This is my 2016 celebration of our Independence Day, or the 4th of July as we tend to call it. I wanted to convey a sense of progressive optimism with this piece by showing a multicultural trio of Americans looking forward to the light ahead while leaving the darkness behind them.

There’s a lot in my country’s past that I am not proud of. Our country was founded on behalf of a very limited subsection of the population, namely white men who could afford property, while oppressing or even brutalizing everyone else. Even after two centuries and four decades, there’s still a lot of work to be done before the scars of those past injustices are fully healed. Nonetheless, as a country, we got to keeping working at it. Hopefully someday we can at last be the Land of the Free for everyone, a land where all men and women can enjoy equal opportunity and liberty. Hopefully someday we can make America great for once.