Happy Juneteenth Freedom Day ... But The March Goes On

This particular National holiday’s origin story began Galveston, Texas, which was at that time the western-most area of the country, when Union soldiers arrived to tell enslaved Black Americans of their Emancipation on June 19, 1865.

Now, those enslaved people had technically already been freed two-and-a-half years earlier when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but slaveholders in Texas kept the information to themselves, extending the period of violent exploitation of enslaved African Americans.

But in 1865 the news spread: freedom, and the following year, in 1866, a celebration was had in Texas on that same date, June 19th … Juneteenth … to finally recognize freedom from slavery in the United States.

Of course, here we are in 2026, one-hundred-sixty years later, and we know Black Americans still aren’t entirely free; think of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and on and on we could go … think of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and the current regime ending DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion—in government.

We still have much work to do to free all Americans, of every race and color and gender and sexual orientation.

We need to free People of Color from the abuses of police and the criminal justice system and some in our own government that work to deny them the right to vote.

We need to free Women from having the government control their bodies.

We need to free Educators to teach American history, all of it, even the ugliest parts; every step forward and every step back in American history.

We need to free Parents to be able to raise their own children as they see fit; to let their children read the books of their choosing; to let the parents make healthcare choices for their own children.

We need to free our Trans Brothers and Sisters to live their lives as they identify; to be fully themselves, to be respected by all of us.

We need to free the LGBTQ+ population from continued harassment and violence by rightwing agitators and politicians trying to turn the clock back to the closet.

We are, none of us, free, until we are all free, and there is still work to be done. 

Juneteenth was signed into law as a federal holiday by President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021.

In 2025, the current president, vowed to end diversity, equity and inclusion in government and there was confusion about whether Juneteenth would stay on the federal calendar. That all changed when the current president dropped Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day from a list of days people can access national parks for free though he added his own birthday to the list.

So, celebrate Juneteenth, not matter what this regime says; recognize the meaning and the history, American history of this day.

Happy Juneteenth!

Happy 4th of July?

Sort of a repost from last year with a bit of new stuff tossed in …

Not a lot to celebrate this year, what with the Supreme deciding last year that women have no rights to their own bodies, and then deciding this year that racism in America is over so there is no need for Affirmative Action, or that The Gays can be discriminated against because of someone’s Faux Faith; deciding that bribery, er, gratuities, to government officials, is okay, but homelessness is a crime; deciding bump stocks, an  aftermarket product designed to make a semi-automatic rifle fire faster so you can kill faster, are okay.

But think of what could happen if all the people of color, who are once again being told they are less than, voted this year and next year and the year after? How would America look then?

And think of what could happen if all the women who are once again being told that they cannot make their own healthcare choices, even on birth control, voted this year and next year and the year after? Think of what life would be like then.

Then think of what could happen if all the LGBTQ+ people who are once again being told they are less than voted this year and next year and the year after? How would it feel to be equal in the eyes of your own country?

Think of what could happen if all the people who are allies of people of color and of women and of the LGBTQ+ community voted this year and next year and the year after?

Think on that and maybe next year, and the year after and the year after, the Fourth of July would be worth celebrating for ALL Americans.

Think of this  … Joe Biden will be fine if he doesn’t win the presidency but …

It’s women who won’t be,

It’s visible minorities who won’t be.

It’s LGBTQ+ Americans who won’t be.

It’s non-Christian religions that won’t be.

It’s th4e disable community that won’t be.

It’s the Middle Class who won’t be.

It’s the working poor who won’t be.

It’s the health of the planet that won’t be.

So …

Freedom Day ... But The March Goes On

This particular National holiday’s origin story began in 1865, in Galveston, Texas, which was at that time the western-most area of the Union, when Union soldiers arrived to tell the enslaved people of their emancipation on June 19, 1865.

Now, those enslaved people had technically already been freed two-and-a-half years earlier when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but slaveholders in Texas kept the information to themselves, extending the period of violent exploitation of enslaved African Americans for two more years.

But in 1865 the news spread: freedom. And the following year, in 1866, a celebration was had in Texas on that same date, June 19^th … Juneteenth … to finally recognize freedom from slavery in the United States.

