Minneapolis scores sixteenth anniversary after being approved for vacation | Competitive News
Minneapolis, United States – On a hot summer morning in George Floyd Square, a gardener lights up a santo in a small wooden table next to a black and white Floyd shed.
Near the church car park, a Sponge-Bob-themed ornate house has been built. Inside, the children simply walk around and hit a running ball like a hot dog, burgers, and brats standing on a nearby black bar.
“For the 16th year this year, it’s a special thing. We are looking to the future and the future is for children, ”James Johnson of Worldwide Outreach for Christ church told Al Jazeera. “Now that we have a global holiday, it’s a special thing and we want to explain that.”
June 19, or the eleventh anniversary, commemorates the day the Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and told American slaves they were free – more than two years after the war ended and President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which declared all free slaves.
The festivities began the following year to commemorate the event and the day has been celebrated as the second day of independence in African American communities since then. In the last few decades, the Sixteenth Vacation Team has grown.
In Minneapolis, the city’s labor department recommended in April that it be the city’s eleventh holiday. May 14 Minneapolis City Council he made it legal, followed by the rest of the world when President Biden has signed The sixth law of Independence Day becomes law on June 17.
While celebratory celebrations were taking place in Minneapolis with its “twin city” of St. Paul Saturday, some events are not in line with recent developments by local and state governments.
“It doesn’t change anything,” said Kevin Reese, founder of Till We Are All Freedom, a Minneapolis human rights organization led by former prisoners, tells Al Jazeera.
He plans to hold a community event in the afternoon at a South Minneapolis cafe, where local actors and artists are present alongside prayer and public speaking.
“It’s another symbol from America the focus of the descendants of slaves. It does nothing and there is nothing America can do without repaying… that would satisfy me. ”
Earlier this year, Until We Are All Free we connected with other local groups sixteen years ago, but this year they are celebrating the growth of the group. “This will be our first annual event,” says Reese. “We are preparing for 500 people.”
A few weeks after Minneapolis decided on a fifteenth day of vacation, Mayor Jacob Frey began pressuring George Floyd Square, which had been closed to the public since Floyd’s assassination, to be reopened to resume walking.
George Floyd’s Supreme Court recently reopened cars [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]
City members have criticized the mayor misuse of emergency power was present during the epidemic to enter into a $ 359,000 deal with a community group to reopen the conflict.
Tony Smith, who walks through a warm morning in the shade section of the stadium, believes the reopening is important for businesses that have been suffering from closure but that the reminders should be left open and stored.
They spent sixteen years collecting donations for those living in several homeless camps through Catholic Charities, for no ordinary benefit.
“I often eat meat and [spending Juneteenth in] living alone, ”tells Al Jazeera. “Nothing to enjoy, sixteen. With great anger you know… When I heard this [Biden] we made a complete vacation, which took away the anger. ”
Tony Smith lives in George Floyd Square, Minneapolis in preparation for the seventh anniversary [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]
North of Minneapolis, a large party, with parking lots filled with tents set up by local teams and another luxury home, began to gain momentum among the growing group.
As passers-by and volunteers form a prayer tent surrounded by black, red, and green balloons for the “complete holiday that is all ours – the 16th”, the founder and director of Black Bold and Brilliant and one of those organized the event organization, Wisdom Mawusi, is working to establish a venue called Cave Man Black.
“We wanted to do something and agree, to celebrate black men,” he tells Al Jazeera. “We are creating a better environment for black men to respect and value themselves and all that they do and their importance in our community. Sometimes they do not even realize that they are married. ”
Across the country, where funk music is playing in the background, Comer X. Henry, director of anti-bullying activities at the Twin Cities Recovery Project – an organization that provides support and services to those with substance abuse problems – is in the process one of the four men working on another tent.
He tells Al Jazeera that fifteen is “a celebration of the freedom of the so-called slaves. It means a lot to me in two ways – one is that we are free. Second, my truth is, we were mentally closed and still dependent on everyone but ourselves”.
When it comes to saying that Friday is a town and national holiday, Henry says “it’s a big thing and I think we’re going well but it’s a little deeper and harder for me. [We’re] related to the development of the whites and the continued suffering. ”
