Juneteenth celebrates the date (June 19th 1865) that slaves in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their emancipation. Today is the first time that Juneteenth has been celebrated as a national holiday. This is momentous and wonderful.
Why not celebrate the emancipation proclamation instead?
From Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA, President of Howard University
It is important that we as a nation continue to elevate Juneteenth as an independence day for the African-American community – not January 1, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect; not July 9, when the 14th Amendment was ratified; not July 4, when the right to liberty was enshrined as an inalienable right for all people in our nation. Our freedom should be commemorated on an occasion when Black men and women were truly able to feel it and free to enjoy it.
By celebrating Juneteenth, we are not dismissing the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation. We are simply reminding ourselves that service never stops. Even when we pause to celebrate a milestone, a victory or a seminal moment, our work continues the very next day.
Our work continues. Service never stops.
When we celebrate Juneteenth this year, let us remember the jubilation of the slaves in Galveston, Texas the moment they found out they were free. But let us not forget the injustice they experienced – of a bondage that lasted two years after they were emancipated by the law of the land; of a nation that allowed them to be enslaved at all; of a society that gave them freedom, but not justice or equality.
So we celebrate this amazing moment for those slaves, while we acknowledge that we are not yet where we need to be. We humbly accept that equality and justice and true freedom are works in progress in America and around the world. We have a lot of work to do.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t celebrate Juneteenth for what it meant to the people who were freed, for what it meant to our union, for what it means to all Black Americans, and for what it means to all humans.
Despite the very long distance we still have to go, humans have advanced. Read about the prevalence and normalcy of slavery in the ancient world and compare it to today. Read about women’s rights hundreds of years ago and compare it to today. Read about stadiums of people in Rome gathering to watch fights to the death and compare it today. Read about the Jewish ghettos all over Europe and compare it to today.
We have gotten better. We have a long way to go, but we have gotten better.
And we should celebrate each of the steps that brought us closer to freedom, equality, and justice. We should dance and sing and tell stories and eat and drink and embrace one another. We should celebrate the days when our ancestors were freed from their bonds, when other people’s ancestors were freed, and when all people moved a little closer to a better world.
We should listen, with an open heart, to the concerns that still exist from Black Americans.
And we should keep in mind that we are bound and honored to do the hard work necessary to advance freedom, justice, and opportunity for all, regardless of who we are and where our ancestors lived.
Now onto the good news:
We Can Win in 2022
2022 is always on my mind. It’ll be a challenge, but with hard work, we can increase, rather than decrease, our majority.
A new report suggests that Democrats have been even more successful enacting increased voter access laws this year than Republicans have been in restricting voting.
As GOP-controlled state legislatures push through a wave of laws to restrict voting, a new report from the Voting Rights Lab suggests that Democratic state legislatures have enacted their own proposals to increase voting access at an even faster rate.
In the first six months of 2021, a “tidal wave” of voting rights legislation has resulted in the enactment of 153 new laws in 38 states—with over half increasing access to voting.
Of course, those laws are still a real concern — any laws that take away people’s right to vote are. And the location of those bills could really hurt us. BUT I hadn’t heard about the relative balance of these new laws and that is good news.
Black Voters Matter to Kick Off “Freedom Ride” for Voting Rights on Juneteenth
DOZENS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS WILL PARTNER WITH BVM ON VOTER OUTREACH AMID SUPPRESSION EFFORTS.
Black Voters Matter is taking what the organization is calling a Freedom Ride for Voting Rights. The education and outreach campaign aims to increase support for voting rights legislation, advocate for D.C. statehood and build Black voting power.
Beginning on Juneteenth (this Saturday, June 19), the group will board its coach, dubbed the “Blackest Bus in America,” for a voter outreach tour from Jackson, Mississippi to Washington D.C. They will make stops in Southern states such as Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina to rally with partner organizations and concerned citizens and discuss the issues impacting their communities.
Democratic Senate committee to invest $10 million in voter protection ahead of midterms
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee plans to invest $10 million in voter protection efforts ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, committee operatives told CNN on Tuesday, highlighting the concern top Democrats have about how restrictive voting laws in Republican-controlled states could impact elections.
The new program -- named "Defend the Vote" -- will be a three-pronged effort that will highlight Republican efforts
to suppress the vote, support litigation in key states and fund voter protection organizers on the ground.
Democrats battle Republican-led voting curbs in Georgia
Democrats and their allies are mounting a major effort to educate Georgia voters on sweeping new voting restrictions passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature ahead of next year’s crucial U.S. Senate and congressional races.
