A Juneteenth Message from the Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus Leadership

This Juneteenth of 2026 feels different because the moment is different. The freedoms Black people fought for, organized for, litigated for, and died for are being challenged in plain view. The weight is not hard to name because it is complicated. It is hard to name because it is familiar.

This past week made it heavier.

We watched Chikei "Rick" Chow acquitted in the killing of Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a 14-year-old Black child wrongly suspected of shoplifting. We watched Karmelo Anthony, a Black teenager, sentenced to 35 years in prison in a case that has raised painful questions about race, youth, mercy, proportionality, and who receives the benefit of doubt. We watched the homicide convictions of the paramedics involved in the death of Elijah McClain overturned and sent back toward the possibility of retrial. We are witnessing yet another devastating moment that demands accountability. A Senatobia, Mississippi police officer shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley in a Walmart parking lot. A one-year-old child. Gone. And once again, communities across this country are calling for transparency, accountability, and answers that too often never come. This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern. And that pattern must end. FourThree cases. One week. The same old question Black America has had to keep asking this country: when Black life is harmed, will the law answer with justice or with excuses?

But this Juneteenth message cannot stop at grief. It must also name the political truth too many people still avoid: justice denied to Black people is not a Black problem alone. It is justice denied to every person who believes the Constitution will protect them when power becomes abusive.

When Black people are denied equal protection, equal protection becomes conditional. When Black voters are targeted, every voter inherits a weaker democracy. When Black defendants are denied proportionality and due process, due process becomes negotiable for everyone. When Black workers have to fight for fair employment standards, the entire labor force benefits when they win. When Black families challenge housing exclusion, the country is forced to decide whether property, safety, and belonging are public promises or private privileges.

Black Americans have repeatedly served as the nation's legal and moral stress test. Through abolition, Reconstruction, civil rights litigation, labor organizing, voting rights work, school desegregation, fair housing advocacy, jury discrimination challenges, criminal procedure cases, and grassroots organizing, Black people have forced this country to make its promises more real for everyone. That is not charity. That is constitutional infrastructure built through Black struggle.

So when Black justice is treated as optional, American justice is being hollowed out. When Black history is erased, the country loses the map of how its rights were won. When Black communities are told to wait, accept less, be patient, or be grateful for symbolism, every community is being taught that rights can be rationed by political convenience.

We are living in a time when Black communities sit at multiple intersections of attack. Black unemployment remains disproportionately high. DEI language, hard-fought language that represents real people and real lives, is under assault nationally and locally. Medicaid and SNAP are being threatened or weakened. Voting rights have been narrowed and attacked. Black history is being treated as disposable in curriculum fights, federal spaces, museums, websites, and public memory. Reproductive rights have been stripped. LGBTQIA+ communities are under siege. Immigration has been weaponized. And the carceral state has still not been made to fully answer for what it has done and continues to do to Black people.

This is the reality we are living on Juneteenth 2026.

Juneteenth is supposed to be a celebration of freedom. But freedom deferred, freedom threatened, and freedom rolled back is difficult to celebrate without telling the truth. And the truth is, we are tired.

But we have always been tired. And we have always kept moving anyway. Through worse. Through the unimaginable. Through conditions meant to break us, erase us, and make us disappear, we survived. We built. We organized. We voted. We litigated. We governed. We led. That is who we are. That has always been who we are.

On this Juneteenth, the Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus is issuing a call. Not only to the nation. Not only to a Republican Party that has made its agenda clear. We are issuing a call to ourselves, to our own party, and to every Oregon Democrat who has ever said they stand with Black people, democracy, equity, and justice.

It is time to look in the mirror.

Being a Democrat does not make anyone an automatic ally to Black people. Allyship is not a voter registration card. It is not a yard sign. It is not a social media post in February or June. Allyship is action. It is prioritization. It is showing up when it costs something, when it is inconvenient, when it is uncomfortable, and when it would be easier to look away. It is not something to perform when Black turnout is needed and abandon when Black communities need power.

We are asking Oregon Democrats, this November and in every election, organizing meeting, budget debate, platform discussion, and party decision that follows, to move with intention.

Our Call to Action

• Elect Black candidates into public office. There is no shortage of qualified, aligned, progressive, visionary Black leaders in this state. The shortage has never been talent. The shortage has been will, investment, support, and follow-through.
• Move Black leaders into real power within this party. Committees. Chair roles. Delegate positions. Endorsement tables. Budget tables. Strategy tables. Not as symbols. Not as checkboxes. As full decision-makers with authority, resources, and support.
• Listen to Black communities year-round. Not only when campaigns need turnout. Not only when the party needs credibility. Listening must become a discipline, a relationship, and a governing practice.
• Push back locally. When policies, decisions, budget cuts, public narratives, or institutional patterns disproportionately harm Black people or erase Black historical impact, say something. Do something. Silence from Democrats on local rollbacks is not neutrality. It is complicity.
• Treat Black justice as democratic self-preservation. Do not misunderstand the stakes. When Black rights are weakened, the rights of everyone become easier to weaken next. Anti-Black injustice is often the pilot program for broader democratic rollback.

"The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy." - John Lewis, 2019

The Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus will not be silent. We will not be satisfied with symbolic representation while our communities continue to bear the heaviest burdens. We will not allow the urgency of this moment to pass without demanding that our own house be in order, because we cannot ask the country to do what we are unwilling to do ourselves.

Freedom was never given to us. It was wrestled away from those who refused to grant it. It was marched for, bled for, organized for, litigated for, died for, and grieved for. And it is still being fought for today, right now, by us.

Black Americans have never fought only for ourselves. We have fought to make America's rights real. We have fought so the words citizenship, equal protection, due process, public education, voting rights, fair housing, fair employment, bodily autonomy, and democracy could mean something beyond rhetoric.

That is why justice denied to Black people is justice denied to everyone. Not eventually. Immediately. Because when the country learns to make exceptions to justice for us, it learns how to make exceptions for anyone.

We are still fighting. We have never stopped. And we need Oregon Democrats fighting with us - not in spirit, not in sentiment, but in policy, budgets, leadership, votes, organizing, and power.

"Nobody's free until everybody's free." - Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964

We look forward to working with the DPO Chair and executive team to bring forward resolutions that specifically repair harm, create stability and safety, build homeownership opportunities for people historically displaced from their communities, minimize the racial health gap, and close the wealth disparity gap that decades of discriminatory policy deliberately created. Words and gestures are no longer enough. We are ready to do the work and we expect our party to show up ready too.

In solidarity and in truth,

Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus Leadership