Dear John,

Today, the United States celebrates our latest holiday to gain federal recognition: Juneteenth.

We share today’s celebration of Black liberation and resilience, while regrettably noting how many people confuse the meaning of today’s holiday.

Juneteenth is the approximate anniversary of the date when formerly enslaved Black people in Texas learned about their emancipation. But it doesn’t mark the end of industrialized slavery in the United States, which legally continues in our prison system under the terms of the 13th Amendment.

Can you join us today to finally end industrialized slavery in the United States?

When the Civil War ended, negotiations over the text of what became the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution imposed a vital caveat forgotten and overlooked by most observers. It reads:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Few words in any American legal text have done as much to justify human suffering as “except as a punishment for crime.”

Today, industrialized slavery has expanded beyond its scale before the Civil War.

Read that again. If that fact surprises you, we invite you to learn more from professor Tryon P. Woods.

Industrialized slavery has expanded in more than one way. First, the U.S. prison population today exceeds the population of enslaved people at the height of the antebellum South. It has also grown multiracial, while playing a key role in driving the expansion & metastasis of paramilitarized policing. The militarization of police departments across the entire country stretches well beyond previous slave states.

In that context, the expansion of our criminal injustice system threatens not only the millions of legally enslaved Americans in our nation’s prisons, but also everyone else in our country vulnerable to arbitrary (and often lethal) state violence.

Few voices pierce through the self-serving lies of our bipartisan establishment like mine. With our race still continuing as we await the final results of the June primary, can you join us again today to help us keep speaking truth to power?

It’s important not to let corporate politicians off the hook by accepting cultural concessions—like the overdue recognition of a federal holiday—as substitutes for the policy changes needed to finally end our nation’s continuing horrors, including multiracial industrialized slavery via mass incarceration.

That recognition helped animate our campaign for Congress, which today hangs by a thread.

The latest announcements from the San Francisco Board of Elections promise another public update tomorrow. As of the most recent count, we remain 580 votes behind the crucial second place finish that would advance our campaign to the general election in November.

Stay tuned, thanks for your support, and enjoy today’s holiday!

Shahid