Will January 6 Become the New Independence Day?

Or will we finally defeat the insurrectionists instead?

Before I get to the headline, I want to say that on this day, the bleakest July 4 I’ve ever experienced, I choose to honor the lives of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, two protesters murdered by January 6 insurrectionists posing as ICE stormtroopers.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti image via the Immigration Law and Justice Network; artist unknown

Alex Pretti, 37 at the time of his murder, was an ICU nurse who “devoted his life to serving veterans,” in the words of the Immigration Law and Justice Network.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that Pretti was “someone who went to work to care for veterans, someone who was a valued co-worker, someone who relished and lived in this state in a big way, whether it was outdoor activities or being down there on the street as a First Amendment witness to what ICE is doing to this state.”

The insurrectionist government released videos at the time stating that Pretti was a domestic terrorist. He had no criminal record.

His family responded to the insurrectionist lies like you would have: “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.”

Renee Good was also 37 years old when she was shot in the head by insurrectionist stormtroopers.

According to CNN at the time:

A mother of three, Good had two children, ages 15 and 12, from her first marriage, The Associated Press reported.

Her 6-year-old child’s father died in 2023, according to the Star Tribune. “There’s nobody else in his life,” the child’s grandfather told the newspaper.

Never forget.

Insurrectionists murdered the mother of 6, 12, and 15-year-old children. They murdered a loving mother named Renee Good.

A former neighbor in Kansas City called Good and her family “lovely,” CNN affiliates KCTV and KMBC reported.

She is “a neighbor who, you know, is not a terrorist. Not an extremist,” Joan Rose told KMBC. “That was just a mom who loved her kids, loved her spouse.”

On her social media accounts, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom,” according to the AP. She recently said she was “experiencing Minneapolis,” posting a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account.

Both were people I would have liked to have known.

Today, I also honor the immigrants who keep this country’s promise alive. We must do everything we can to reclaim the importance of immigration in the United States.

I honor the ancestors of the slaves who built the economic engine that we still benefit from. We must do everything we can to reclaim the importance of civil rights and end racism once and for all.

I honor the Native Americans who lost their homes, lives, and livelihoods during the growth of the American empire. We must do everything we can to honor their traditions and help them retain sovereignty over their lands.

And I spit at the January 6 insurrectionists

Now to the headline.

Just a few days prior to Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. hoisted an upside-down flag at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, in protest of Biden’s election and in honor of the January 6 insurrectionists.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s Home on January 17, 2021

Photo of flag at Alito’s home taken on Jan. 17, 2021, by Alito Jr’s neighbors

The historic “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a historical pine tree flag, now linked to Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, was also seen flying at Alito’s vacation home on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, in the summer of 2023.

Public domain

Representative Jamie Raskin reminds us about the revolutionary nature of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which has since been co-opted by Christo-nationalists:

The Appeal to Heaven flag is arguably the most radical democratic flag in American history. It was flown by “Washington’s Cruisers,” Yankee privateers who practiced hit-and-run raids on British shipping during the Revolution. They used fast, lightly armed sloops to disrupt General Howe’s supply lines when he was close to crushing the American revolt.

The people who flew this flag fought against everything MAGA stands for today — one-man rule and a mystical cult of personality, state-enforced religion, and the power of financial oligarchs over working people. These Revolutionaries fought for the ideas that Trump’s monarchists detest: liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy.

Although the first recorded evidence of the upside-down flag at Alito’s home was reported as January 17, 2021, there were rumors and circumstantial evidence that the flag was raised on January 6 in honor of the insurrectionists.

The Supreme Court was in the middle of an important election case, Republican Party v. DeGraffenreid, involving how elections in states are administered.

Alito and the insurrectionists lost that case, but he went on, along with a 6-3 majority, to rule that Trump had full immunity for his actions inciting the January 6 insurrection.

Trump, of course, later gave immunity to the insurrectionists themselves by pardoning or granting clemency to all 1,600 insurrectionists for their attack on the Capitol building.

Make no mistake about where we are at this moment of American history on this, a ruined 250th anniversary of the birth of a nation.

The insurrectionists are in power.

There is no sugar-coating it. Everything they do, from the implementation of Project 2025 on down, is a reflection of this.

Today, there is no Republican in Congress willing to denounce the January 6 insurrection. Most of them openly embrace it.

This is not, as the media likes to call it, “The Trump administration” or presidency.

We are living under an insurrectionist government.

We can take some comfort that nobody seems interested in celebrating at Trump’s empty festival in Washington, D.C., but the hardest part of the battle against the insurrectionists who are in power begins now.

We will need an army of volunteers to reach out to voters, even if it’s one at a time, to swarm the polls during the midterms. Failure to take both the House and Senate likely means that the government that follows Trump's impending death will change the Independence Day holiday to January 6, Insurrection Day. They might even call it Trump Day.

If that happens, if you think things are bad now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Thanks for reading!