“This [the election of progressive leaders] represents the future of America. This represents the vision of America that they’re so fearful of because it’s an inclusive America. It’s one that affirms human dignity. It’s one that affirms our solidarity with each other, our connection . . .” — Rep. Justin Jones, TN
On Juneteenth we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States and the victories that have been won over the years in the African American people’s fight for equality. Juneteenth is now an official federal holiday only because of many long years of struggle by grassroots activists who insisted that this country confront its ugly history of slavery. Celebrations in the streets and neighborhoods throughout the country often include music, live performances, food, and speakers who bring the lessons of especially the fight for equality, which continues today. Something to remember on this Juneteenth 2023 is the sacrifices people made after Juneteenth 1865 fighting for the right to vote, and the need for all of us to join that fight.
The fight for the right to vote has been a key part of the struggle for equality and for a real democracy from the beginning of the country. Voting rights have been under attack for years, and as always, the attack has fallen first and hardest on African Americans.
The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted important provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and opened the door for state legislatures to pass laws limiting the right to vote, especially for African Americans and communities of color generally. This was compounded by the Democrats’ failure to pass a federal voting rights bill in 2022, a fight that has to continue.
The fact that the Constitution gives the states the power to set voting requirements has resulted in setbacks to the fight for democracy numerous times in our history, and this continues today.
The discriminatory attacks on voting rights at the state level, especially against African Americans, take various forms – gerrymandering, reducing the number of polling places, imposing voter ID requirements, purging voters from the rolls, enacting restrictions on voting by mail, allowing state legislatures to overturn elections, and the list goes on. In Utah, the legislature is even considering a bill to make gerrymandering legal. The legislative actions have been accompanied by police killings and vigilantes’ acts of intimidation, the attacks on “wokeness” as a pretext for censoring African American history and more.
The attack on the vote today is seen by many grassroots people as part of the overall assault on democracy in a country where there is a growing movement for both voting and economic rights against corporate power. We have never had a true democracy in this country– meaning democracy for everyone, including our economic rights to have a home, healthcare, food, an end to police killings and repression.
The constant struggle of those who have been denied their rights – especially African Americans, given the history of the U.S. – has been key to helping advance the struggle for a real democracy for all of us. Therefore we should see the threat to anyone’s rights, particularly the right to vote, as a threat to everyone’s rights. As Dr. Opal Lee, the 96-year-old Texas activist known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, has said, “None of us are free until we’re all free.”
As we celebrate Juneteenth, let’s rededicate ourselves to fighting for not only democracy as we have known it, but for the expansion of democracy, and for our right to vote.
In Tennessee earlier this year, the Republican majority in the state House expelled two vocal Black Democratic state legislators. They were later reinstated by the votes of local bodies. One of them, Rep. Justin Jones, made the following comments in a recent interview that point to the urgent need for us all to defend and exercise our right to vote:
“If you look at what they did, their attacks on democracy are galvanizing a movement. They have lost a generation. You know, in the South we have a saying, ‘a dying mule kicks the hardest.’ These systems of white supremacy, these systems of transphobia, of homophobia, of plantation politics, are dying. And so that’s why we’re seeing this extreme reaction….This [the election of progressive leaders] represents the future of America. This represents the vision of America that they’re so fearful of because it’s an inclusive America. It’s one that affirms human dignity. It’s one that affirms our solidarity with each other, our connection. But let them be on notice that this is just the beginning, that we are going to continue to push forward toward that vision of America that lives up to what it says on paper, towards that vision of America that challenges this notion that people like us don’t belong in elected office. Because we’re not going in there to make friends. We’re going in there to make change. And that’s the difference, is that we are not going to assimilate. We’re not going to conform to a system that’s been meant to make us feel small, meant to stifle our voices and the voices of our constituents. But we’re going with this bold mandate to say that we have to push forward together…. a new generation is rising up to make America what it ought to be.”
