A Declaration of Interdependence
What we declare for our next 250 years.
I hold a conviction — the special certainty that comes from both feeling and knowing a thing to be true. Interdependence is both an essential value and a fundamental fact. It should and must guide our future.
It is a matter of morality and practicality. If we do not honor and protect our connections, we will have nothing.
I have written what follows for July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — as a beginning.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a new nation declared Independence.
It sought freedom for its people — freedom from unjust rule, freedom to determine their own future, and freedom for all to aspire and achieve.
These values are still ours.
Yet we do not always honor them.
We forget that we have only what we build and maintain together.
We forget that we can only express our differences after we build our connections.
We forget that the individual freedoms we cherish depend on the community bonds we nourish.
We forget that our bonds free us.
These are our truths.
The question now is whether we will live by them.
***
There is a story being told about us.
It says that we are individuals, competing for positions in a hierarchy.
It says that our suffering is our own to carry — that others are our rivals.
It says that we are too different to share values, and too divided to commit ourselves to them.
It says that we will never build a world that works for all of us.
But across humanity, people want the same things.
We want safety. We want respect. We want freedom.
We want a world responsive to the people who build it.
We want a future we can believe in.
And we want these things for each other, not only for ourselves.
The truth is we are more united than the story would have us believe.
***
Our unity is not a dream. It is a fact. We depend on each other.
You are born only because of the life of others who precede you — the decisions of two others who made you.
The food you eat was touched by people you will never meet.
Everything we have been taught has come from other people.
Every word you speak was made and preserved by people before us.
You were cared for before you could, in turn, care for others.
A sickness born in one corner of the globe can reach everywhere in a season.
When the people who do the essential work stop, everything stops.
No one makes their life alone. Each of us is born, built, and held by others — the ones we recognize, and the ones we never will.
Of course, people have always felt our connections.
Humanity’s earliest spiritual insight — born from a life lived close to the Earth — was that we depend on what is in front of us. It felt obvious that gods, or a God, or Existence had made all of us as equals. We were among the animals, plants, and fungi we depended on.
Now, we have the opportunity to live by these truths more than any generation before us. What our ancestors felt for the people in front of them, we can feel for the whole world — faces on a screen, neighbors who crossed oceans, lives on the far side of the planet tied to ours. Every faith sensed it. Now we can prove it.
The reigning theory for how it all began — what we call The Big Bang — informs us that everything that exists began as one. All that is came from that one, and nothing has been made or destroyed since. So we are still one, only in new forms.
Every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of dying stars. Every breath we take has been breathed by countless beings before. All of us are made of each other. This is not philosophy. This is reality.
Every human body is a record of cooperation. No cell survives alone. No organ exists for itself.
All life is born from another life. All life depends on other life to survive. All life dies to create new life.
Within every being that seems to stand alone, you will find a community.
We cannot be without the bacteria that live inside us.
A lichen is a fungus and a plant, cooperating across their difference to live where neither could alone. What we call one being is two.
The fungi in a plant’s roots feed it, and cannot live without it in return. Where does the one end and the other begin?
A saguaro cactus looks like it stands alone in the desert. But the birds nest in it, the animals shelter beneath it, the fungi feed its roots, and the ground holds it up.
What we call an individual is a community. Even the strongest one. So are we.
Our connectedness — our interdependence — is both miraculous and a fact.
That fact should first comfort us.
Then it should be our guide.
***
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence established the words —
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
There are betrayals in these words. “All men” meant not all of us.
Yet these aspirations have inspired generation after generation to build a more perfect union. The commitment and work of people before us extended America’s promises further than our Founders could have imagined.
We have spent those years growing freedom. No one grew it alone. Now we must take the harvest and begin building equality.
Equality is not an abstraction. It is the conclusion of our connectedness. The task is making our country honor it.
Now it is our turn — to declare the values that future generations can pursue, and perfect, for the next two hundred and fifty years.
On July 4, 2026, we declare Interdependence. We declare that freedom comes from community. We declare our unity, and the equality that comes from it.
“We hold these truths to be fundamental, that all beings are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creation with certain essential Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
***
As the Declaration of Independence broke the rule of an empire, the Declaration of Interdependence must break the rule of a story — the story that we are alone.
And with us, there is power. Power to build the country that we need and deserve.
***
We therefore commit ourselves anew:
That work should provide dignity and stability — a living wage for all.
That everyone deserves security, and that neighbors are often best at protecting neighbors.
That everyone deserves control over their own life and health.
That every person should be equal before the law, and representation should never be for sale.
That we must sustain the planet that sustains us, including for the generations who will follow.
And our community cannot be limited to humanity alone — we depend on all life.
All life has equal worth — as creations of the same source, as beings with feelings and family and hopes.
The loss of even what we neglect can threaten what we love.
The most basic truth of all is the one we see in the soil — in what goes into it and where we emerge. We are all connected.
We are them. They are us.
***
We, The People, stand together to carry these values forward.
Across our differences, these commitments connect us.
They show who we are —
We are America.
