WE STILL HOLD THESE TRUTHS!
DEAR US invites people to make original works of art that respond both to this moment in history and to the foundational concept of inalienability.
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MAKE ART TOGETHER
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WRITE POSTCARDS
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SHARE & CONNECT
The Declaration of Independence asserted a radical idea: that certain rights are inalienable—not granted by governments, not earned by status, not contingent on approval, and not subject to removal. They belong to us simply because we are human. As we approach the 250th anniversary of that document, the question of what it truly means to hold rights as inalienable feels newly urgent.
DEAR US invites people to make original works of art that respond both to this moment in history and to the foundational concept of inalienability. We have never gotten this promise perfect; the history of inalienable rights in the United States is a history of exclusion, struggle, and continual renegotiation. Yet anniversaries are not only moments of celebration—they are invitations to reflect and to recommit.
3 WAYS TO GET INVOLVED!
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Maker meet-ups are small but powerful acts. They create space for people to practice democracy not as debate, but as care, creativity, and shared responsibility. In a time when the very word inalienable sits uncomfortably in our mouths from lack of use, these gatherings return the conversation to human scale—where love, imagination, and dignity live.
As such, we encourage artists, neighbors, friends, and organizations to host DEAR US meet-ups so that your community can make this art together. These gatherings use making as a civic practice—a way to slow down, listen, reflect, and express care for one another and for democratic ideals.
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We imagine DEAR US postcards sparking letter-writing nights that gather people at shared tables to slow down, reflect, and practice democracy through attention and care. Each postcard then becomes a record of participation and a reminder that civic engagement can be personal, creative, and grounded in human connection.
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You know your community and its resources. Your creativity is the limit of this phase. We can imagine these postcards mailed to elected representatives. We can see groups giving stacks of them to their elected officials to deliver to detention facilities or to organizations working closely with immigrant neighbors. We can envision them assembled into larger art installations and put on display with other artwork at libraries, galleries, and public spaces. Whatever your collective impact, send us pictures of both your artwork and your time together so that we can include them in this movement.
We welcome art across all disciplines and especially encourage artists to integrate heritage and folk arts to communicate their ideas. Artists of all abilities and at career stages are encouraged to create.
However, if you are looking for a more deliberate prompt, we encourage people to design 4 X 6 postcards.
Both making and responding to art offer uniquely human ways to slow down, tell the truth, and examine our ideals.
In this moment—marked by brutal and often unconstitutional immigration enforcement in Minneapolis and across the country—the gap between the ideals articulated in 1776 and the lived experiences of many people in 2026 is impossible to ignore. Engaging creatively with the concept of inalienability now allows us to ask, together, what these rights must mean in practice if they are to belong to all of us in the centuries to come.