Freedom Is Not a Gift. It's a Responsibility.

Posted on the occasion of Passover, 2026

Tonight, Jewish families around the world gather to retell one of humanity's oldest and most powerful stories: the story of liberation from bondage. The Passover Seder is not simply a religious observance. It is an act of collective memory — a deliberate, annual insistence that freedom matters, that oppression must be named, and that the struggle for dignity is never truly finished.

It feels like exactly the right moment to ask: how are we doing?

The honest answer is: not as well as we should be.

Across North America and beyond, we are watching rights and protections that took generations to build come under sustained pressure. Equity programs are being dismantled. Trans people — among the most vulnerable members of our communities — are being targeted by legislation designed not to protect anyone, but to exclude and humiliate. Immigrants are living in fear. The language of scapegoating, which history has taught us to recognize as a warning sign, is being normalized in public discourse.

This is not abstract. These are real people. Real lives. Real losses.

The Passover story reminds us that freedom is not a destination you arrive at and then get to keep without effort. Every generation has to choose it — and defend it — anew. The ancient Israelites crossed the wilderness for forty years before reaching the promised land. The road from oppression to genuine liberation is long, and it has setbacks.

We are in one of those setbacks right now.

But here is what Passover also teaches: naming the problem is the beginning of the response. Gathering around the table, telling the truth, refusing to look away — these are acts of resistance. So is showing up for your neighbours. So is speaking out when institutions fail to protect the people they are meant to serve.

Human dignity is not a partisan position. It is a baseline. It is the floor, not the ceiling.

At The Human Dignity Project, we believe that an injury to the dignity of one person is an injury to all of us. Tonight, as we remember what it felt like to be enslaved, let us also recommit to the work of making sure no one in our community — no one — is made to feel less than fully human.

Chag Pesach Sameach. Happy Passover.

Let freedom be more than a wish. Let it be a practice.

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The Human Dignity Project is an independent community initiative based in Abbotsford, BC, working to advance human dignity through education, dialogue, and advocacy.