Juneteenth is a stark reminder of our history—one of hard-fought progress towards justice and one of work yet unfinished. On this day 156 years ago, slavery was finally ended in America. It was on June 19th, 1865 that Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the enslaved were now free.
I was proud to vote for legislation that will recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday — and I’m glad that President Biden signed it into law. But we can’t just call this a win and move on. Congress still has enormous work to do to make equality real and address nearly a century of Jim Crow.
Here are the pressing issues I’m thinking about today:
America’s for-profit health care system leaves Black Americans much more likely to be uninsured than white Americans. Even when seen by a doctor, our Black brothers, sisters, and siblings are less likely to get the care they need. Black women are more likely to die during childbirth, have nearly three times the odds of being hospitalized as white Americans, and are nearly four times more likely to die from COVID-19. Every moment that we refuse to guarantee health care for too many Black Americans is a devaluing of their lives.
America’s economy is deeply, deeply unequal. White families have 10 times more wealth than Black families — a racial wealth gap that has gotten worse, not better. This is because we live in a society and an economy that simply does not address longstanding inequities, deprivation of opportunity, or a lack of investment.
America’s housing system is based on devastating generational impacts that used exclusionary redlining and financial practices to shut out people of color and fuel racial injustice. This — combined with lack of economic justice — has caused the housing crisis for Black Americans, who now make up more than 40% of those experiencing homelessness.
The neighborhoods that many Black Americans live in are perpetually flooded with toxic dump sites and lack of access to clean air, safe drinking water, and public lands. They are far more likely to be situated next to highways and polluted areas that only worsen the health conditions that exist because of lack of health care.
America’s education system institutionalizes discrimination to the extent that the schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline begins as early as kindergarten. Black students are treated differently because of the color of their skin: disciplined, suspended, and expelled for behavior that elicits no response for white students.
Our justice system is patently unjust. At a time when we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other country, Black Americans are being imprisoned at more than five times the rate of white Americans. This is in part due to a war on drugs that was actually a war on Black Americans, locking them up and locking them out of opportunity.
You see, every single system is stacked on top of another — all discriminatory and intertwined, threads of injustice that come together to hold people back. That’s why I am working on and fighting for immediate and urgent legislative solutions to address each of these institutionalized disparities — like Medicare for All, a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, the PRO Act, the Housing is a Human Right Act, the College for All Act, a Green New Deal, and so much more.
I didn’t come to Congress to fight for incremental change. I came here to set things straight and to fight for what matters and what we deserve. This Juneteenth and every single day, I pledge to you that I will stand up to push for real change, in solidarity with the Black community and with all of us who believe in a better world — a world that only we can shape with our own hands and our own will.
Thank you for doing this work with me: with urgency, with generosity, with the belief that we can change things if we work hard enough and urgently enough.
In solidarity,
Pramila
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