Remembering a March for a Bicentennial Without Colonies

Philadelphia, PA — On a crowded Broad Street Line train on the way to a No Kings march, Pedro Rodriguez and Paul Socolar saw one another and remembered another march they attended almost 50 years prior: the March for a Bicentennial Without Colonies in 1976. They created the July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition to commemorate the march with others who saw its significance and began hosting events in the Greater Philadelphia area.

The march was attended by an estimated 40,000 people in North Philadelphia during the reign of Mayor Frank Rizzo, who requested 15,000 federal troops to oppose the protest. There was pushback by local civil rights leaders who were wary of mostly outsiders coming to march in predominantly Black neighborhoods, but a consensus was achieved. The march had over 40 demands and was very diverse according to Socolar, who described many movements as “overwhelmingly white” at the time.

One of the driving forces behind the march was the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) who launched the broader July 4th Coalition to coordinate the march. The PSP brought 20,000 people to Madison Square Garden in 1974 for Puerto Rican Independence. Many decolonization movements were achieving successes at the time. There was the feeling among activists that Puerto Rican independence and a more just society was just around the corner, according to Rodriguez, a then-22-year-old student at New York State University at Oneonta and organizer with a leftist organization called Just Folks for Responsible Government.

Paul Socolar was a 21-year-old student then and organized a contingent of students from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges to attend. He remembers the march as “a beautiful scene of solidarity.” He continued,

“It was called a parade of the people, it was a protest, but also celebratory in a way – a parade of the causes that we were all there to advocate for. The experience of this being a joyous event was memorable, too often there isn’t that kind of joyous spirit at protests.”

Cornelius Moore from Chester, PA was then a 21-year-old senior at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked with the African Liberationist Support Committee and an autonomous group that met in West Philadelphia to promote the march. His fond memories of the counter-bicentennial march included listening to Elaine Brown, head of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, speak. Moore recalled,

“The thing that was impressive was the march began with Native Americans’ presence and drummers. Anything about colonialism or human rights, that was really the first manifestation of colonialism…There are Native peoples all over the U.S., but not a strong presence of Indigenous people [in Philadelphia].”

The American Indian Movement “never, ever, ever” marched with the U.S. left, according to Alfredo Lopez, an organizer with the PSP and editor of the U.S. version of Claridad, who spearheaded the July 4th Coalition and was then 27-years-old.

Maritza Arrastia was a 30-year-old organizer with the PSP, reporter with Claridad, and co-founder of the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse who spent much of the year prior coalition-building. Her and fellow organizers saw the bicentennial as an opportunity. “It felt like you can’t let this go by, this lie of bicentennial. No, a bicentennial without colonies. It was that sort of grito, that sort of war cry.”

She recalled, “The march itself was pretty euphoric — being part of a big sort of human river, really screaming and expressing what we really feel very, very strongly about. It’s almost like a primal human need.”

“One of the delusions that capitalism really relies on is that we’re individuals, but really we’re inter-beings. Native and global majority ways of knowing really carry the sense that we are, I am because you are. That’s an experience that you get to have in that situation where you get to be with a mass of people expressing your profound sense of justice and injustice.”

Many local Philadelphians cheered on the march and welcomed marchers onto their porches during heavy rainfall. A diverse coalition drawing such a large crowd was uncommon then, but it came with struggles.

The march route assigned by the city was a concern for local civil rights leaders who feared intensified police violence in their communities along with wariness of outsiders planning a large action.

Lopez reflected on the consensus building process: “I had conversations almost constantly… every freaking night for the last two weeks right up to the demonstration.” Philadelphia was chosen for the march as the “birthplace” for the nation, but Lopez advocated for bringing the march to the Black community and saw it impractical to have it in white, rich or commercial areas where national actions were typically held and he considered “foreign” to the perspective they were bringing.

“[We had to be] very careful about whose toes you stepped on to be respectful. These were very real activists representing a real perspective, but also responding to the fears and concerns of their own constituencies that are very real and very difficult to understand if you’re not a Black person in Philadelphia under Rizzo.”

There was a “huge resistance” to the inclusion of gay activists according to Lopez, but gay rights were made a part of the platform with pressure from coalition members notably an activist who flew to New York from San Francisco and won over the executive committee.

“In ‘76 that had never been included in a mass demonstration before, not like that, never, ever, ever. We had entire buses, particularly a couple of buses of radical lesbian activists.”

“Some Marxist organizations were not supportive of gay liberation. [It was considered] marginal, not central, to revolutionary politics and [there was] homophobia. Then left-wing dogma was like, homosexuality is petty bourgeois, all that. Just like those independent struggles distracting from the central class question.”

Arrastia remembers organizing the march as very labor-intensive and consuming, but worth the effort. “That’s another thing – that these grito, larger-than-life events do is become markers in collective memory because the oppression is always trying to erase what we know.”

