We the people, pending review

Juneteenth is next Friday, and it's had me thinking back to a few days we spent in Washington DC in May 2017.We walked around the main monuments after dark — fewer people, the marble lit against a black sky, the spring heat finally off. Earlier that day we'd been through the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where there's a piece I really love: "Preamble" by Mike Wilkins — the opening of the Constitution spelled out phonetically across license plates, one from every state. WE TH, P PUL, OF TH, U NI... you sound it out and there it is. Fifty plates, fifty states, one sentence.Then the memorials. Lincoln up in his chair, the inscription over his head about the man who saved the Union. Jefferson in his rotunda, ringed by his own words — that all men are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights. The Declaration carved into the marble around him. And the King memorial, that block of stone with the line about injustice anywhere being a threat to justice everywhere.Here's the…