Of course, here we are in 2023, one-hundred-fifty-eight years later, and we know African-Americans still aren’t entirely free; think of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and on and on we could go …

We still have much work to do to free all Americans, of every race and color and gender and sexual orientation.

We need to free People of Color from the abuses of police and the criminal justice system and some in our own government that work to deny them the right to vote.

We need to free Women from having the government control their bodies.

We need to free Educators to teach American history, all of it, even the ugly parts.

We need to free Parents to be able to raise their own children as they see fit; to let their children read the books of their choosing; to let the parents make healthcare choices for their own children.

We need to free our Trans Brothers and Sisters to live their lives as they identify; to be fully themselves.

We need to free the LGBTQ+ population from continued harassment and violence by rightwing agitators and politicians trying to turn the clock back to the closet.

We are, none of us, free, until we are all free, and there is still work to be done.

On the Other Hand, Cyntoia Brown, Sex-Trafficking Victim, Must Serve 51 Years Before Release

While Jacob Anderson rapes a woman and walks free, Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman who was a victim of sex-trafficking, has been convicted … as a teenager … of shooting the man who pimped her out and must serve 51 years before she is eligible for release.

In case you didn’t get it, Cyntoia Brown is a black woman.

Brown was just 16-years-old in 2004 when she killed real estate agent Johnny Allen. Allen had solicited Brown for sex, taken her to his home and showed her his guns. Later in bed, Brown thought Allen was reaching for his gun to shoot her, so she grabbed a handgun from her purse and shot him first. She then stole the money from Allen’s wallet, took his guns and drove his truck to a Walmart.

At the time, Brown was a runaway, living with her 24-year-old boyfriend, a pimp known as “Kut Throat,” who raped her and forced her into prostitution. But teenager Cyntoia Brown was tried as an adult, convicted of first-degree murder, felony murder and aggravated robbery. She was sentenced to life in prison in 2006.

When her case received widespread attention, a documentary of her case was filmed; activists and celebrities tried to get her released.

But this week Tennessee’s Supreme Court said that, under the state’s law, defendants like Brown who were convicted of first-degree murder after July 1, 1995, can only be released from prison after serving at least 51 years of their sentences. 

After the Tennessee Supreme Court’s ruling made headlines, Brown’s advocates pointed out how white men and women who commit crimes are handed lighter sentences than people of color.

Like that of Keeva Delaney, who was twenty-three when she was convicted of killing her husband during an argument. Her sentence? One year in jail, and nine years of probation. Oh, but wait, it gets better. Delaney will serve her sentence one month at a time for ten years; yes, every June she must report to the jail and spend a month there, then take the next eleven months off before she goes back in for another thirty days.

And what about millionaire hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein? He was accused of trafficking minor girls and coercing them into sex acts in his mansion for at least six years. He got thirteen months.

A black woman, Cyntoia Brown, who was a sixteen-year-old girl forced into a life of prostitution as a child, killed a man and will spend 51 years in jail.

A White woman, Keeva Delaney, shot and killed her husband because maybe he was a little too friendly with another woman. She was given one year in jail, and the option of serving one month a year for ten years and living free the rest of the time.

A rich white man, Jeffrey Epstein, forced girls into sexual trafficking, and raped dozens of them in his own home. He’ll be jailed for thirteen months.

Ain’t that America.

Huffington Post

Vonciel Jones Hill: Another Moronic Texas Politician

HIV. It’s not just for Gays anymore. Especially in the South, and in Texas.

Every year, some like 6,000 Dallas County residents are diagnosed with HIV, giving the city the honor of having the highest infection rate in Texas. And the statistics are even higher for gay black men, who are contracting HIV at alarmingly high rates.

So, in an effort to arm the gay community, the black community, and, in fact, all communities, with the rising HIV numbers, Dallas County Health Director Zachary Thompson launched a public education campaign as part of a broader effort to drive down infection rates. The campaign cuts across lines of age, race, gender, and sexuality.

