We’ve been hearing fireworks for weeks in Brooklyn and across New York City. That is not unusual activity to see leading up to this holiday celebrating the start of the country, but the quantity and quality of fireworks available on the black market (fireworks are largely illegal in NYC) and the duration of the explosions into the night has been wearing down already frayed nerves of people in some neighborhoods, spawning rumors and conjecture.

Have you ever noticed that every conspiracy theory appears to involve black SUVs? Or maybe black helicopters? Dude, what do you think that means?

Tonight we’ll expect a cavalcade of illegal fireworks to light up the sky all over the city nonetheless. In the morning we’ll expect that none of our social and political problems will have disappeared overnight because of a patriotic holiday. We know that none of us are free until all of us are free, so there will still be work to do.

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