July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition hosted a commemorative panel on June 13, 2026, that focused on where social movements are today in the context of the 1976 March. The panel was at Taller Puertorriqueño, an organization established in 1974 with support from Puerto Rican Socialist Party members, based in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia to serve as a cultural and arts hub for the neighborhood where Puerto Ricans have maintained a strong presence. Rafael Damast was on the panel as the art curator & exhibitions coordinator for Taller Puertorriqueño.

Several panelists are involved in place-based struggle to improve their communities while resisting gentrification and displacement.

Bill McKinney represented New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), an organization that works on neighborhood revitalization in Kensington, a neighborhood that has been heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic and drug trade which has brought it national attention.

While Philadelphia as a whole consistently ranks as one of the poorest big cities in the US, only recently no longer ranking at number one, the poverty level in Kensington is close to double the city as a whole according to data by the City of Philadelphia.

Part of NKCDC’s strategy of neighborhood revitalization in Kensington is tending abandoned lots, creating community gardens, and transforming vacant properties into community resources. Kensington has twice the amount of vacant lots as Philadelphia overall. While the impacts of the drug crisis are visible in parts of Kensington, the abundance of community gardens stands out as well, many featuring Puerto Rican flags and symbols associated with Taino culture.

There is a larger movement and history of vacant lots being taken over in Kensington to develop community gardens as a means of resisting blight and more recently gentrification, particularly by Puerto Rican and Latine people as a form of cultural preservation.

“Kensington [has been] abandoned to, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like we’re walking in another place other than the States. That world is like a different world, an apartheid. People try to avoid this neighborhood,” Cesar Viveros, co-founder of Iglesias Gardens, told UR.

César Andreu Iglesias Gardens, commonly known as Iglesias Gardens, is part of that movement in Kensington. It was named after the Puerto Rican Communist Party president, labor organizer, writer and “in honor of the Puerto Rican and Latinx community that live in the neighborhood.”

Since Iglesias was established in 2012 when Viveros, alongside Philly Socialists, took over the vacant and littered lot, it has served as a meeting and gathering space, art and sculpture exhibition inspired by Viveros’ Aztec roots, place for immigrants to connect with their culture, and to lead campaigns against gentrification.

Iglesias Gardens is closely tied to the recently formed Land Stewards Union which unites land stewards around Philadelphia who tend vacant lots.

Viveros shared at the panel that one of the challenges of joining neighbors to tend to abandoned land was their lack of belief that they could “fight for the side yard” because “we are so colonized or don’t have the political ideology.”

Building and tending relationships as a part of organizing and building coalitions was a prominent topic at the panel.

Debbie Wei was on the panel with Asian Americans United and Neighbors and Communities in Solidarity, a group that fought against a stadium being built in Chinatown that could have displaced its long-term residents, businesses, and much of the community as a whole. The stadium ultimately wasn’t built.

Wei said the strong community in Chinatown was a key factor in building a strong movement to fight the arena. She explained she’s unable to pass through Chinatown quickly because of the time she takes to speak to people and “that’s what community is.”

Many other groups and individuals stepped up to join the fight against the arena. Wei remarked that coalitions are built on trust and relationships and likened them to growing crops which need regular and consistent care.

McKinney said that in social movements “we don’t know exactly when the moment will be, so when the moment comes we need to be ready” by having already established relationships.

There was also a focus on intentionality brought to those relationships, Damast said that in a coalition rights can’t be “prioritized for one group” which can be a pitfall to building successful coalitions.

Viveros sees all the different aspects of social movements as contributing to the greater cause to “advance our society” and Iglesias Gardens as, “a microcosm, doing a little change here… When the community is involved, everybody’s putting their own resources, for the common ground and for the advancement of everybody, things are possible.” he told UR at a visit to the garden.

Social movements and society have changed in immeasurable ways in 50 years. Conditions are different and in many ways incomparable, but memory helps with orientation during the 250th anniversary of the U.S.

Moore reflected on the shifts he’s seen in social movements since 1976:

“It may have taken years and years, but whether it’s people organizing across racial lines or thinking that feminism and women’s liberation is legitimate, not a white middle-class women’s thing as well as queer politics – it’s legitimately viewed as part of the progressive movement.”

Several interviewees mentioned more coalitions and a greater focus on anti-imperialism as ways social movements have shifted in the last 50 years, with the campaign to get the U.S. military out of Vieques being notable to Socolar.

“Social change happens gradually and episodically. Think about major seismic events that shape shift the landscape as you know it, the mountains move, valleys get created and then you talk about the erosion of how water running through mountains creates canyons. Social movement happens the same way and then you look at the history of capitalism in the long run you can see this ebb and flow of it. … You have to be an optimist to do this work, if not, it will eat you up and your health will suffer.”

Several exhibits and events have been planned for the late summer and fall to commemorate the march.

Lopez shared a final message for radicals:

“This thing gets rough, but there is no greater life than the life of a revolutionary. It’s the most wonderful life you can have, you have the one gift that life gives you. You wake up every day and you know why you’re here.”

About the author: Caroline Keane studied Political Science and Political Economics in their undergraduate studies and went on to obtain a master’s degree in journalism. Their areas of interest include the environment, mass incarceration, community, arts and culture.

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