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We’ve made it halfway through 2025! I think that many of us can relate to feeling as though this year has been speeding by while simultaneously being painstakingly slow. Despite the numerous challenges and hurdles that 2025 has thrown our way, from personal to professional, we’ve managed to make it to the halfway point of the year, which deserves a well-earned deep breath. With graduations, the start of summer, Pride, and Juneteenth, June is typically a month that ushers in a feeling of hope, celebration, and jubilation. Yet, given the political climate and all that’s been happening around us, celebrating looks and feels a little different, and it’s difficult to conjure up feelings of jubilance. If anything, there’s almost a guilt associated with feeling good as things seem to fall apart around us. Last Thursday, June 26th, marked 10 years of same-sex marriage being legalized nationwide, which should give extra cause for celebration. There was a time, which now feels like a past life, where I used to roll my eyes when companies would suddenly have rainbow colored logos and items as the clock struck midnight on June 1st, despite not doing anything year-round to uplift or positively impact the LGBTQ+ community. But as I look back, even performative activism was better than where we have found ourselves, with companies bowing down to this administration’s harmful tactics. This year, it doesn’t even seem as though many companies even bothered to make an attempt or pretend to care. Two weeks ago, on Thursday, June 19th, we celebrated Juneteenth, and instead of acknowledging the importance of this day, the statement from this administration was noting that there are “too many non-working holidays in America” – yet they want to “reclaim” Columbus Day… When Juneteenth first became recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, I was still living in San Diego and had decided to use my day off as a “treat yourself” day. While getting my nails done, I heard two women (who were not Black) expressing that they weren’t sure what Juneteenth was, but were glad to have a day off. In true Aniya fashion, never one to give up an opportunity to educate folks (solicited or not), I chimed in, explaining that Juneteenth was meant to celebrate the freedom of enslaved people in Texas. Every year when Juneteenth rolls around, I think about those two women and that interaction, and I found myself thinking about them even more so this year. Quick history lesson: With the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln declared that slaves in Confederate states must be free. Despite what we were taught in school (or at least, what I was taught in school), this was not the end of slavery, as enslaved people in states that had not seceded (i.e. Northern States and parts of the Confederacy) were not declared free. The 13th Amendment in 1865 officially abolished slavery*, but it wasn’t until June 19th, 1865, that enslaved people in Texas were freed, as slave masters in Texas had been hesitant to spread the word for obvious reasons, making ALL enslaved people truly free. *Please know that I am speaking with a technicality, as slavery is still alive and well in this country, shown through our prison/incarceral system, even in “progressive and left-leaning” blue states like California, where voters voted against Proposition 6 in the November 2024 Election, allowing forced labor to continue in prisons, and the 13th Amendment itself notes slavery as acceptable for as punishment for crime. Despite the times that we find ourselves in, it has been absolutely awe-inspiring to see how people and organizations have stepped up to show that we refuse to wave the white flag and remain committed to fighting for what we know is right. On Juneteenth, the New Jersey Reparations Council released their report, “For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey” with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We saw people power nationwide as folks united for the “No Kings Protest”, and most recently, our neighbors in New York City voted for Zohran Mamdani to be the Democratic Nominee for mayor. My own organization, Gathering Ground, continues to center our work around equity and justice, not just in writing, but in practice. We’re living in times that are scary, confusing, and frustrating, but time and time again, we’re proving that together, we can be the change we want and need to see. In Solidarity, |
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Aniya Brown, Communications Associate |