To the Young, Scrappy and Hungry: Do Not Give Away Your Shot

The pen is ours. The revolution isn’t history — it’s a group project. Due now.

Inspired by the words and work of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

I saw the beloved Hamilton this weekend, authored by the brilliant and talented Lin-Manuel Miranda.

In 2015, when Hamilton opened, we were still living inside a version of the American promise.
President Obama was in office. Lin-Manuel Miranda was celebrated at the White House.
And the story we told ourselves — that “any kid, however unlikely, can be president” — still felt true.

There was a sense that history was bending.
That it was being passed, baton-style, to a new generation of storytellers.
Immigrant sons and daughters.
Kids of Kansas and Kenya. Of Puerto Rico and the Bronx.
Not as footnotes — but as headliners.

But this time, watching Hamilton hit different.
Because since then, the promise has cracked.
The pages are being torn out.
The room where it happened? It’s under attack.

And there it was, on stage — just days before we light fireworks for a country still pretending it hasn’t already been set on fire.

Back in October, when I bought our season tickets and spotted Hamilton on the list,
I was thrilled to see it again.

And back then — Trump wasn’t president.
He hadn’t even been elected.

Remember that feeling?
Waking up without dread before opening your phone.
A president who didn’t rage-tweet policy.
A memory of law and order — and of each other — that still felt shared.

Knowing I would see it right before our nation’s 250th birthday — and my own — I thought: How perfect.

But when the lights dimmed and Alexander Hamilton strode into the spotlight,
it hit deep in my chest.
Different than it ever had before.

Because we’re not just watching history come alive on stage.
We’re standing in its spotlight — right now.

The choreography.
The fury.
Wordplay like lightning.
A reminder that this nation wasn’t born clean; it was born complicated.

What struck me this time wasn’t just the show’s brilliance —
but the irony:

“...slip the pages from the ledger, silence every resolution.” — Hamilton

The nation that once lifted its voice in revolt
is now trying to erase the record of that very revolution.

The place that birthed jazz, rock, and hip-hop
is suddenly afraid of truth with rhythm.

A system built to tell its story
is burning the pages — writing new ones in smoke.

And we’re not just watching history get rewritten —
we’re fighting like hell to keep the ink from drying.

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The Young, Scrappy, and (Still) Dangerous

It wasn’t just the music that felt familiar.
It was the fire in their voices.
The fury in their eyes.
The brilliance of youth too fed up to wait their turn.

Because Hamilton wasn’t a relic.
It was a reminder.

That revolutions are almost always ignited by the young —
by the sharp, the unflinching, the underestimated.

Jefferson was 33 when he penned the Declaration.
Madison was 36 when he drafted the Constitution.
Hamilton was barely out of his teens
when he rewrote the economic backbone of a newborn nation.
And Lafayette? Just 19 when he crossed an ocean to fight tyranny.

They were students.
Scholars.
Writers.
Revolutionaries.

And every single one of them terrified a king.

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Now?

Our universities are under siege.
Our students are being silenced.

Our public education system isn’t being gutted because they want to make it better —
it’s being gutted because they don’t want the generation of the new majority to think critically.

They don’t want a generation of problem-solvers.
They want compliant labor —
low-wage, no-benefits, don’t-ask-questions kind of labor.

They want you broke, busy, and begging —
not reading, rising, or organizing.

Because if you can decode an executive order,
you might demand to know what they’re doing behind closed doors.

If you can trace a headline to a vote,
you might show up at the polls.

If you can follow the money,
you might follow it all the way to the top.

That’s the real threat.
Not CRT.
Not pronouns.
Not books with brown kids on the cover.

It’s the power of an informed generation of the new majority.
And they’re doing everything they can to shut it down.

Because the ones in power know what we know:

An educated population doesn’t beg for scraps.
It demands the pen.
It writes the new story.

And that is what they fear.

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Built by Many, Feared by Few

What built this country —
our diversity, our defiance, our relentless reinvention —
is now being twisted into a threat.

But here’s the truth they won’t say out loud:
More than 53 million people living in the United States — approximately 15.8% of the population — were born in another country.
That’s the highest share in U.S. history, surpassing previous peaks in 1890 and 1910.

They are not “outsiders.”
They are mothers. Workers. Students. Soldiers. Caregivers.
Neighbors. Voters. Innovators. Storytellers.

Including — let’s be honest — the daughter of Indian immigrants who now serves as our Second Lady.
Including the First Lady, born in Slovenia, standing quietly beside a man unraveling the very institutions that once welcomed her in.
And the man they entrusted to help dismantle those institutions?
A first-generation immigrant from South Africa.

This isn’t irony.
It’s intentional.

It’s a system that rewards assimilation with power —
and then turns that power against the next generation
trying to walk through the same door.

This country wasn’t built by sameness.
It was built by the collision of difference —
and the courage to hold it together anyway.

But now, that difference is being criminalized.
Accent. Origin. Even faith — framed as danger instead of identity.

Because when power gets scared,
it doesn’t just build walls —
it builds systems.

Systems not designed to serve the people,
but to preserve the powerful.

And when those systems feel like they’re losing their grip?