Thompson has campaigned against Dallas school’s abstinence only programs, and he even used singer Alicia Keys on billboards to encourage women, mainly black women, to get tested, but it’s his newest billboard that has one Dallas politician in a snit.

The billboard—seen above—pictures two smiling, gay black men reminding the gay and black community to get themselves tested, to, and they’ve co-opted a popular Facebook idea, ‘update their status.’

But Dallas City Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill says she believes the ad will have a corrupting influence on the youth of her city, by making it appear that being gay, and apparently black, is acceptable. She seems to suggest that having two gay black men on a billboard will encourage people to be gay.

Yes, she’s a person who believes being gay is a choice, and even though the risk of contracting HIV is on the rise in the black communities of Dallas, this ad will make young black men turn into young gay black men.

In fact, Ms. Jones Hill, what this ad might do, is teach young black men, gay and straight, and young men of any and every color, that they need to get tested; that they need to know their stratus; that they need to be safe. But, in Vonciel Jones Hill’s mind, all the ad does is make it seem that being gay is acceptable.

But it is, ma’am, but it is acceptable.

What isn’t acceptable is your bassackwards view of what gay is, and what HIV is, and who can become infected and how, and what isn’t acceptable is the idea that you seem so grossed out by a picture of a happily gay black couple that you’d just as soon tear down the ad as see it as a way of educating an entire city.

Nice.

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Keep The Promise March On The South

This past weekend Carlos and I took part in the Keep The Promise March on HIV/AIDS in Atlanta. Why Atlanta, you may ask? Is it because the ATL has a thriving gay community, many of whom could be at risk for HIV/AIDS?

Kind of, but then again.

The good news is that HIV/AIDS infection rates are falling all across the United States, but they are, in fact, rising rather dramatically in the southern US. And while deaths from AIDS complications either fell or held steady in other parts of the country from 2001 to 2006--the last year complete figures were available--they rose by more than 10% in the South.

An update to a 2002 report that identified the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS in the South--defined as Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.--found that:

• Although those Southern states are home to only 36% of the nation’s population, some 50% of all US AIDS deaths in 2005 were in the South, and more than half of all Americans with HIV lived in the region in 2006.
• Nine of the 15 states with the highest HIV diagnosis rates are in the South.
• More than 40% of all new infections are in the South.
• Of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of AIDS cases in 2006, 16 were in the South.
• African-American women are 83% of all [new] cases in the South, and the new epidemic is young people between 22 and 24.

AIDS specialists cite some of the reasons for the rise in new HIV/AIDS cases:

• Unequal government funding of anti-AIDS programs; for years a majority of the funding has gone to major metropolitan areas, and now that those areas are seeing a decline in new HIV/AIDS cases, the funding hasn't shifted to areas in need.
• Economics; the South is home to a great many low income people who cannot afford testing or treatment
•  Cultural; many parents in the South are in denial that their children are having sex;  religion also plays a part, in the notion that "good Christians" do not have sex outside, or before, marriage, and many churches refuse to even acknowledge the issue exists
• Transportation issues; many Southerners live in very rural areas without direct access to hospitals or medical facilities
• Translation; there is an increase of Hispanics in the South, and the language barrier makes education and treatment difficult., lack of access to proper health care
• Education plays a particularly important role in fighting HIV in rural communities where there is a strong “It can’t happen to me" factor.
• And even though the numbers show that HIV/AIDS numbers are on the rise in the South, there has been no increase in funding for the Southern states.

There is a call for more “age-appropriate, science-driven education for prevention of all sexually transmitted diseases,” along with increased federal funding for “prevention, treatment and care."

Fear seems to be the most prevalent reason for the spread of HIV/AIDS from what Carlos has found as an HIV outreach Counselor. People live in fear that they may have "it" so they refuse to get tested. The stigma of being HIV+ is huge in rural communities, religious communities, the Black community, making it hard for people to want to get tested or to seek treatment.

All in all, this crisis, which seems to be abating in other parts of the country, in on the rise in the South, and people here could die because they are afraid of a simple test. There is treatment, there is care, and there is prevention, but we need education and we need funding.

Keep the Promise.

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