Wednesday, June 22, 2022 — 3 News The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Second Juneteenth Annual Symposium opens with Opal Lee and discussions of healing UMich welcomed the start of the Second Annual Juneteenth Symposium on June 15, held in collaboration with the Ann Arbor branch of the NAACP The University of Michigan recognized the start of the Second Annual Juneteenth Symposium on June 15, a four-day event held in collaboration with the Ann Arbor branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With “Celebrate, Educate, Inspire” as this year’s theme, the symposium will take place from June 15 to June 18 and will include a series of speeches, panels, workshops and performances to celebrate Black excellence and bring attention to issues that concern the Black community. The majority of the events will be held in a hybrid format with pre-registration required. Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans following the end of the Civil War. Though the Emancipation Proclamation declaring freedom for all enslaved peoples in the rebelling states went into effect in 1863, slavery was not officially ended across the United States until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865. In Texas, slavery continued for two years after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, until General Order No. 3 — which is dated June 19, 1865 — informed the state’s enslaved people of their legal freedom. Juneteenth has been celebrated on June 19 across the United States since the 19th century, but it was not until June 17, 2021 that President Joe Biden signed Juneteenth’s status as a federal holiday into law. On the first day of the symposium, activist Opal Lee, also known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” talked about her journey of fighting to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in her opening keynote speech. Since 2016, Lee has led 2.5- mile walks in various cities to bring attention to Juneteenth. The walks symbolize the number of years that it took for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas in 1865. In September 2016, Lee left TINA YU Daily Staff Reporter CAMPUS LIFE Fort Worth, Texas, and began her 1400-mile trek across the United States, ending on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. She hoped to speak directly with President Barack Obama about making Juneteenth a federal holiday. In 2021, she started a petition for a federally-recognized Juneteenth holiday on Change.org. The petition received support from multiple celebrities, including Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Usher. Her years of activism eventually led to a Juneteenth holiday being signed into law in 2021—with Lee in attendance. During her opening keynote speech, Lee talked about the moment she found out that Biden would sign the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. “P. Diddy helped me get 1.5 million signatures to take to Congress,” Lee said. “We took them to Congress and we were ready to take that many more when we got the word to go to the White House, that the president was going to sign the Juneteenth bill into law.” Lee discussed the role of education in freeing people from homelessness and unemployment, as well as providing the freedom to be who they are. “The recognition is for all of us to be free,” Lee said. “We realize that we have a common goal, and that is to dispel the disparages that we have in this country. I’m talking about (how) we need books in the education system to tell the history as it occurred. We can erase history, and so we need to learn about it. We need to be able to be sure (history) doesn’t happen again. Freedom is the thing that I’ll cherish.” Lee said freedom should be valued, celebrated and fought for by everyone. “What we need to know is this is not a Black thing,“ Lee said. “(It) is not a Texas thing. Freedom is for all of us, and none of us are free until we’re all free … So (white people have) got to learn that, hey, this is for you too. And I advocate that we celebrate freedom from the 19th of June to the Fourth of July.” Courtesy of Roni Kane Read more at michigandaily.com Hundreds of Washtenaw-Wayne County community members “March for Our Lives” in wake of Uvalde school shooting Over 400 Washtenaw-Wayne county community members gathered in the Diag to encourage law makers to take measures to end gun violence Over 400 voices rang out in unison over the Diag Saturday morning with a message for state and U.S. legislators alike: “stop the silence, end gun violence.” Organized by high school students from the Ann Arbor and Plymouth-Canton areas, the Washtenaw-Wayne County March for Our Lives was one of over 450 local marches that happened across the country on June 11. The national call to action was sparked in the wake of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which resulted in the death of 19 students and two teachers — just one of the more than 240 mass shootings so far in 2022. Guns have been the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens since 2020. When the March for Our Lives movement was initiated in 2018 following the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., it was seen as a testament to the efficacy of student activism. During the movement’s first year, marches all around the U.S. — including the main protest in Washington, D.C. — were organized primarily by middle and high school students. Over 4,000 people attended the first student- lead rally in Ann Arbor alone. The return of the March for Our Lives movement on Saturday was a result of renewed student activism calling for gun reform. Around six local high school students who are a part of the Washtenaw-Wayne County chapter of March for Our Lives orchestrated Saturday’s protest on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, including Plymouth High School rising senior Kavya Keshavamurthy. Keshavamurthy said she went on a virtual call with leadership from the national March for Our Lives organization and chapter leaders from all over the U.S. shortly after the massacre in Uvalde. It was there, she said, that March for Our Lives announced its intent to once again incite a wave of protests after four years. She and the rest of the Washtenaw- Wayne chapter immediately began organizing the march in Ann Arbor. Keshavamurthy said she hopes Michigan legislators in Lansing and on Capitol Hill will hear the echoes of their chants, will see the faces of the protestors in the media and will be moved to pass bills addressing gun reform and mental health. “The overarching goal of our march is basically to send a message to our legislators,” Keshavamurthy said. “Our politicians can no longer just get away with thoughts and prayers. They need action.” The Washtenaw-Wayne County chapter of March for Our Lives is currently co-lead by two recent Ann Arbor Public Schools graduates: RONI KANE Daily News Editor Rhiannon Hubbard, who graduated this year from Pioneer High School, and Christine Kang, who just graduated from Skyline High School. The pair stood before the crowd to kickoff Saturday’s protest by listing off the numbers 58%, three million and one million: 58% for the majority of Americans who have experienced, or know someone who has experienced, gun violence in their lifetime; three million in regards to the number of American children who witness gun violence on an annual basis; and one million for the number of women alive today who have been shot at by their partner. They warned the crowd to not let these statistics become mere numbers or to accept them as facts, but to fight to decrease the number of lives affected by gun violence. “We have seen so many acts of gun violence that we allow these numbers to remain numbers, but we must never let that happen,” Kang told the crowd. “There are friends, families and communities behind these numbers.” In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Hubbard and Kang highlighted one final statistic, but this time it was a number they felt encouraged by. “I am so grateful and proud of the over 400 people who showed up today to march with us to end gun violence,” Kang said. “I can’t even put into words how powerful this all felt.” Read more at michigandaily.com