This Juneteeth we celebrate the anniversary of June 19th, 1865, and General Order No. 3 which enforced the Emancipation Proclamation to the state of Texas and freed the last remaining slaves in the nation. Just like then the fight for freedom is not over; it has merely changed. It is no longer physical chains of slavery; instead it’s the chains of worker inequality and unjust enforcement of laws.
This is something we see in the state of Atlanta currently, with a police department that regularly does training with the IPF of the Apartheid state of Israel, trying to build a literal cop city against the will of the people. This is worrisome as APD has already displayed violence towards protesters and minority groups in the past and should not get a facility to train on how to strip the rights of local citizens.
We stand with the people of Atlanta that are working to #StopCopCity every day, including by speaking against this facility to the local government for over 13 hours. This Juneteeth we remember the words of Socialist, Civil Rights Activist, and NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”, as well as the words of socialist and civil rights activist Fred Hampton Sr.: “We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”