies.
rikyrah
That story is the epitome of America. The broken promises after using the talents of a marginalized population. The fight to right the wrong. And, ultimately, the wrong being corrected.
Soprano2
@mayim: They’re totally illegal in my city, yet they’re all around me right now.
Geminid
@mayim: One reason I like reading about places like Syria and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region is that I get to see people moving forward. That’s nice change from watching my own nation moving backwards.
It also teaches me to not feel sorry for myself or want to give up, because those people have endured horrors far worse than those we are going through, and now they’re moving forward.
H.E.Wolf
@Kathleen:
I’m passing along my share of the thanks of Anne Laurie and satby; I was just the first person to comment. And I agree with you – it’s a beautiful story! Exactly what I needed to read today.
Elizabelle
Excellent thread. Beyond time to read the Frederick Douglass speech. You all have put a lot of good links today. Thank you.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: way cool. Libraries can be such a hub. My local branches have music, thester, comedy hour, an Elvis impersonator, the zoo with small animals, senior art and music things, meditation, writing groups, discussion groups, awareness classes, community panels, games days, teen and kid activities, computer classes for adults, sewing and 3 d printer lab with cri cut and other stuff, beads n crafts in the maker labs, cooking classes, English and citizenship classes. Art shows. Ancestry research classes. A movie night. Yoga, tai chi. A book discussion group. Multiple computers, and printing, faxing. Not all that every month, and not at every branch, but there’s a little 10 page magazine every month with the baby story times, main activities and concerts. It’s a great place for inclusion and community. I have low income internet because of some cards left out at a branch, a few years back.
libraries are so great. Library staff is always so helpful and kind.
I typed that wrong. LIBRARIES ARE SO GREAT. And librarians.
I’m so glad Kurdistan folks are getting a library, and that a peace process is unfolding. Isn’t Kurdish a Persian related language? I wonder if they are mutually intelligible, like Spanish and Italian.
I’ll try to catch up on this soon. I found some of the authors you mention, on ‘journalists of blue sky’ today.
Jay
According to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, in a CBC story today, there are currently 55 known Canadians in ICE Custody, some have been in custody for 3 months despite being willing from day 1 to self deport.. None of them are criminals. Some made errors or omissions on their visa applications, some were arrested at their Immigration Hearings for their Green Cards.
They are kept in unsanitary, massively overcrowded cells, food, when they are fed, is garbage, they get little water and no exercise, and little medical care. One of the kidnapped hostages has lost 45lbs so far. ICE constantly moves them around, from one Concentration camp in Arizona, to Florida, to Utah, to Texas, to California, to Virginia, etc. The reason they do this is so their friends, family and lawyers can’t find them for days or weeks on end.
There is an Immigration Detention database, but in it names are not searchable, only Immigration Case numbers, and you need to have a lawyer get those through an application to the Immigration Court, but which Immigration Court? The one where they were first kidnapped, or the one where their Charges were heard?
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: oh, it’s a garden of hope for you. It’s good to know of humans moving forward and creating a life they want, rebuilding after long difficulties. It is.
Goodness continues, somewhere.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: Reading that story now.
eta: well, 1 of the stories about it.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: good to know. Absolutely horrible. Horrified.
but important that we know this. Thank you.
our friendly neighbor to the north. What the fuck.
already in tears over the Sudan plane thing, the court allowing it, JFC.
Spending some time praying for this to be alleviated and rectified, asap. get these Canadians freed and out of there.
and for the whole stupid thing to stop.
MagdaInBlack
The ceasefire has broken, 9 pm must be the “blow up stuff” hour, because ‘splosions” everywhere now.
Gloria DryGarden
@Sure Lurkalot: giggling over the dogs. I bet you saw some great art.
So nice that it only got up to 88 today. Way better than 94, or worse, 100. Pleasantish, except for the doggies crowding you. Glad there were murmurs of awareness and resistance.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
It’s Splodey Time! here in the Denver core!
Time to go out and experience it.
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: where are you talking about? Sorry, no idea, all dat spent connecting with poets and liking the scads of piss on Fourth of July poetry, national day of mourning stuff.
MagdaInBlack
@Gloria DryGarden: NW suburbs of Chicago
Jay
kalakal
@Gloria DryGarden:
As a librarian I thank you for that. Libraries, along with their more obvious functions, add a great deal of social glue to communities and far too many people fail to realise that.
Pauline
@Gloria DryGarden: I work at DPL and I am so proud of all the wonderful things our system is able to do. Sadly, we do get entitled people beefing about the services that we provide, especially to the unhoused.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
it’s definitely splodey time here in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where the fireworks on every block set off the car alarms & make the air smell like cordite or whatever it is that’s making all the noise.
i don’t know what to about MAGA, so I also don’t know what to say. Let’s hope more stories come out in gory precise detail.
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: oh you mean the fucking fireworks? The Jesus so-loud please-can I-sleep neighborhood after parties until all hours?
RevRick
I count myself a patriot. And I know our history. The injustices of the past pain me. And what the blood-and-soil fascists running our government are doing pains me immeasurably. I feel acutely the temptation to despair. But to surrender to that despair would be to betray my patriotism. And it would make a mockery of the hope I proclaim.
So, I took pleasure in the fireflies at twilight and the fireworks set off all around the neighborhood, because that roots me in my childhood wonder and delight. For the first three years of my life, the city of Stamford’s fireworks display on the Fourth happened literally overhead. I lived with my parents and older brother in Quonset huts that abutted West Beach and the fireworks were shot off from across the inlet. Oohs and aahs were part of my earliest vocabulary.
