Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, a group of colonists in a small port city thirty miles south of Newburyport signed a document declaring that they would no longer be governed by a king three thousand miles away. They knew what the odds were. They knew what the punishment for treason was. They signed anyway.

That is a Massachusetts story. This is a Massachusetts news outlet. So on the Fourth, we are going to take a break from the police scanners and the RMV filings and the City Council roll calls, and we are going to say something we do not say enough.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading Mass Daily News. Thank you for sharing our stories. Thank you for pushing back when we get something wrong, and for cheering us on when we get something right. Thank you for caring about the neighborhood you live in and the state you live in enough to want to know what is actually happening in it.

Every generation of Americans has been handed a country and asked what they were going to do with it. Every one of them, when the moment demanded it, chose to build. The 1770s did. The 1860s did. The 1940s did. The 1960s did.

We happen to think this generation will do the same. We happen to think Boston will lead it. We have thought that since we started MDN.

The Fourth of July is not a partisan holiday. It never should be. It is a day for barbecues and beach chairs and cousins you have not seen since Christmas. It is a day for the neighborhood parade with the fire trucks in front and the veterans in the middle. It is a day for beers on the porch with your dad or your kid or the guy who fixes your car.

If you are lucky, you will spend it with the people you love in a place you love, doing things that would seem completely ordinary to anyone except a person who understood, deep down, how rare it is to live in a country where you get to do them.

The Mass Daily News editorial desk wishes you and your family a safe, happy, and — if the fireworks are still allowed in your town — a very loud Fourth of July.

We will be back Monday. There is a state to cover, and we are still the outlet that covers it.

Until then: have a beer, hug your people, and thank someone in uniform.

Happy Independence Day.