A Simple Guide to Celebrate Our Interconnectedness

🇺🇸This July 4th, let’s celebrate not just freedom from tyranny, but our freedom as connection. Let’s name it what it truly can be: Interdependence Day—a day of gratitude for our shared humanity, our ecosystems, and the diverse roots that make the United States of America unique. Let’s remember who we really are.

Here’s What a Local Interdependence Day Gathering Can Include:

🌱 Set the Intention: Open with a short reflection on how we rely on one another and the Earth.
🌍 Acknowledge Land and Ancestors: Thank the original stewards of the land and invite guests to name ancestral values they carry forward.
🧳 Celebrate Diversity: Encourage guests to share music, food, stories, or dances from their heritage.
🍲 “United Tastes of America” Potluck: Invite attendees to bring dishes representing their roots, labeled “Made with love from [Country or Culture].”
🎮 Play Connection Games: From the “Yarniverse” Web of Life to “Speed Friending” and ancestry mapping—these icebreakers build bonds across backgrounds and generations.
✍️ Group Poem: Guests each write a line about interdependence to co-create a collective poem.
🎤 Global Mic Open Stage: Songs, poems, jokes, or stories from any culture welcome.
🔦 Symbolic Fireworks: Instead of traditional fireworks, use glowsticks, mirror balls, lanterns, and music to host a dazzling “Glow and Tell” parade with your beam team.

🌟 HOW TO HOST AN INTERDEPENDENCE DAY GATHERING

Anyone can do it — friends, families, schools, neighborhoods, faith groups. Here's a proposed step-by-step guide. Make it your own. Mix it up.

🌞 1. Set the Intention

• Theme: For example: ”We Thrive and Strive Together”

• Say a few words at the beginning of the event to set the tone. Like: ”“Let’s remember how much we need each other and the living world around us.”

🌳2.  Land/Ancestor Acknowledgement (bringing the past to the present)

• Invite guests to call out their own ancestral lands, a chorus of nationalities/places of belonging.

  • Offer gratitude to the original people who stewarded this land.

🌎 3. Celebrate the cultural diversity of your guests.

. World of Us:  On a map of the U.S. and/or world, guests can place small stickies with their written name on places their ancestors came from.

• Invite folks to share an Indigenous or immigrant heritage song, story, poem, joke or proverb passed onto them from their ancestors.

🥗 4. Host a “United Tastes of America Potluck.”

• Ask guests to bring a dish that reflects their heritage. Tastebud Diplomacy in action.

• Add signs like “Made with love from [Culture/Country]” and list of ingredients.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾 5. Speed Friending

• Degrees of separation: Go up to someone you don’t know at all and ask how you may be connected. Start with common interests and organizations. (You’ll be connected after that.)

🎮 6. Play Connection Games

• “Yarniverse” Web of Life Game: Everyone takes turns tossing a ball of yarn, holding onto the strand as they name something they rely on—like trees, farmers, teachers, or bees—until a visible web of connection forms between them.

✍️ 7. Poem Sweet Poem

• Whispers from the Wild.  Guests choose something in Nature that reveals their mutual interdependence. If the wild could whisper, what would it say? Write it on a stickie, then share with the group. Since AI can an important tool for better understanding our interdependence, type all the messages into ChatGPT to generate an instant poem and read it to the group.

🎆 8. Symbolic Fireworks

• Glow and Tell.  Use glow sticks, laser lights, mirror balls, candles, flashlights, lanterns, sparkle tunnels, projection mapping, flow toys, pod pois, etc. with wishes for collective well-being.  Add ambient sound and dance with lights. Take your beam team on a light parade around the block.

We grow stronger together. At the end of your event, invite everyone to:

• Host their own Interdependence Day in the coming years.

• Share stories and photos on social media using the tag #InterdependenceDay.

🌺 WHAT WE CELEBRATE

• Our strength in diversity.

• Our connection to the natural world..

• Our power of cooperation.

• Our hope in community.

Let’s make July 4th not only a celebration of freedom—but also a celebration of love, connection, and mutual support that makes freedom meaningful.

Happy Interdependence Day!

📢 Breaking News! If you’re not planning a party this year but want to be invited to one (or more), copy and share this guide to friends, social media and/or a local Newspaper.

www.InterdependenceDay.us