A day of TRUE CELEBRATION
Hundreds mark Juneteenth at Roosevelt Park gathering
Emancipation anniversary noted
Speaker at gathering urges a pursuit of love to deal with racism, strife
For Matthew Rendon Jr., there is a feeling that the tide is turning.
“I think it’s awesome and I think this is needed in the community,” Rendon said as he looked out upon the crowd at Roosevelt Park in Southeast Albuquerque. “The fact that everyone is coming together and looking for change.”
Rendon was one of hundreds to flood the park on Friday afternoon for the Juneteenth celebration. All around, people of all ages sprawled out on the grass or stood as musicians and slam poets sang and spoke messages of hope with a central theme: change. Tables were set up where vendors sold abstract paintings intermingled with Black Lives Matter imagery and
T-shirts bearing messages such as “free-ish” and “I can’t breathe.”
Brother Saddiq, a spoken word artist and poet, said “Black people” into the microphone as the crowd echoed “are loved,” over and over, before going into verses of poetry.
Saddiq called the turnout — his seventh Juneteenth celebration in the state — beautiful.
“It’s beautiful to see that it’s mostly non-Black people celebrating this Black freedom story,” he said.
Having seen several social movements spark up and fizzle, the 46-year-old said “things only look different” in the wake of George Floyd’s death because of the access to technology and “instant media.”
“It’s a different rhetoric, but I don’t think it’s a different type of action,” he said. “But we’ll see, I hope I’m wrong — the same things that my father’s father told me when I was these little kids’ age … same (expletive) still happening.”
Beyond the police reforms and social change, Saddiq said there needs to be an increase in the love for Black people.
“It doesn’t matter what policy you make, it doesn’t matter what world you make; if you don’t care about the people you are doing it for, eventually it’s going to fail,” he said. “The love of the people has to be first, doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it, if you don’t love the people — it doesn’t matter.”
But, Saddiq said, he does believe that love is “moving up.”
Heather and Larry Verbrugge said they had been cooped up since the pandemic hit, but they couldn’t sit idly by any longer after the movement began.
“We felt we had to be involved in some way with all that’s going on,” Heather Verbrugge said. “It’s challenging after being home for three solid months to try to take care of our health.”
Larry Verbrugge said that what happened to George Floyd is something that’s been going on too long.
“Just to see it on TV, it drives it home. It’s enough, this should’ve been done in the ’60s,” he said, propping up a sign that read Black Lives Matter in bold lettering. “If it ain’t now … ”
Heather Verbrugge has been encouraged by the charges and arrests brought against the officers involved in Floyd’s death, something that feels different for her.
“I feel optimistic, optimism has been hard to come by the past four years,” she said.