Tomorrow, the United States marks its 250th birthday.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of people signed a Declaration of Independence. They declared that no king should rule over the dignity, liberty, and future of a free people. It was a bold act of courage that reshaped history.

But every generation faces its own defining challenge.

The great challenge of 1776 was political independence.

The great challenge of the 21st century is learning that independence alone is not enough.

We have become astonishingly connected. Our economies, our technologies, our atmosphere, our oceans, our information, and even our public health are woven together in ways our founders could scarcely have imagined. Carbon released on one continent changes the climate on another. A financial collapse spreads across oceans in hours. A war, a drought, or a pandemic reaches every shore. The illusion that we can flourish while others suffer is becoming harder and harder to sustain.

Yet at precisely the moment our interdependence has become undeniable, we have often turned inward. We have grown more divided from one another, more suspicious of our neighbors, more isolated as nations, and more willing to define freedom as simply being left alone.

But freedom without responsibility becomes fragmentation. Liberty without solidarity becomes inequality. Independence without interdependence eventually becomes self-defeating.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Neither can a civilization divided against its own future.

The threats before us are larger than any one nation can solve alone. Climate change, democratic erosion, concentrated wealth and power, technological disruption, war, forced migration, ecological decline, and deepening polarization do not stop at borders. They challenge us to expand our understanding of what it means to be free.

Perhaps the next great declaration is not one of independence, but of interdependence. Not because independence was wrong, but because it was incomplete. Interdependence is the next stage in our moral and civic evolution.

We remain free individuals, free communities, and free nations. Yet we also belong to one another. We share one atmosphere, one biosphere, one fragile civilization, and ultimately one home.

The United States is strongest when it is truly united. Humanity is strongest when it remembers that every person possesses inherent dignity, and that our destinies are intertwined.

So on this Semiquincentennial, I invite you to read and, if it speaks to your conscience, sign a new declaration, a Declaration of Interdependence.

It is not a rejection of the ideals of 1776. It is an invitation to carry them forward into a world the founders could never have imagined, where the deepest expression of liberty may be recognizing that none of us stands alone, and that the future we leave our children will depend not only on what we claim as our rights, but on how faithfully we live our responsibilities to one another, to democracy, and to the living Earth we all call home.

The Declaration of Independence was not wrong. It was written for a different historical challenge. The Declaration of Interdependence can honor that achievement while proposing what the next 250 years require. Humanity has entered a new stage of history. We have become one interconnected civilization. Our survival now depends upon realizing it and living it.

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Declaration of Interdependence

In defense of democracy, human dignity, and our shared future

When in the course of human events it becomes evident that no nation, no people, and no individual can flourish in isolation, it becomes our responsibility to acknowledge a deeper truth: that our lives are bound together.

The age of imagining ourselves as separate is passing.

Our air is shared. Our oceans are shared. Our climate is shared. Our technologies shape one another across continents. Our economies rise and fall together. Disease ignores borders. Violence spreads beyond its birthplace. Knowledge belongs to all humanity. Every generation inherits the consequences of those who came before.

We therefore declare that the highest expression of freedom is not independence alone, but interdependence freely embraced.

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident:

• That every human being possesses inherent dignity, equal worth, and the right to live free from oppression, exploitation, and needless suffering.
• That humanity is one family, diverse in culture, belief, and identity, yet united by our common origin, our shared humanity, and our common destiny.
• That the Earth is not merely a collection of resources to be consumed, but a living home entrusted to our care, whose flourishing is inseparable from our own.
• That democracy exists to serve people, and must remain transparent, accountable, participatory, and protected from corruption, concentrated power, and authoritarian rule.
• That economic systems are meant to serve life, rewarding creativity and enterprise while ensuring that prosperity is shared, opportunity is real, and no person is sacrificed to unchecked greed.
• That science, wisdom, and honest inquiry are gifts to humanity, and public decisions should be guided by evidence, humility, and compassion rather than fear, propaganda, or deliberate falsehood.
• That advancing technology, including artificial intelligence, must expand human flourishing and freedom, never diminish human dignity or concentrate power beyond democratic accountability.
• That future generations possess a moral claim upon us, and that our actions today must leave them a world more just, more peaceful, and more life-giving than the one we inherited.

Therefore, We Stand Together to:

• Strengthening democracy wherever it is threatened.
• Protecting the living systems of the Earth upon which all life depends.
• Building economies that create opportunity while honoring workers, communities, and the natural world.
• Reducing extreme inequality wherever wealth or power undermines the common good.
• Encouraging cooperation among nations while respecting the freedom and dignity of every people.
• Rejecting hatred, dehumanization, and violence as tools of political or cultural conflict.
• Cultivating communities marked by generosity, curiosity, mutual aid, and genuine dialogue across differences.
• Developing science and technology with wisdom, restraint, and ethical responsibility.
• Recognizing that the freedom of one is strengthened, not diminished, by the flourishing of all.

We reject the illusion that strength comes through domination, isolation, or fear.

We affirm instead that resilience grows through trust, cooperation, justice, and compassion.

Our greatest challenges cannot be solved by one nation alone, nor by one generation, one religion, one ideology, or one people. They call us instead to a larger identity, one that embraces both our local communities and our common humanity.

We therefore pledge ourselves, not to uniformity, but to unity.

Not to conquest, but to cooperation.

Not to fear, but to hope.

Not to indifference, but to responsibility.

Not to independence alone, but to interdependence.

May this declaration remind us that while we belong to many nations, we also belong to one another.

And that the future of each depends upon the future of all.

Signed this day by all who choose cooperation over division, stewardship over exploitation, and hope over despair.

Sign here: https://www.change.org/Declaration-of-Interdependence