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Dems won’t deliver on police reform — much less defunding
When Joe Biden signed a bill declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday last week, it was greeted with much fanfare. The president invited to the ceremony Opal Lee, the 94-year-old civil rights activist who has long campaigned for federal recognition. Vice President Kamala Harris waxed poetic about the law’s significance in a televised speech. In the media, it was hailed as a historic event. One outlet went so far as to treat it like the dawn of a new day, when partisan divisions gave way to a moment of unity: “At a time when Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, they came together this week to vote overwhelmingly in favor of making Juneteenth a federal holiday.”
But the response of many Black activists, academics and commentators was less enthusiastic.
Professor Treva Lindsey pointed out the hollowness of a “symbolic gesture” at a time when progress has stalled on material issues affecting the health and safety of Black people. “[With] little headway being made on securing a living wage and Black people still being assaulted and killed by police,” Linsdsey wrote “it’s hard for many of us to find substantive value in a new federal holiday.”
While the signing of the Juneteenth bill garnered a lot of national coverage, another move by the Biden Administration went largely unnoticed…
