by J. Chavis and Vicki Porter
As the US observes the 5th federally-recognized Juneteenth (June 19), the material, political, and economic conditions for Black workers continue to decline in real terms. The Black Lives Matter movement forced the two corporate parties, Democrat and Republican, to recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday. While some corporate politicians pay lip service to the holiday, which celebrates the abolition of slavery, they continue to use the power of the state to repress ongoing struggles of Black people.
The Trump administration intensifies its culture war against DEI initiatives at universities, further undermining opportunities for working-class Black youth to access higher education. Republicans continue to use tired “states’ rights” arguments to justify whitewashing critiques of racism and slavery out of public school textbooks.
Meanwhile, the federal Supreme Court has put yet another nail in the coffin of the historic Voting Rights Act with their recent Louisiana vs. Callais decision making it even more difficult to systematically undo and oppose ongoing race-based voter disenfranchisement. This flagship piece of legislation from the Civil Rights Movement has been made functionally defunct by the unelected Supreme Court, allowing Republicans to gain even more political power and setting back minority voting rights by decades.
The Trump regime’s assault on minority communities includes Black immigrants
Even though corporate media reporting on ICE has largely died down, kidnappings continue to disappear our neighbors in major cities across the country, including both LA and Minneapolis. In the last year, these cities became frontlines in the struggle against mass deportation, with ICE/CBP brutalizing and murdering immigrants and their fellow allied workers in the streets and rounding up innocent civilians to put into for-profit immigrant prisons.
Black immigrants are being disproportionately targeted by ICE. Black immigrants make up around 20% of immigrants facing deportation based on a criminal conviction, despite making up only 7% of the immigrant population. This is almost exactly proportional to the racial profiling that Black Americans face through policing, as Black people are arrested around 2.5 times more than white people.
The Democratic Party continues to fail to oppose the Republican Party’s attacks on immigrants, with 7 House Democrats voting in favor of a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, including another $10 billion in funding for ICE.
ICE funding has almost tripled since 2004, going from $3.4B in 2004 to $9.2B in 2024, with the increases in funding being bipartisan as both corporate parties – and the corporations that fund them – benefit enormously from exploiting precarious immigrant labor and dividing workers based on nationality and race. It is essential for workers to link the anti-ICE struggle with the fight against racist police brutality.
Need for independent Black left politics
Most working-class people have yet to recover from the economic devastation of the 2007-2008 financial crash, when the Obama administration presided over a $4.5 trillion transfer of wealth to the top 1%. The Democratic Party continues to prove itself incapable and uninterested in representing the material interests of Black workers.
The California DNC pulled out a series of nonsense legal maneuvers to block Butch Ware, a left-wing Black activist, from running in the 2026 California governor race. This Democratic Party-led attack resulted in Ware’s campaign being forced to rely on write-in votes only.
Andrea James is a progressive Black activist who is running as an independent in the 2026 Massachusetts governor election against incumbent Democrat Maura Healey. Independent Socialist Group members voted to support James’ campaign. Read more at independentsocialistgroup.org. The Democratic Party makes it extremely hard for any challenge to its rule to gain traction. Andrea James’ grassroots, working-class campaign, funded without corporate money, calls for rent control, a $25/hr minimum wage, and the right to strike for public-sector workers. The campaign is forced to collect 10,000 signatures in a short span of time just to appear on the ballot for the election in November.
We need more Black left independents who are free from corporate funding and influence to run for elections. Whether these or other independent left-wing campaigns succeed, they serve as a flashpoint to raise widely popular pro-worker policies and can help organize the beginnings of an independent anti-racist worker’s party.
Juneteenth is not just a holiday. It is a reminder of the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. The Independent Socialist Group calls for June 19th to be a day of protest to re-mobilize the historic Black Lives Matter movement. Key demands must include:
- End mass deportation policies and ICE’s occupation of cities across the country.
- Reinstate the Voting Rights Act in earnest and vastly limit the powers of the Supreme Court, an unelected and unaccountable body, as a step towards expanding democratic rights.
- Working-class democratic community control of policing and abolishing ICE.
- $30/hr minimum wage and nationwide rent freeze to begin to address the cost-of-living crisis.
Independent Socialist Group 