Biden is great
You know who I love? Joe freakin’ Biden. Check out some of his awesomeness from this week:
Biden takes steps to rein in ‘forever wars’ in Afghanistan and Iraq
President Biden this week quietly took another step toward fulfilling his campaign vow to “end the forever wars” America has been fighting since Sept.11, telling Congress he supports repealing 19-year-old legislation giving the green light to invade Iraq.
The top general responsible for the Middle East, meanwhile, told Voice Of America the United States will not carry out air strikes to support Afghan forces after U.S. troops withdraw, but only to preempt plots to attack America or its close allies.
Together, the two announcements amount to a retreat from so-called “forever wars” — giving up executive branch war-making authority on the one hand, intentionally narrowing America’s self-appointed military responsibilities on the other.
Biden taps Big Tech critic Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission
In a move that heralds a growing effort to check the power and influence of Big Tech, President Biden on Tuesday appointed Lina Khan, a top antagonist of the tech industry, to chair the Federal Trade Commission, the federal government’s primary antitrust watchdog.
Biden’s decision to put Khan in charge of the FTC’s agenda is the clearest sign yet that his administration will take a drastically different approach to regulating the tech giants than did President Barack Obama, whose administration took a largely hands-off approach toward Silicon Valley.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who launched her failed presidential campaign pledging to break up the tech companies, hailed the move as “a huge opportunity to make big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society, and our democracy.”
Biden 'greatly expands' number of Central American children eligible to apply for asylum in U.S.
The Biden administration said Tuesday that it will expand the number of Central American children eligible to apply for asylum in the U.S. while still in their home countries.
The program, known as the Central American Minors Program, began in 2014, during the Obama administration, to allow children whose parents were legally in the U.S. to apply for admission, but the Trump administration stopped it. The Biden administration had been accepting applications only from children with cases that were pending when the program closed.
Now, the program will go beyond the Obama administration's eligibility limits to consider children whose parents have asylum cases pending in the U.S., a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The statement said the new eligibility requirements will "greatly expand" the program.
Biden And The EU Call A Truce In A 17-Year Trade Fight To Focus On Threats From China
President Biden on Tuesday announced a truce in a long-running trade war with the European Union, saying it was time to put aside the fight and focus together on the growing trade threats posed by China.
"I've been making the case that the U.S. and Europe — and democracies everywhere — are stronger when we work together to advance our shared values like fair competition and transparency. Today's announcement demonstrates exactly how that can work in practice," Biden said in a statement
The biggest winner in the Biden-Putin summit: Democracy
Putin offered a few compliments to President Biden — some that were intentional (e.g., that Biden is experienced in diplomacy), and others that were not (e.g., that Biden’s views on human rights are different than Biden’s predecessor). He also provided a glimpse into his gloomy worldview: “There is no happiness in life. There’s only a mirage on the horizon.”
The contrast between Putin and Biden was on clear display during their individual news conferences. Even the settings of those events were remarkably distinct: Putin held his inside; Biden’s was outside, with bright sunshine and a picturesque background.
Biden emphasized his defense of human rights and democracy. “I pointed out to [Putin], that’s why we are going to raise our concerns about cases, like Alexei Navalny. I made it clear to President Putin, and will continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights, because that’s what we are. That’s who we are,” he recounted. “No president of the United States could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values. . . . Human rights is going to always be on the table, I told him.” The president also warned that if Navalny died, the consequences for Russia would be devastating. When asked about Putin’s false equivalency between his jailing of a dissident and Jan. 6, Biden declared it a “ridiculous comparison.”
What a difference a presidential election makes. Here was a sober, serious U.S. president defending democracy and standing firm against a thuggish dictator.
Biden wiped the smirk off Putin’s face
At Helsinki in July 2018, then-President Trump simpered and cowered. In a low point of a presidency with more low points than Death Valley, Trump accepted at face value Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denials of complicity in the 2016 election attack. Putin emerged from that meeting smirking like the cat that swallowed the canary.
As the historian Michael Beschloss noted, there was no such grin on Putin’s lips when he did his solo press conference after meeting with Biden on Wednesday. While Putin engaged in his usual dishonesty and whataboutism — he compared his jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny with the prosecution of the Capitol rioters — his manner was subdued and far from triumphant. He attacked the United States but was careful not to insult Biden personally. He even compared the current president favorably to his predecessor: “President Biden is an experienced statesman. He is very different from President Trump.” (Ouch. That’s got to sting for Putin’s biggest fanboy in the United States.)
Biden administration grants loan relief to former for-profit college students
The U.S. Education Department said Wednesday it’s erasing student debt for thousands of borrowers who attended a for-profit college chain that made exaggerated claims about its graduates’ success in finding jobs.
The Biden administration said it is approving 18,000 loan forgiveness claims from former students of ITT Technical Institute, a chain that closed in 2016 after being dealt a series of sanctions by the Obama administration. The new loan discharges will clear more than $500 million in debt.
