Juneteenth Message

Written by Barbara Velazquez

We at the SOMA Action Racial Justice Committee would like to wish you a happy and purposeful Juneteenth.  Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of the last remaining enslaved African Americans. On June 19, 1865 slaves in Texas received the joyful news, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that they were free. Juneteenth heralds the coming of Spring which in turn represents renewal and rebirth. We can all use this annual commemoration to renew our commitment to Racial Justice, to the end of institutional racism, and to affirm the truth that Black Lives Matter. African Americans now struggle against the various forms that lynching now take. And we struggle for freedom from institutional, economic, educational, and criminal injustice. It is time for the Rebirth of a
Nation, and Juneteenth provides the opportunity to remember that no one is free
until we are all free.