New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams released the following statement in celebration of Juneteenth.
"I travel around the city today as we celebrate the American holiday Juneteenth with the knowledge that while this country has seen progress, we are yet to be truly free. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 should have granted people of African descent in the United States rights and privileges that still have yet to be fully realized so we, people of all races in all corners of the world, march together more than 150 years later to fight the system that continues to deny us the freedom, equity and dignity afforded those who are truly free.
"This country is literally built on the bodies of enslaved Africans and its wealth and privilege is born of the sweat of their brows and the blood they shed. From Tulsa to Wall Street the evidence is clear that their purpose was never supposed to be of advancement for them, but sacrificial and supportive to the people who were the real focus of the words 'We The People.' There are no longer slave patrols, but there are disparate policing practices and systems that take our lives, whether in homes with a deadly virus or in the street with our face to the concrete and a man's knee on our necks. These are not comfortable times, they are not supposed to be, because change can be slow and agonizing.
"With the privilege I have as a cisgender straight man who is a citywide leader there is a mandate to act, and I will use the tools available to me to join others in the fight to defeat racism, bigotry, discrimination and hate. We are not collectively yet totally free from this system of privilege, but like the ancestors, we will celebrate Juneteenth because our freedom - as it was intended - is coming. As a nation seems to be waking up to the importance of this holiday, we will continue to push in an effort to create the transformational changes, the freedoms, promised 150 years ago but not yet received.
"We will persevere and we will prevail."
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