06/19/2026
Juneteenth is a day to honor and celebrate the long history of struggle for Black liberation in this country, particularly the defeat of the brutal regime of chattel slavery in the American South. But to borrow a phrase from the great Black communist Harry Haywood, we all know that the shadow of the plantation still looms over the present.
Mass incarceration, police terror, economic deprivation, and attacks on the democratic rights of Black people are still widespread across the U.S. - especially so in the Black nation, also known as the Black Belt South. Just this week, the murder of Black 1-year-old Kohen Wiley by the police in Mississippi speaks to the sheer depravity of this ongoing national oppression.
We need an end to this, and it can’t happen through a few reforms or tweaks here and there - we need to strike at the root of Black oppression, which means to upend monopoly capitalism through revolution. This Juneteenth, build the struggle for Black liberation and socialism!