We all need to find our rootedness in whatever will enable us to persist in what will be a long and enduring struggle for freedom, for truth, for justice. We all need to find our rootedness in whatever will enable us to be a voice for those who cannot speak.
The late Karl Barth, one of the theological giants of the twentieth century and author of the Barmen Declaration , instructed preachers to enter the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. But one of the central acts of worship is remembering. Remembering holds the unfolding story of the Bible with who we are in this present moment, as dreadful as it may be.
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: boom boom
BOOM,
etc. Yup. ‘ Splosions
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: this is beautiful. I want to make a poem from some of it. Rootedness..
if I do, it’ll be tomorrow, on blue sky. Are you there? Never mind. It’s beautiful what you’ve said. And I’m moved.
prostratedragon
@MagdaInBlack: Seems to be tailing off in Bronzeville, though an hour ago it was really popping, with 3 major sites and some random others in my 120° view. Whoops, there go a couple of rockets!
Gloria DryGarden
@Pauline: you know I’m in Denver, right? Once I was at Schlessman, wintertime, reading or relaxing in the reading nook. It was snowing outside. A guy was fast asleep in a chair near me, quiet, not harming anyone. this was before COVID. And we have that stupid law that says you can’t sleep in public. The librarian came and gently woke him up, told him he couldn’t sleep in the library. I bet it broke his or her heart to have to uphold it. It saddened me.
I have been assisted by so many librarians around. Quite possibly even by you. Dps has so many wonderful services. Way more than the magazine tells us.
Im sorry to hear there are folks who complain that you are welcoming to homeless people. No clue.
Gloria DryGarden
@kalakal: indeed. And you are welcome. Thank you for being part of that glue, that community.
Pauline
@Gloria DryGarden: I thought as much when you described the monthly Engage magazine. Yeah, none of us likes waking folks up but it’s actually more about making sure that they aren’t passed out or unconscious from an overdose. Reversing ODs with Naloxone does happen.
prostratedragon
For decades I’ve successfully resisted the discreet charms of the movie/musical 1776, but I am so very glad to have been drawn in enough to catch this little minuet just now:
Apparently, Richard Nixon tried to get it pulled from the movie, despite the fact that many thousands had already seen it on the stage.
Comrade Colette
Here in San Francisco, the “bombs bursting in air” have been going on for a while, mostly coming from the mostly immigrant hispanic Mission District downhill from me, and I have to wonder: what are you celebrating? What are you remarking on? What are you defying? Our total collective failure to support and protect you? I’m really, really struggling to come to terms with this anniversary.
prostratedragon
Ranz des Bacs
eclare
@RevRick:
That is beautiful. Thank you.
Gloria DryGarden
@prostratedragon: classy. So classsy.
Gloria DryGarden
@Comrade Colette: so many sad 4th of July poems on bluesky micro poetry. About half of today’s entries. People are sad, and mad, and shaping words to express it. I have been comforted by it, this day of mourning.
Gloria DryGarden
@Pauline: I didn’t even think of that. They’re cutting funds for naloxone, too. Bless you, you’ve probably saved someone’s life, or witnessed it. Jeepers.
i just thought, winter, probably can’t sleep that well outside, probably quite tired.
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: fireflies.
we had them in our backyard, in Chicago suburbs..sweet.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Cooked atop “clean, beautiful” coal stoves?
WTFGhost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u5Z-PGJWYU
(Intro to Zero Wing, where, although, “all your base are belong to us,” we still “take off every ‘zig!”
Why? For Great Justice! You know what you do!
prostratedragon
Speaking of cartoonishly crass, I’d somehow missed this:
Plans reportedly call for 25,000 spectators.
JWR
I’ve been off-blog all day so don’t know if this has already been posted, or if this email is different, (I didn’t get it), but the last I heard yesterday, the email from Social Security was suspected spam. (Well, it probably was spam, considering the source.) From NBC:
Note: It doesn’t eliminate taxes on SS benefits, and again, sorry if already covered.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gloria DryGarden:
🎵 Boom boom boom. Bang bang bang.
Boom boom boom. Bang bang bang. 🎶
MagdaInBlack
@Sister Golden Bear: Oh! I am a long time fan of Bighead Todd. Thank you !
NotMax
@Gloria DryGarden
Boom boom?
Cue Basil Brush.
:)
JWR
Good Lord, is this woman ever stupid! From MeidasNews
NotMax
@JWR
IIRC 27 indictments.
JWR
@NotMax: Ding ding ding! You, sir, are correct! (Not a thing I remembered, and so went back and counted.)
JWR
Yeah, right, Donoldo. Also from NBC
prostratedragon
Also the 7th anniversary of this unveiling. Three of them had the subtlety, or as someone once put it, the subletelty, to wear red stripe instead of solid red.
moonbat
AL, I love you. Don’t ever stop posting.
jonas
Ken White is a national treasure. My brother is actually a casual acquaintance of his and says he’s the stone-cold smartest human he’s ever met. Super nice, too, though! (Unless you’re across from him in a courtroom, apparently)
Gloria DryGarden
@Sister Golden Bear: it’s been awhile. Hits the spot, this music. Much as gracias!
( my keyboard has been told to accept spanish, really. Can’t always fight it)
Betty
@JWR: Someone suggested Trump never heard it that way because he picked it up from his father as just a normal reference.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: The idea, promise and hope of America is a beautiful thing and should be proudly centered in our coalition. It’s what has allowed Black People, Mexicans, Chinese/Japanese, Jews to endure and fight for so long despite horrific oppression. It’s the ideal that Obama and Hillary and Biden and Kamala talk about when they praise America.
rikyrah
@Jay:
😡😡😡😡😡😡