This year 2021 the US government declared Juneteenth a national holiday and we are celebrating today. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that all Black African slaves in the United States were free from slavery, even though it had technically happened by law two years before. Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people living in states that were engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” This news didn’t become a reality for the Black African slaves in states like Texas for two years for a number of reasons (slow communication methods, plantation owners not telling them and keeping them on plantations using violence, etc.), so although they were freed in 1863, it wasn’t until June 19, 1865, when the Union Army intervened that all Black African slaves in the U.S. actually knew and could act on the fact that they were free. 

Juneteenth is a celebration of liberation for Black people that calls us to look at where we are at in the arc of history. It’s an important reminder that white supremacy will do anything to stay in power. While much progress has been made, that progress still sits within white supremacist systems. Looking at this new Federal holiday in the context of history and the current lived experience of Black people in America, Juneteenth and the entire transition away from slavery has been designed to be a palatable and sustainable form of control after outright slavery became socially unacceptable for the average white American. At that point, the bosses came up with new ways to gaslight society by creating repressive conditions for Black people that aren’t as blatantly obvious and violent. Juneteenth was the beginning of a new era of fakeness and gaslighting – you are free, but here are all these rules and conditions like Jim Crow, zoning, the Black Codes, redlining, police brutality, gentrification, the prison industrial complex, the nonprofit industrial complex, and more to keep you down. 

So while Black people are technically free, we actually live in an open-air prison and our bodies are under a similar control as when they were on a plantation. This is reflected in every aspect of society, and PUSH Buffalo is unfortunately a part of this gaslighting and low-key societal control, too. PUSH claims to be about Black Liberation and Black Leadership, but we would like to ask the 26 Black people who no longer work for PUSH Buffalo what their experience was?

Yes, by our count, there are at least 26 Black people who have left PUSH Buffalo throughout its 15-year existence. We would love to live in a world where we could list out each person’s name and tell the story of how they were pushed out of PUSH, from gaslighting and coercion, to being physically removed and banned from all buildings, to being passed onto another affiliated organization so it doesn’t seem so bad that they’re gone. But naming names would do explicit harm and affect their lives and careers. Believe it or not: if you are a Black person holding people accountable to anti-Blackness, you will be the victim of white supremacy. 

In our experience, PUSH Buffalo is a toxic, gaslighting, and emotionally torturous environment for People of Color workers because they do not have any power to make PUSH benefit the community that they are supposed to serve. It’s tortuous to be told that you can help Black people when you actually can’t. 

There is a delusion that PUSH Buffalo is designed to support Black people, but it is not centered on following through on that support in any way, and it is not held accountable to its empty promises. One example is PUSH’s fake promise of jobs for the community. Also, when Black workers take leadership to try to make PUSH work for Black people, they are put down in a way that is a devious form of gaslighting, often by white people in senior management positions who own homes and/or have other sources of wealth. Black consciousness and decision making is only respected when it is in service of building the brand, beefing up the public image that keeps the funders, sponsors and donors handing over the money. 

You can read our other stories to see our backlog of what we already have written about on PUSH Buffalo’s toxicity, but on Juneteenth, June 19th 2021, People of Color across the country, especially Black and brown organizers and professionals (and even whites) in the corporate non-profit movements and organizations find themselves still battling against oppression in movements that advertise being about justice. Black and brown people are getting fired, cancelled, controlled, manipulated, and enslaved to organizations that were supposedly created to create equality and equity. Happy Juneteenth. 

And to those Black People who are still trapped in the trap of PUSH Buffalo, when is your Juneteenth?