Langley Mayor Kennedy Horstman wrote an opinion piece on the Juneteenth holiday, which appeared on the website of the Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record on Wed., June 19, 2024.
They Said It
Juneteenth is not only an African American holiday. In fact, it’s not universally celebrated by Black communities in the U.S., which is a lovely opening for all of us to engage with it in personally meaningful and relevant ways….
Let’s celebrate that in spite of slavery, and Jim Crow, and ongoing more subtle but still profoundly destructive forms of racism that persist — Americans — particularly descendants of formerly enslaved people — have moved freedom forward for all of us. I stand before you as an out and proud lesbian who is directly in debt and profoundly grateful to the work done primarily by descendants of formerly enslaved people to secure freedom and civil rights for all.
I hope to honor their sacrifice by accepting the responsibility to continue moving us forward — because we have not arrived. In fact, hard won freedoms are under attack both legally and illegally: in the form of gerrymandering and outright voter suppression, in the form of racially motivated intimidation, violence and murder, and in the form of attempted sedition cloaking itself in cynical lies aimed at undermining democracy.
So, for me, Juneteenth is a call to action: to celebrate, to learn and educate and to agitate to ensure we retain and broaden freedom in the United States for everyone.
