Happy Juneteenth!

Happy Juneteenth, everybody! Juneteenth: the holiday that celebrates not just the end of slavery in the United states, but the time the actual news that they were free finally reached the former enslaved people of Texas after a long delay.

Juneteenth is often thought of as a Black holiday, and while I certainly don’t want to take away anything that community considers their own, I think it’s a holiday we all should celebrate. Because while anyone, anywhere, is enslaved or oppressed, none of us are truly free. The residue of slavery still haunts us today in the racism that fuels autocratic movements and undermines democracy. Prejudice falls most harshly, and often lethally, on those who are its targets, but it also harms its perpetrators in ways perhaps less obvious, by focusing blame and righteous anger on the wrong people and obscuring the faces of those who are truly causing harm. Today is a good day to commit ourselves to the struggle for justice, not just us, not just for some, but liberty and justice for all!

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