The celebration of Juneteenth nationally took a new turn in its bid to become a nationally recognized Black holiday last year in the context of the intensified struggle against police violence and systemic racism.
The month of August for our people is a special month, full and overflowing with commemorations of our awesome march and movement through human history in our ongoing quest for freedom, justice, expanded human good and the sustained well-being of the world. This year and month mark the 400thyear of our brutal insertion in this country, enslaved and in resistance. And so, we must mark it, not simply as the time of our beginning savage oppression, but also as the time of our resistance and forming ourselves into a community of struggle, righteous and relentless struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves and build the good society and world we all want and deserve to live in.
More than two thousand came from the greater Newark/New York region, Black America and the Pan-African world, drawn by the urgent impulse to connect, network, bond, share and unite in the wake of the most hate-filled, demagogic and divisive presidential campaigns that produced a presidential regime, elected by less than a majority of the popular vote, embedded with racism, white nationalism and Islamophobia. It was one of the most threatening moments since the arrival of Africans on these hostile American shores.