Becoming America: Honoring the Past, Creating the Future
Updated: 12 hours ago
250 years after the Declaration of Independence, we asked people across the country one question: What do you hope America becomes next?
Campaign Dates: March 1, 2026 - September 30, 2026
For America’s 250th anniversary, Becoming America invited people across the country to reflect on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and share what they hoped for the country’s future. The idea was to make those hopes visible, both to one another and to the people elected to represent us.
At the center of the campaign was one simple prompt:
My hope for America is…
And people answered.
Becoming America joined with Pen Your Power to create four commemorative postcards for America’s 250th anniversary, giving people a place to write their hopes for the country and share them with their elected representatives. The campaign also put out a national call for art, inviting people to answer the same prompt through painting, drawing, quilting, needlework, and other visual art.
77 original works of art came in from 25 states. Across Becoming America and Pen Your Power, 23,274 postcards were ordered, and Women Building Peace teams made 320 visits to congressional offices to hand-deliver postcards to elected representatives.
“Honoring 250 years of our country means holding both the promise of our ideals and the complexity of our past. Writing our hopes on postcards that will be hand-delivered to our congressional leaders is a small but meaningful way to help shape the country we want to leave our children. I love that this is something we can all participate in, no matter our political party or ideology. A healthy democracy needs each of us, and every generation has a part in making life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness more fully possible for everyone.”
— Women Building Peace Director
What began with one question became a collection of hopes expressed in words, fabric, paint, and thread. Becoming America brought thirty of those pieces together in Washington, D.C., on September 30, 2026, with a reception featuring artwork submitted from across the country.
