This Fourth of July, I'm Feeling Patriotic For the First Time

, books by Black authors, art supplies, Band-Aids, and—of course—masks. "We keep us safe," goes a common protest chant, and it never feels more true than when you're watching a group of people gather around to tend to a stranger pushed to the ground by a baton-wielding NYPD officer.

I've been offered water, snacks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and—on one occasion when I got separated from a friend in—a place to use the bathroom and charge my phone, all by people I'd never met before. I remain in awe of the ways, large and small, in which I've been welcomed to a fight I'm long overdue to join: the generosity of spirit I've seen on display at protests has made me fiercely, intensely proud of America in a way I can never recall being before.

It's important to note that this summer's organized resistance against the state's racism is nothing remotely new: Black Lives Matter protests and marches have been going on since 2014, and I had the information and resources to involve myself in the fight for racial justice long before it became de rigueur to share a hashtag on Twitter. I don't blame Black activists for wondering

AMERICA IS AMAZING! YOU MAGGOT!

YOUR FULL OF DIARRHEA VOGUE!

THOSE PROTESTERS ARE ANARCHIST THUGS!!!

YEAH THOSE PEOPLE ARE LOOTERS AND MARXIST CRIMINALS!!!

I’m not

....

this is why teen vogue is the superior publication

Y’all really cant read the room huh

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