Biden nominated as many minority women to be judges in four months as Trump had confirmed in four years
President Biden and the Democrat-led Senate have moved quickly to boost minority and female representation on the federal courts following Donald Trump’s four-year push to remake the judiciary, in which he nominated a large share of White, male justices.
Biden’s early judicial slate represents a departure from his recent predecessors; his initial picks are more diverse, and Biden rolled out more nominations earlier in his presidency than others.
Biden apologizes for snapping at CNN reporter over Putin questions: ‘I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy’
I actually didn’t think that Biden did anything wrong in how he interacted with the reporter, but he did and he apologized. Imagine that: we have a president who can see his own weaknesses and apologizes when he does something wrong. Wow.
As President Biden turned to walk off the stage following a news conference in Geneva after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a reporter shouted out one final question.
“Why are you so confident [Putin] will change his behavior, Mr. President?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked.
The president, who had already turned away from the clutch of journalists, threw up his hands and started back toward the reporters while wagging his finger.
“What the hell? … When did I say I was confident?” Biden said as he headed back toward Collins, before launching into a tense back-and-forth with the reporter while defending his approach with the Russian president.
Biden issued a mea culpa for his tone.
“I owe my last questioner an apology,” the president told reporters on the tarmac as he readied to board Air Force One on Wednesday afternoon. “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy with the last answer I gave.”
Democrats are great
Missouri Democrat Cori Bush offers bill aimed at ending the federal War on Drugs
Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush on Tuesday introduced legislation to end all criminal penalties for drug possession at the federal level.
The Drug Policy Reform Act, which is co-sponsored by New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, would expunge existing records and provide opportunities for re-sentencing for people already convicted of federal drug crimes.
The legislation essentially aims to end the federal War on Drugs — declared 50 years ago this week by President Richard Nixon — by shifting federal authority over controlled substances away from the Department of Justice to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Title IX Protections Extend to Transgender Students, Education Dept. Says
The department said that discrimination against transgender students was prohibited under the law, a reversal of its Trump-era position.
Democrats go big with new spending proposal
Senate Democrats are preparing to draft a fiscal 2022 budget resolution with up to $6 trillion in reconciliation spending during the next decade.
Their list includes universal child care, lowering of Medicare eligibility age, a permanent extension of the child tax credit.
Garland withdraws asylum limits for domestic abuse victims
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday rescinded two Trump-era policies that limited asylum eligibility for domestic violence survivors and others, following mounting calls from Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates.
The two decisions, issued by former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, made it harder for asylum-seekers fleeing violence by private actors, including domestic partners and gang members, and those persecuted due to family ties to qualify for protection in the U.S.
Good Healthcare News
The public option is now a reality in 3 states
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday signed into law a public health care option, making it the third state in the US to approve the creation of a government-run health insurance plan to be sold alongside commercial coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces.
More than a decade ago, a federal public option was cut out of the ACA, largely because of objections by centrist Senate Democrats. Now it’s enjoying a revival of sorts. President Joe Biden campaigned on a public option in 2020, and while the chances of his proposal (or something like it) passing at the federal level have faded, Democrats in Congress are seeking input on what a federal public option should look like.
But some states aren’t waiting for Congress to act. Their public options may be more limited than what a possible federal version could be, but they are still valuable experiments that will test the concept in the real world.
The Supreme Court shut down an attack on Obamacare in the most dismissive way possible
For the third time since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, the Supreme Court rejected a call for it to sabotage that law — this time, in an unusually dismissive opinion.
The Court’s brief decision in California v. Texas, issued Thursday, ultimately concludes that the plaintiffs trying to undo the law had no business being in court in the first place.
n a 7-2 ruling written by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court ruled that no one is allowed to bring suit to challenge a provision of law that does nothing. Four Republican appointees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — joined Breyer’s opinion.
Obamacare lives to fight another day. Now Democrats can start playing offense again.
Obamacare lives to fight another day. That’s thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday that quashes the latest (and hopefully last) effort to kill the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans helped by this law — the poor, people with preexisting conditions, those without employer-sponsored insurance — can breathe a sigh of relief.
Happily, Democrats can also start playing offense again: They can concentrate on expanding, rather than simply maintaining, health coverage. Democratic lawmakers appear ready to go, with their $6 trillion reconciliation package expected next week set to include provisions that would lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60 and expand the program’s benefits.
On the Lighter Side
Want to help us win in 2022? We need you!
Here are some things you can do:
Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
I’ll be away from the computer this morning but will pop in later.
I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with you ✊🏾✊🏻♥💙💚💛💜🧡✊🏽✊🏻