The white-supremacist counterrevolution laid the basis for today’s reality of Black people in disproportionate numbers being relegated to a second-class status, with some of the worst housing, education, health care and nutrition in the country, along with being subjected to mass incarceration and police terror.

And now with Juneteenth being elevated on a national level, the ruling class and its media mouthpieces will attempt to co-opt this holiday by finding ways to make profits and by putting their own spin on “looking back at the past,” as a diversion from granting full equality.

Instead, Juneteenth should be a clarion call for reparations for the descendants of once-enslaved people, whose unpaid labor was superexploited by white plantation owners. The inspiration of Juneteenth can inject a heavy dose of anti-racist solidarity to help move the classwide struggle forward by workers of all nationalities, ages and genders, uniting to organize for a liveable wage and more humane working conditions.