Juneteenth Statement from the NY Young Communist League
Juneteenth is our day to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in the United States—a victory won through the revolutionary general strike waged by the enslaved Black masses in the Confederacy.
On June 19th, 1865, General Gordon Granger issued General Order 3, which enforced the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas once Union military presence spread throughout the defeated counter-revolutionary secessionist state.
It had been 126 years since the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, 61 years since the Haitian Revolution created the first Black republic in the world, and 34 years since Nat Turner’s Rebellion brought American settlers the deadliest blow they’d suffered in a single revolt.
The victory over slavery was won through revolutionary struggle; through revolutionary struggle, we are called to bring this victory to its completion.
Today, Black people face relentless national oppression through the state’s prison network. We must recognize this oppression as special in nature, not reducible to class. 92% of the nation’s incarcerated are in public prisons, where the majority of costs go to white prison guards represented by one of the most reactionary “unions” in the country. The incarcerated, overrepresented by Black and Indigenous peoples, continue to be denied voting rights.
The struggle for Black national liberation is far from over.
It has been 55 years since the Attica Prison Rebellion was brutally crushed and 55 years since the federal government responded to the Occupation of Alcatraz with a campaign of counter-revolutionary repression against the American Indian Movement (AIM). Prison and police abolition have fallen from the popular demands spread through the George Floyd Uprising. Even community control of the police remains out of the popular liberal imagination.
Even now, “progressive” political candidates and elected officials submit to the capitalist desire to maintain this prison network, their cudgel against the development of the nationally oppressed Black and Indigenous peoples. This Juneteenth, the New York Young Communist League contends that freedom for all has not been won yet.
We call for a Third Reconstruction to restore the reforms and advances won by the newly freed Black masses following the Civil War. This includes community control of the police. We call for the revolutionary youth movement to (re)adopt police and prison abolition as core long-term demands, imperative for the growth of the national liberation movements torn asunder by the state and only possible after a revolutionary transformation of society to communism.
The Plantation continues to exist in our prison system, private and public. The Slavecatcher lives on in the uniformed officer. So, while today we celebrate our wins, tomorrow we will keep fighting until all chains are gone and liberation is won for all nations in and outside of the United States.
Free the Land! Free Them All! All the Land Back!
Published June 19th, 2026
