Hopes that America’s 250th birthday would be a time of national unity and healing have not been fulfilled so far. After a bipartisan commission (America 250) formed in 2016 dissolved into internal squabbles with little to show for its years of planning, President Trump authorized his own commission (Freedom 250) to organize celebrations worthy of the occasion. But the Left refuses to approve anything touched by Trump, even if it simply cheers on America, so a band of committed leftists is now organizing their own summer events as counterprogramming to the official celebrations of America. Early signs suggest that their events, organized under the title “Next250,” will prioritize protest over celebration.

The Next250 movement is co-chaired by two former organizers of the Women’s March, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez. The Women’s March became the face of anti-Trump protests during his first administration, although it fell into disrepute after its leadership’s ties to notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan were exposed. Sarsour and other organizers stepped down in 2019, while Perez lingered to facilitate a leadership transition.

Sarsour announced the tone of the Next250 campaign on Sunday, “America’s next 250 years start with us. As attacks on voting rights continue, immigrant communities are targeted, and too many of our neighbors are pushed to the margins, this moment demands more than remembrance — it demands action.”

The Next250 website described itself as an effort to “retell US history from the perspectives and contributions of women of color and other marginalized identities.” It listed five policy demands: “Living Wage for All; Climate Justice for All; Reproductive Rights & Justice for All; Voting Rights for All; Gun Safety and Peace for All.”

Lest the organization seem totally partisan and not remotely patriotic, they shoe-horned in a Marxist manifesto but slapped a patriotic-sounding title on it. Next250 announced that it would “declare and demonstrate our shared values through a process that centers a new Declaration of Interdependence.”

Not in-dependence but inter-dependence. It would be an innocent inference in its own right, but in the pen of these leftists, it takes on the shape of group identity, ala critical theory.

“To begin the next 250 years of the American story,” the document declares, “we open our hearts and set free our radical imaginations to unlock a nation defined by interdependence, where everyone can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.” We have to wonder if Next250 was secretly designed to show America what the 250th celebration would have looked like under President Kamala Harris.

“We are one nation,” it asserts, “interdependent, woven together by the strength of our ideals, our shared history, and the extraordinary land we live on — stewarded since time immemorial by Indigenous nations whose sovereignty and leadership continue today.”

The sentence started strong. The first half could have been uttered by any number of presidents. And then it petered away into an irrelevant land acknowledgement, which only ended the sentence in confusion (are the native nations part of the one nation?). Is this declaration trying to appeal to the spirit and ideals of America? Its left-wing base? Or is it caught in an incomprehensible middle by trying to do both?

In keeping with the vision of “Next250,” the declaration did not celebrate the America that has been as much as try to cast a vision for a future America. In a purpose statement, the declaration says it is offered “to achieve the promise of our nation and possibilities of this moment.” There is nothing wrong with a forward-looking vision. Nor is it necessarily bad to acknowledge that, “From its founding, the United States has existed in the gap between ideals and actions — the space between the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all, and the actions of genocide, land theft, and slavery.”

However, there is no tempering recognition that America, despite its flaws, remains the freest, most prosperous, and arguably greatest nation on earth. Those who read the declaration may also struggle to escape the conclusion that this document is a party platform, not a declaration of principles. Thus, it states:

“In this declaration of interdependence, we are building a nation where:

• “All people are treated with dignity and respect.
• “Everybody feels safe in every community.
• “Access to clean, green spaces is abundant.
• “Every person who works earns a living wage and benefits that allow families work-life balance.”

Finally, unlike the Declaration of Independence, which had a clear historical context that gave it a reason for existence, the Declaration of Interdependence just sort of flops gelatinously in an abstract breeze. Why does it exist? Perhaps not even the authors could tell that, at least not without mentioning the fact that Donald Trump is president.

With their guiding principles so poorly articulated, the Next250 movement has announced a kickoff event on Saturday, June 27. In their own words, the event is not a rally or celebration or memorial or anything of the sort. Instead, it is a “National Mobilization” — which sounds more like generic left-wing street protest than anything uniquely devoted to America’s 250th anniversary.

The National Mobilization event is sponsored by MPower Change, a positive-sounding name for the Muslim Grassroots Movement. Other sponsoring organizations include 50501 Events, People Power United, Blue Future, DemCastUSA, Free Speech For People, and 50501 D.C. Some of these groups are deeply embedded into the left-wing agitator network. For instance, 50501 is responsible for the “No Kings” protests and has been linked to CodePink, Antifa, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

The Next250 itinerary features other events. For instance, a June 20 art exhibition in Brooklyn, N.Y. will seek to recruit people for the Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. “We’re trying to reach the folks who might not go to a protest, they might not go to a rally, but they would come to a cultural gathering,” organization Co-Founder and Executive Director Trevor Smith said. “And then once we reach them through art and through culture, we can actually onboard them into movement participation.”

Once again, the agenda seems more like standard left-wing street activism than celebrating America’s 250th birthday.

Indeed, the funding stream for Next250 suggests that it is at least friendly with the Democratic Party. It has a funding page on the ActBlue website, an organization that raises money for Democrats. The page notes, “#Next250 is housed at One Fair Wage.” That means this hatchling organization does not have the infrastructure (such as bank accounts, a treasurer, etc.) to handle its own finances, but a larger, more established organization in the Democratic orbit is happily providing this service for it.

Some committed activists seem to be taking the agenda into their own hands. More than once already, organizers of Freedom 250 events on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. have encountered acts of vandalism against the equipment being set up (which is massive). In one recent incident, vandals cut a fuel line powering generators that ran the lights. As a result, 30 gallons of generator fuel leaked into underground cisterns that held rainwater.

Nice work greening the planet there! For some leftists, if they are forced to choose between allowing America to be celebrated or polluting the planet, they will choose pollution.