On the meaning of the Fourth of July

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — KELOLAND News took a simple question to Falls Park in Sioux Falls on Thursday: What does the Fourth of July mean to you?

Different personal answers to this query might focus on the collective or the individual. For Minnie Galán of California, her son was born on this date back in 2007.

“At ten o’clock in the morning, I was giving birth on the Fourth of July,” Galán said.

17 years ago.

“17 years ago,” Galán said. “Funny story, that if I can tell you, is that my husband said, ‘Oh, I wish my son was born on the Fourth of July.’ Then I said, ‘Well, maybe we can make that happen.’ So we did make that happen.”

So for her, the day is about more than one birthday.

“It’s like we make it, like, a big thing, okay it’s Fourth of July, you were born on a beautiful day, and it’s your birthday, too,'” Galán said.

“The Fourth of July to me, means, is about the people,” Garrett James of Iowa said. “It’s not about the rhetoric or the background noise that’s coming out of D.C.”

James says while unity might be a destination, there isn’t a fixed road map to arrive there.

“That’s what the American spirit is about,” he said. “It’s about coming together as a people and having a common idea, but there may be multiple ways to get there.”

From the clouds to the sky to different shirts, it was easy to quickly spot plenty of red, white and blue among all the different people gathered at Falls Park on Independence Day. The question about what the Fourth of July means to someone might draw a wide variety of specific answers. But there’s a commonality here, too.

“It’s not about color,” said Kelly Schuring, who was alongside James at Falls Park on Thursday. “It’s not about if you’re male or female or whatever, it’s about us as human beings, totally being human beings and being able to treat each other as a human being no matter who the other person is.”

“It’s not about just one voice, though,” James said. “It’s about all of our voices being heard and being regarded as being important.”

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