Cue the fireworks?

In Pennsylvania, where I’m living the socially distant life at the moment, you can get fireworks at a store. It’s amazing: cross the border from New Jersey and you’ll see them. Just walk in and buy fireworks. There are multicolored boxes and they all have scary warnings and huge, screaming designs and it’s all kind of wonderful and exclusive and horrifying at the same time.

We will be closed on July 4th for the Fourth of July.

Nope, my inner editor sneers. We will be closed on July 4th for Independence Day.

Last year, we bought fireworks at the scary store and set them off in the backyard—it was exhilarating. We were close enough to smell it. (The verdict: fun, but also expensive, noisy and a fire hazard. I prefer the far-away version.) I wore white, put on red lipstick and waved a little American flag.

The year before, I was on my rooftop in Brooklyn with my best friend and her wife, who is in the Air Force and is one of the most inspiring American heroes I know. That year I cried.

The year before that, we watched the fireworks from the waterfront—where Domino Park is now, before it was finished. It was more real back then: hodgepodge picnic tables, patches of dirt and grass and big cranes and the water coming right up by the craggy fence and that sparkling, rugged skyline right up close. We stood on the picnic table and watched. I’d just met the love of my life.

Ten years ago, I’d just moved to New York. The fireworks switch sides of Manhattan every year, so of course we went to the wrong side of the island to see them, and almost realized too late. From FDR drive, we hailed a cab and hot-tailed it to Midtown West to catch the end. It was perfect.

I came to New York in 2010, with the privilege of dancing at Alvin Ailey. At the time, I didn’t know just how meaningful it was to play a small part in telling Black American stories through dance. Looking back now, I realize just how important that is.

It was easier back then—in the Before Times—to celebrate Independence Day. But now, it doesn’t feel like there’s much freedom to celebrate.

Instead, there’s this reckoning we’re having as a country. It’s good and it’s right and it’s important. But it’s just too heartbreaking for fireworks. The racial profiling, police brutality, voting limitations, educational, housing and financial disadvantages, and mass imprisonment of people of color in this country is a moral outrage. It goes against everything we believe in, everything we’re supposed to stand for.

I believe in our capacity to get to a better place. Especially now, after watching so many of my friends and colleagues come out and support the Black Lives Matter movement. I believe we can make a real change together. We don’t have all the answers, and we certainly won’t be doing everything perfectly. But little by little, we’ll stay informed and we’ll make real change.

Then it’ll be time for the real fireworks.

For more information and to get involved with me, check out Campaign Zero.