Freedom for Who? Reflections of an American Woman on the Declaration of Independence

A revolutionary perspective on toxic American exceptionalism and nationalism

Image by Mr. Fish. Used with permission.

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Through the 4th of July CELDF will be challenging dishonest narratives about America’s past and how those lies distort our lives in the present. This essay is part of a four-part series of reflections on the Declaration of Independence from CELDF’s staff. They’re part of CELDF’s America 250: A Revolutionary Perspective series.

Two-hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was signed by an exclusive gathering of wealthy white men, O’Dell speaks to what the Declaration failed to address when it asserted that:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You can find more on America 250: A Revolutionary Perspective at CELDF’s Truth + Reckoning Substack. Be sure to follow us there and at CELDF.org, where you can learn about our Education, Consulting, and Community Resistance & Resilience programs. Consider supporting CELDF by making a donation that fits your plans.

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By Tish O’Dell

Looking back at what I was taught in my 6 decades on this Earth as an American and what I have had to “unlearn” thanks to my colleagues at CELDF, community members I have fought alongside and even the lawyers, judges, electeds and media who have exposed reality to me, my perspective of the Declaration of Independence (DOI) is far different today than what I learned in school.

As a young girl in school, I believed what I was taught hook line and sinker — the DOI was an amazing document recognizing that we were all free and equal in this country no matter where we were born, our socioeconomic status or who our parents were. Although an obvious red flag clue should have been the first line “all men are created equal”! When I questioned that, the reply was always the same, “women fought for the 19^th amendment (over 100 years after the DOI) and won”, as if voting somehow guaranteed we were equal under the law.

I also came of age during the era of “women’s liberation” which included the fights for equal pay and equal rights. I remember seeing Gloria Steinem speak at Kent State University which I was attending in the mid-1980’s and she inspired me to look closer at what I had been taught and what reality was when it came to women’s rights. She gave statistics on the pay discrepancy between men and women doing the same job. The fact that a woman couldn’t get a credit card without her husband’s signature and that in many states marital rape was legal (many states still treat marital rape differently under the law). And of course, the big issue about whether a woman has the right to decide whether to go through with an unwanted pregnancy is still being debated in 2026.

Over the years I did what so many of us have been taught to do… I marched in my community; I traveled to Washington D.C. to march for the Equal Rights Amendment for women; and I wrote letters to electeds and anywhere else that would print them. These experiences made me realize that the freedom I had been taught that the DOI and constitutional amendments promised, were more illusion than reality.

In 2011 I began organizing and working with CELDF. I took Democracy School and learned the real history behind the DOI and this sparked my interest in learning even more about the movement for women’s rights. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, in 1776 as the idea of what we know as the United States was being formed, “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Over the next two centuries women fought and fought hard to become recognized rights holders. Some engaged in direct action and were arrested, like Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul. When they appeared before the court, the judge ruled against them. What many today would call a “loss” and yet, I am so grateful that they didn’t give up. I learned that in many local communities and later territories in the US, women had the right to vote and when the territories became states, the legislatures actually took away women’s right to vote. I learned that the struggle wasn’t just some women in white dresses with sashes parading down the streets and that these protests were somehow responsible for the 19^th amendment. It took over 100 years of meetings, organizing, protests, arrests, court cases and acts of extreme courage and sacrifice that resulted in torture and even losing their own children, just to be able to vote, but still not changing that famous line, “all men are created equal”.

I also learned in my work with CELDF and by being directly involved with the court cases filed on behalf of local laws protecting nature and the rights of community members, that when we attempted to cite the DOI as the basis of our arguments in our briefs regarding those “unalienable rights of the people to protect their lives, liberty and happiness”, the courts, if they even addressed the argument at all, stated that the DOI is not actually law but just poetic words of aspiration.

So while this country and our government celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let’s see it through the eyes of truth and reality. There may have been good intentions by the people at the time who took all the risks, including the women, but we have never lived up to those intentions of freedom, justice and rights for all persons and the non-humans that we depend on. Isn’t it about time we take the words seriously and breathe life into the righteous word of the Declaration of Independence or perhaps just start over with a new guiding document that actually reflects and codifies the values we were taught were there all along?

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About the Author

Tish O’Dell has been involved in community rights and Rights of Nature work since 2012. She started in her own community of Broadview Heights, Ohio, leading to the adoption of Ohio’s first Home Rule charter amendment creating a Community Bill of Rights banning fracking and recognizing Rights of Nature.

She then went on to work with dozens of Ohio communities on anti-fracking, anti-pipeline, right to a livable climate, fair and free elections, and water privatization issues. Today, Tish works with communities all over the country and internationally, most recently working with residents and a state legislator in NY to introduce the Great Lakes Bill of Rights. In 2019, she worked with the people of Toledo to pass the historic Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

She has taught workshops, CELDF’s Democracy Schools, and is a founding member and current board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network. Tish, along with other CELDF staff and community members, has been featured in the documentaries We the People 2.0, Invisible Hand, What We do to Nature, We do to Ourselves, and edited the book Death by Democracy.

In her free time, Tish likes to spend time on or near Lake Erie, in her yard, or with family and friends having lively discussions or playing a competitive game…for fun of course.