Op-Ed: At 250, America’s Promise Is Being Kept in Our Hometowns

The following is an op-ed authored by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Chief Government Affairs Officer Lisa Katz, who leads CAM’s municipal initiatives with North American mayors:

This year, the fireworks will mean something different.

On Saturday, America turns 250. Two and a half centuries ago, 56 men signed their names to a single sheet of parchment and staked their lives on a radical idea that all people were created equal and that a nation could be built to prove it. That promise has been tested before. It is being tested again now.

Last year, I wrote that antisemitism was no longer lurking in the shadows, but marching openly through our streets, our campuses, and our politics. This year, the numbers confirm it. CAM’s Antisemitism Research Center documented 6,819 antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2025, the third consecutive record year.

And the dire reality facing Jews continues to escalate. In 2026, we have watched a sitting mayor skip his own city’s Israel Day Parade, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned candidates normalize rhetoric targeting Jews, and college commencement stages become platforms for antisemitism. The pattern is no longer a series of isolated moments. It is a climate.

So here is the question a 250th birthday forces us to ask — what did our founders actually build, and is it strong enough to hold?

I believe the answer is yes, and I believe the proof is not in Washington. It is in city halls nationwide.

This year, I have watched it happen, roundtable by roundtable, proclamation by proclamation.

In Miami Beach, Florida, mayors did something no single mayor could do alone — they founded the Jewish Mayors and Municipal Leaders Association, a standing coalition built to outlast any one news cycle.

In Savannah, Georgia, nearly fifty mayors gathered under one roof for a different milestone, a Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) celebration that showed just how quickly this network is growing.

And through CAM’s annual North American Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, that local leadership has become a national movement, giving mayors from across the country a place to learn from one another, act together, and return home with concrete tools to protect their communities.

In Lorain (Ohio), a mayor opened his doors and convened his counterparts because he refused to wait for permission from anyone above him. In Palo Alto (California), Montgomery (Alabama), Clearfield City (Utah), and Sandy Springs (Georgia), mayors hosted their own forums, proving that this is not one city’s project, but a larger movement. None of these mayors needed a national mandate. They simply needed a conscience.

The United States was built on the belief that the people closest to the problem must have the power to help fix it. Mayors don’t pass constitutional amendments. They don’t command armies. What they have is proximity. They know which school had a swastika drawn on its wall, which synagogue needs a patrol car outside on a Friday night, which community is afraid to gather publicly, and which local voices are testing how far antisemitic rhetoric can travel before anyone objects. Increasingly, they are the ones drawing the line.

That is what I want people to remember from this 250th anniversary, beyond the parades, barbecues, and fireworks — hatred is a local problem before it is ever a national headline. That means the cure must be local too.

None of this means Washington is off the hook, or that this moment does not call for state and federal action. It means the opposite. The elected officials closest to every American are proving that the fight against antisemitism and hate can be won. Their work deserves the same investment, urgency, and protection we give to declarations signed 250 years ago. A promise made on parchment is only as real as the people willing to defend it in their own backyard.

So this Fourth of July, as the country marks 250 years since we first declared what we meant to be, let’s also mark something newer and just as important — a growing, gritty, and unstoppable network of mayors across every region, party, and background who have decided that “liberty and justice for all” is not a line for the history books. It’s a job description.

And they are showing up for it.

That is the America worth 250 candles. Not one that has solved antisemitism, but one that has finally begun building the local infrastructure to fight it — city by city, mayor by mayor, promise kept by promise kept.