Friends,

Today, we commemorate Juneteenth to mark the anniversary of the day where enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas were officially freed in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

This recognition of delayed liberty is why today must be so much more than a celebration of a step forward in our country towards equality -- it must be a moment in which we grapple with the hard truth of our history and the ongoing injustices of our present.

We must acknowledge that a country where your future is determined by the zip code you were born in is not a country with equal opportunity for all.

We must acknowledge that a country that treats petty drug offenses in one neighborhood as a criminal sentence and the same offense in a fraternity basement as a cocktail party punchline is not truly equal.

We must acknowledge that a country that still erects monuments to genocidal separatists is not truly equal.

Because from Washington to Lincoln to King, from women’s suffrage to Black Lives Matter, the greatness of our history has always come when we have confronted our shortcomings and worked to fix them by expanding our liberty. But to expand that liberty is first to admit where it is absent.

This moment in our history is painful, but necessary. So let's work to empathize. Let’s have hard, honest conversations. And let’s follow the lead of the thousands of Americans of every skin tone, religion, and gender identity who are coming together to make themselves heard. They are angry about where we are -- but they are pointing the way forward.

We must lead with love, but we will not settle for the status quo.

-- Sean Casten