Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition Juneteenth Celebration Speech
These are my remarks as prepared for the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition People's Juneteenth Celebration. It is worth noting, I did not to give them because a ferocious thunderstorm came through, and the event was outside.
Nonetheless, it was an excellent celebration, and BACC has a lot if important work happening right now.
Thank you.
It’s an honor to address today’s powerful Juneteenth gathering—and to do so with deep respect for the work and witness of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.
The truth is, BACC does the work that so many politicians only pretend to support. You are preserving memory. You are demanding justice. You are standing in the gap between protest and power. Because you know we must construct a new world.
Over the years, I’ve been proud to stand with BACC—not just in moments like today, but in the many ways of building and contesting power.
We worked together in the General Assembly on HB 1099. At first, we cautiously supported what looked like a good bill. But after a last-minute backroom deal in Annapolis, we had to pivot—and defeat a bad bill. Because not just any bill will do. Substance matters.
We worked within the Green Party to add cemetery desecration to our national platform—because we know the grassroots alternative to the two party trap , must acknowledge that Black lives matter in life and in death.
We’ve worked together to follow the money and track which developers are donating to which Democrats, because we understand how power works in Montgomery county and Maryland.
This year, Robert and I worked together on how to respond to SB 587, the bill that would have created the Maryland reparations commission. We organized, we advocated and we rallied for Governor Moore to sign it.
But we knew he probably wouldn’t sign it.
So well before anyone else even began to worry about the bill, we tapped into the Green Party’s 25-year legacy of supporting reparations—and the work done right here in Maryland by groups like BACC and LBS—and we built a comprehensive plan for real repair and reckoning.
We had it ready when he issued the veto.
I hope to use it as a platform to engage the debate about true reparative justice. We will have that debate in the streets, in the media, in Annapolis next year, and I hope to bring that plan to the debate stage—next year, alongside Democrats and Republicans, and any other party on the ballot.
I think one of the reasons we knew he wouldn’t sign it is because our work with BACC and other struggles for justice has taught us: never be surprised when politicians sell out Black people for their own personal gain.
And let's be honest: the same Montgomery County Democrats who say they believe in justice are the ones who have stood by while developers paved over Moses Cemetery.
They’ve turned prayers into platitudes, and platitudes into policies that displace, erase, and destroy Black life in Montgomery County.
That’s why we can’t simply hope politicians and developers will do the right thing. We have to build the power to make them do the right thing.
That means doing exactly what BACC is doing, organizing inside and outside the two-party trap. It means strengthening independent, grassroots, people-powered movements that refuse to be bought and cannot be silenced. It means building unlikely and unwavering coalitions. And it means standing up to systems of power and saying we refuse to accept injustice and we demand a better world.
And that better world won’t come from politicians’ promises, including mine. It will come from people who refuse to forget—and who refuse to be forgotten. But it will come from people who see a better world and are working tirelessly to build it.
Every time we gather like this—every speech, chant, and act of resistance—is a seed.
A seed of memory.
A seed of power.
A seed of a future where justice doesn’t require a well connected lobbyist —but is built by the people. Together.
So thank you, BACC—for your leadership, your courage, and your unwavering call to conscience and action. Let’s carry the spirit of this Juneteenth not just in our hearts—but in our organizing.
Thank you. And as always—power to the people