Senator Wiener's Statement on Juneteenth

SACRAMENTO - Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) released the following statement regarding Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States:

“Juneteenth is an important day of celebration for the Black community, and it’s how we mark and remember the end of slavery in the United States. With the recent police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Juneteenth is now an even more poignant reminder of how far we have to go to unlearn and undo the systemic racism on which our country was built. I’m especially thinking today about Breonna Taylor’s family and friends, who still have not seen action on Breonna’s murder. 

“Our country was built on a foundation of enslavement of Black people. This is an indisputable fact, and we must always remember it instead of turning away from this history. It’s also important to remember the ways in which Black people still experience systemic racism every day: through police violence, through a lack of good health care, through lack of equal economic and housing opportunity, and sadly, so much more. We will not see justice until we fully reimagine our criminal justice system, our economy, our healthcare system, our approach to housing, and our education system, including reckoning with the racism upon which these systems were built.”