They don’t go quietly.
They don’t reflect.
They don’t reform.

They go mad.
They lash out.
They cloak tyranny in nostalgia,
and demand loyalty under threat.

“When you’re gone, I’ll go mad.
So don’t throw away this thing we had.
’Cause when push comes to shove...
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.”
— King George, Hamilton

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The Future They Fear? It’s Already Here.

By 2020, children under 18 in the United States became majority–minority.
No single racial or ethnic group made up more than 50% of the next generation.
That’s not a theory. That’s a fact.

And by 2045, the same will be true of the entire U.S. population.
According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, non-Hispanic white Americans will make up less than half of the total population for the first time in the nation’s history.

This isn’t a forecast of what’s to come.
It’s the reflection of what’s already here.

That’s what they’re afraid of.
Not “illegals.”
Not “wokeness.”
Not “CRT.”

They’re afraid of a country that finally looks like the truth of its own promise.

A nation of many.
Of all.
Of us.

This country was always a blend.
A remix.
An improvisation.

We are the jazz in its lungs,
the hip-hop in its heart,
the Hamilton in its DNA.

So when you see:

• the book bans

• the border walls

• the executive orders with disappearing numbers

• the silencing of students

• the gaslighting of history —

Know this:

It’s not about safety.
It’s not about order.
It’s not about patriotism.
It’s about panic.

Because the generation that’s rising
doesn’t need permission to exist.
It already does.

And they know it.

“Just as we forget that immigrants are the backbone of this country,
we forget that musical theater is a mongrel art form.”
— Lin-Manuel Miranda

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The Vessels

They’ve come for the young.
They’ve come for the immigrant.
And now—

They’ve come for the ones they fear most of all:

The Women Who Remember Their Power.

Because when control starts to slip,
it isn’t the strongmen they try to muzzle.

It’s the mothers.
The fighters.
The dissenters in heels, sneakers, and steel-toed boots.

The ones who raise the next generation —
and raise hell when injustice calls.

Who do they need more than anyone to comply?

Women.

To be the vessel for their white, male, powerful children.
To teach them compliance.
To keep the peace while the house burns down.

But it’s women who are keeping the receipts.
Women who stood on the front lines of every resistance —
from suffrage to civil rights,
from Roe to the streets of 2020.

And if history has taught us anything, it’s this:
When women rise, regimes fall.

Time and again, women have stood at the vanguard of democracy’s turning points —
from the U.S. suffrage movement, to the streets of Iran, to the revolt in Haiti.

Ask Eleanor Roosevelt.

She didn’t sit quietly in a gown.
She walked into coal mines, onto protest lines,
into back rooms of power —
and dared to say:

“This country belongs to all of us.”

She didn’t just whisper into a president’s ear.
She built policy, platform, and precedent.

She fought for the rights they’re now trying to erase.
And she signed the letter we’re still delivering today.

We’re not here to play nice.
We’re here to pick up her pen.

You can silence a voice.
You can suppress a vote.
But you can’t unwrite a woman who knows her worth.

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The Room Where It Happens

They count on our silence.
They count on our sleep.
While they pass their disaster
in authoritarian creep.

They hope we’re distracted,
too tired to see
that the bill dropped at midnight
ain’t about democracy.

EOs vanish.
The numbers don’t match.
The title’s rewritten.
The facts get detached.

They revise the record
while the headlines lag.
Rebrand the past
while waving our flag.

But we’ve got the ledger.
We’ve got the thread.
We screenshot the story
they’d rather be dead.

We learned a few things along the way.
We didn’t pay attention to how their game is played —
so now we change the rules
and flip this parade.

We’re pulling up chairs they said we’d never earn.
We’re lighting our torches — it’s our turn to burn —

Not buildings.
Not books.
But the lie they’ve been selling:
that truth is disposable
and fear is compelling.

We show up in city halls,
in courtrooms, in schools.
We read every footnote.
We dismantle the rules.

Write.
Call.
March if you must.
Vote like the future is depending on us.

Teach the next voter.
Drop this link.
Because when they try to bury truth —
we’ll write it in ink.

The curtain is rising.
We’re not here for claps.
We’re here to rewrite the closing acts.

Because the room belongs to us —
and both sides need to see:
That We the People will defend our Liberty.

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Deliverance

These are not just words.
They’re meant to be spoken — shouted, whispered, remembered.

“And when my prayers to God were met with indifference,
I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance.”
— Hamilton, “Hurricane”

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Rally Cry

Right now, the Senate is preparing to vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
A $3.8 trillion monster. Packed with giveaways for the rich.
Laced with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, public education, and voting protections.

They’re trying to sneak it through by Monday.
No filibuster. No debate. Just 51 votes.

So here’s what you do:
📞 CALL YOUR SENATORS — TONIGHT.
📣 Flood social media with the truth.
🧾 Drop facts in every group chat and town hall.
🗳️ Tell them: You see what’s in this bill. And you vote.

Make it loud. Make it public. Make them feel the people at their heels.

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Acknowledgments
Portions of this work reference or quote lyrics from Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. All rights belong to the original creators. Gratitude to Miranda for the art, the fire, and the reminder that history has its eyes on us.

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