Thousands demonstrate, celebrate on Juneteenth
Bay Area residents turned out by the thousands on Friday to celebrate Juneteenth, as a new sense of urgency marked the day with rallies and marches calling for an end to police brutality and racism.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down more than two dozen West Coast ports to mark the holiday dramatically in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. A crowd of thousands began their protest with a rally at the Port of Oakland in the morning, before the jubilant marchers — led by a group of motorcyclists that included members of the East Bay Dragons, the Bay Area’s first Black motorcycle club — made their way downtown, stopping at Oakland police headquarters and City Hall.
Thousands more celebrated and demonstrated at dozens of events elsewhere — in the streets of San Jose and Santa Clara, outside City Hall in San Francisco, in front of police headquarters in Alameda and along Oakland’s Lake Merritt and DeFremery Park, also known as Lil Bobby Hutton Park after the slain Black Panther — continuing the nearly month-old protest movement sparked by the killing of Floyd.
The Oakland crowds cheered speeches by icons of activism Angela Davis, Danny Glover and Boots Riley.
“We are still on the long road to freedom,” Davis told the crowd.
“Today we celebrate the end of slavery,” said the professor, philosopher and author, while “we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom.”
Generations of Black families have observed Juneteenth with cookouts, festivals, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed more than two years before Union soldiers would finally bring news of slavery’s end to Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
Those celebrations took on even greater significance this year amid nationwide unrest over police killings of Black men and women, as well as a global pandemic that has disproportionately claimed the lives of Black and brown people.
Marchers and organizers drew a direct line from the emancipation commemoration of Juneteenth to the continuing struggle of Black Americans against police brutality and racism.
“I’m here because Juneteenth is a celebration. I want this to be joyful. I want this to be fun,” said Adia Hoag, an organizer of the rally at San Jose City Hall. “This year I think it’s even more resonant because people are paying attention. Normally it would be a block party. This is a citywide party.”
“But still, you have to remember, freedom in the sense of the way that
white people are free has not been available to people of color, especially Black Americans,” she added. “We see that our slave patrols became what we know as the police system we see today.”
Lauryn Haley, a 17-yearold senior at Oakland Tech, has celebrated Juneteenth at Lake Merritt for years. But Haley, who traveled to a demonstration her cousin helped organize Friday in San Jose, said the day typically hasn’t felt as significant without the fireworks and bigger crowds that celebrate the Fourth of July. This year was different.
“I really like how unified this is, with a lot of people from different races,” she said of Friday’s protest. Behind her, a group called Filipinxs for Black Lives handed out water bottles from a big truck. “I feel like people are getting informed about what Juneteenth actually is, and it’s like, ‘Yes, we should be out there celebrating.’ ”
In the South Bay, hundreds of protesters marched for more than 3 miles from Santa Clara to San Jose State University,
where they rallied at the statue commemorating John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their fists in the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
After weeks of protests often marked by grief, anger and tense confrontations with law enforcement, the mood at rallies Friday tended to be more joyful — though marked occasionally by solemn moments as demonstrators remembered people killed by police.
People danced to “Blow the Whistle” and a line of drummers on the steps of Oakland’s City Hall and to “This Is America” and “Alright” in San Jose. Black families set up picnic spreads as vendors sold snow cones and Black Lives Matter sweatshirts in the festival atmosphere beside Lake Merritt.
Berkeley resident Wangui Hymes recalled getting tear-gassed by police at earlier protests but noted Friday’s demonstration, where law enforcement could scarcely be seen, was far more upbeat.
“I just really think Black joy is radical,” Hymes said. “Seeing people smiling, celebrating, sharing hand sanitizer, sharing food — it just feels really radical.”
Still, Hymes eyed the broader celebration of Juneteenth with a measure of skepticism.
“I saw that Google had put it in my calendar today (and) I sort of rolled my eyes” she said. “It seemed almost disingenuous, like, do you really care?
“It’s easy to say the word but harder to put into practice — to face all this day represents.”
The nationwide Black Lives Matter movement has notched a string of victories over the past month, including criminal charges against the four officers involved in Floyd’s death, calls to make Juneteenth a national holiday and a raft of policy changes and legislative proposals meant to change law enforcement practices. But its aims are much broader: to stop law enforcement killings and reimagine — if not abolish outright — the role of police in American society.
Riley, the Oakland rapper and filmmaker, told the crowd outside Oakland City Hall on Friday that they had the power to bring about that change if they worked collectively.
“Imagine if this wasn’t just a one-day West Coast shutdown,” Riley told the crowd. “Imagine if it’s, ‘We are shutting down all West Coast ports until you do one, two three.’ ”
“We’ll stop the world and make those motherf— jump off,” Riley added, as the crowd roared in approval.