The Humane Party‘s call for a national holiday celebrating the end of human slavery has now gained the unanimous endorsement of Democrat-Republican members of the U.S. Senate, via consent agreement, and a sweeping majority of the Democrat-Republican bloc in the U.S. House of Representatives. The current U.S. President is expected to sign the bill into law later today. This success represents the latest in a line of formerly “obscure” and “extremist” Humane Party positions that have enjoyed an explosion of national and international support over the last four years.
Difference between the original proposal and the final form
The Humane Party’s 2015 official declaration called for the holiday, under the name “Abolition Day,” to occur annually on December 6, since human slavery was abolished in the U.S. through ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865. In the version that has now passed the Senate and House, the holiday will be celebrated on Juneteenth. While, as NPR and others have noted, actual abolition of human slavery was still a few months away at time of the events commemorated on Juneteenth, this celebration marks a meaningful moment in the enforcement of Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.
Additionally, as noted in the Humane Party platform, the original purpose behind Abolition Day was two-fold: “(i) commemoration of the end of human slavery in the United States and (ii) anticipation of the end of all slavery throughout the United States and throughout the world.” While the Democrat-Republican version recognizes this first purpose, their version fails to include the latter.
Significance for parties
Support of the proposal by members of Democratic Party, in particular, is noteworthy: as elected representatives of the U.S.’s “home-grown party of genocide, slavery, and racism“, these Democrats’ endorsement of the holiday represents a public repudiation of their own party’s core “values” and of their party’s actions in furtherance of these “values,” such as their treasonous war against United States of America (1861-65), of which war Juneteenth commemorates one of the last events. Democrat-Confederate-KKK icons, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, have also been resoundingly rejected both nationally and internationally pursuant to the goals underlying the “Genocide Recognition, Reparations, and Reconciliation Act” as set forth in Section 15 of the HP platform.
Congratulations and “thank you” to all Humane Party volunteers who have worked tirelessly to bring about this day!
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~ JLJ
The Humane Herald 