Juneteenth (after) Thoughts for Action Reemberto Rodriguez (June 19, 2025) Link
It was not America’s chest pumping, boisterous bullshit that made America great. It was the aspirations of common folks throughout America to continuously improve upon past generations’ incomplete and imperfect strive for “a more perfect union”. It was Americans dreaming together to relentlessly work towards a more just world, knowing full well we’ll never get there that made America the aspirational democracy it was until January 19th, 2025.
When exactly was America great?
We recently celebrated Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. This commemoration specifically marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Just think about it, most of today’s African-Americans are the great-great grandchildren – and some are great grandchildren – of people that were born into slavery. (Do the math. Someone born in 1860 had a child who had a child in 1900 who had a child in 1940 who is 85 years old today). Let that sink in. Some of our neighbors and co-workers have great-great grandparents who grew up in slavery, in this America. They were forbidden from reading, writing, owning property, and of course, voting. They were forced to labor, housed in barracks and fed as pigs. No, those times were not great times for America.
And neither is today great for America. Here we are: Goons in masks and unmarked cars yanking people from bus stops, hauling them away to unspecified locations and without providing for any access to contact families or legal recourse. Nope. This does not make America great.
All of this under a rotten orange for a leader, a man with evidently zero values or intent to empathetically reach out to the fragile, the down-and-out, the destitute, or the poor amongst us. Someone who refuses to dialogue with those who disagree with him, or refuses to try to bring Americans together, sticking to his MAGA cult and oligarch family and useful idiots as his sole constituents. Nope. He ain’t capable of making America great again. He is in it for himself. Nada mas.
This corrupt, lying thief of a man is also the laughing stock of other worlds leaders. Having promised to end three different conflicts, he has instead exacerbated every situation. In the latest conflict (Iran), he is now sitting idly by, like a buffoon that doesn’t know what to do, being used by Israel who is dragging us into yet another worthless war. And then there is the Ukraine and Russia war, where he promised to end on day one, and has instead intensified exponentially. And in the situation in Gaza which he too promised to resolve? His solution? Promoting – and paying for – the weapons of war to ethnic cleanse Gaza via genocide to build his resorts on the Mediterranean coast. Nope. None of this makes America great again.
It is clearly evident that this sorry excuse for a President does not want to take America back to the 1950s. He wants to take us back to the 1890s, a time when barons ruled, when the bureaucracy existed mostly to keep Whites safe and be at the service of these barons to ensure they would profit from government policy.
And here we are. No, we’re not getting there. Here. We. Are.
Members of the minority political party are being arrested in public and assassinated by fanatics emboldened by the rhetoric of this President. Yes, assassinated. Let THAT sink in also. Public expression is being suppressed. Law firms are being coerced. Academic freedom is being destroyed. And the creation of a propaganda machine is now complete, which includes private media enterprises and all government outlets spewing flagrant lies to their cult – those who have chosen self censorship. They keep going down a rabbit hole of – and adhering blindly to – the State’s message without any attempt to question it.
Here we are. So now what?
The ship has sunk. It ain’t about putting it back together again. That simply will not happen in the foreseeable future given the destruction of the imperfect but relatively reliable bureaucratic system we had created over the last century. We’ve gotta come up with another approach.
It is increasingly evident that now is the time for massive protesting and resisting with an ever-increasing number of regular folks coming out to the streets consistently and regularly with a message of nonviolent change, running the risk of yes, getting arrested and worse.
We can certainly do this, but we cannot do it in despair or desolation – or violence. Hope is our weapon. Non-violence our method. Persistence is our timeframe. We have to protest and resist to reinvent, reform, and reclaim what truly makes America great:
- The aspiration to collectively work towards a more perfect union. Not because we are exceptional or better than anyone else; simply because it is the right thing to do for our children, grandchildren, great-great grandchildren – and the world.
Comments welcome. eMail Reemberto@gmail.com