This Juneteenth, “None of Us are Free”
This past weekend, I stood shoulder to shoulder with a diverse and sprawling mass of humanity gathered to protest this authoritarian regime, and the haunting, steadfast words of Solomon Burke’s song ‘None of Us Are Free’ cycled through my head:
There are people still in darkness,
And they just can't see the light.
If you don't say it's wrong, then that says it’s right.
We got to try to feel for each other, let our brothers know that
We care.
Got to get the message, send it out loud and clear.
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free, if one of us are chained.
None of us are free.
It was a reminder that we weren’t just gathering to free oppressed people from those who would see them in physical, emotional, financial, and legislative bondage.
We were gathering to free the oppressors whose minds still have them imprisoned in a poisonous hatred.
We were gathering to free the voices of people of privilege who have allowed their comfort and cowardice to render them silent for far too long.
Collective liberation has always been opposed by those who benefit from another’s captivity.
Juneteenth marks the day on June 19th, 1865, when Federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to declare the emancipation of all Americans, of every slave being freed. It shouldn’t even have been necessary. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued two-and-a-half years earlier by President Lincoln (freedom under the law had arrived), yet because of the geographic fractures created by the war, many strongholds of institutionalized racism existed. Texas was the final area of this nation to surrender to this particular bend of the arc of the moral universe toward racial justice—and someone had to forcefully bring them the news they'd refused to come to terms with: the war was over.
None of us are free, if one of us are chained. None of us are free.
Enslaved black people had been free for nearly three years, but had this news withheld from them by a group of white Americans who did not want them to know that they were free and did not want them to be free; people for whom the recognized inherent worth of all human beings was not a destination they wanted us to collectively reach—and so they fought to prevent progress and suspend national renovation.
Today, we might look at the state of Texas and we wonder if any time has actually passed, if the news of freedom made it there to some folks to begin with. 162 years after the Emancipation proclamation, there are still people there and in Florida and Iowa and Tennessee, and all over this country, who are trying to rewind the clock of national progress further back to a place where black people’s emancipation was not a reality, where the rights to live freely and determine their destination and have their voices heard were a long way off.
None of us are free, if one of us are chained. None of us are free.
White supremacy is still working to ensure that black liberation is not complete.
On this collective journey toward a just and fair nation, one where the universal worth of every human being is honored, the disheartening news is that we clearly are not all free yet.
But the good news (and it is very good news) is that we are not passive passengers on this trip. Each of us has proximity and agency and the expansive space of our choices. We have our individual wills and our circles of influence and our daily decisions and our social media profiles to usher in the news of equality’s truth.
Not only that, but we have our collective voices and our shared resources and our chosen communities to incarnate a place where more people experience the reality of their liberation.
159 years after the events of Juneteenth, we all need to continue marching into the fortified strongholds of racism, and to the last holdouts against justice—in our homes and neighborhoods and schools and churches, and then to the polls—and declare that all people are not yet free and deserve to be free. We need to release white Americans from the prisons of bad theology, predatory politics, irrational fear, and unconfronted privilege that maintain this sickening status quo.
Until this happens, the cancer of racism will remain and slavery will not be only in our regrettable past, but in our grievous present and our disfigured future.
Every human being here deserves to find joy and to be truly free in their shoes and their skin and their heads, and until we see that day:
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free, if one of us are chained.
None of us are free.
(NOTE: I’m aware that the grammatically correct wording is “None of us IS free,” however the song that inspired this piece uses are for artistic purposes, and I am honoring that.)
Not sure I've ever felt a song resonate so deeply. Thank you for bringing this song to me John. A beautiful loving man and friend of mine was picked up by ICE a week ago and is now sitting in a prison in Boston waiting to be deported to Honduras (which he had fled to escape gang-warfare). His wife and children are devastated and weeping without cease. I know that we've always been a nation with an current of cruelty, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, racism running through us, not to mention plain old violence; but here we are now, waking up in a country where people are literally being disappeared. They are being disappeared from my small town in New England and from every city and town across this nation. And what is it doing to the souls of those whose job it is to carry out these barbaric orders? Don't they too hear the wailing? None of us are free: indeed.
Excellent choice of poetry and song John! And your eloquent essay is a perfect match!
Thank you for your faithfulness. I look forward to reading every one of your posts !