Dear John,
When I was 8, I asked my mom why we celebrated the Fourth of July.
I didn’t understand why a regime change from one set of slaveholders to another was something that we, the descendants of those who were enslaved, should celebrate. Juneteenth, she explained, is a holiday celebrated on June 19th, commemorates the final release of enslaved people in Texas in 1865, two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
This Juneteenth, join Power Shift Network staff, along with hundreds of other climate and environmental organizations across the country standing in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives as we mobilize to demonstrate power and unity in fighting back against systemic police violence. Sign up here to learn about what’s happening in your area.
Today’s police system is a legacy of slavery I didn’t understand when I was a kid. Police are at the front lines of a prison system that literally facilitates legalized slavery in the 21st century.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a piece on Medium calling for climate activists to participate in the movement for accountability for police violence. If we can’t count on accountability to uphold Black human life and get the government to fire, charge, and convict a cop who commits murder in cold blood, often on camera, how can we expect them to be accountable to people over profit when it comes to climate change?
To build power and affect widespread social change, solidarity is everything. Join an event near you this Friday in defense of Black lives.
For many of us at PSN, saying Black Lives Matter is a cry out for others to see the value of our own lives. It means we deserve pollution free communities, municipal systems that don’t poison our water, and to live in a world where we know that policies won’t throw us under the bus to protect whiter communities from the impacts of climate change.
Black Lives Matter, means that we shouldn’t -- and won’t -- live in fear of targeted, state-sanctioned racial violence that we and our ancestors have endured for four hundred years.
This has to stop. Now.
Black Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter. Black Indigenous Lives Matter. Black Womxn’s Lives Matter. Black Immigrant Lives Matter.
All Black Lives Matter.
