The stress of cooking and finding enough chairs for Thanksgiving dinner, the fun of watching fireworks on Independence Day, finding a parking spot at the mall the week before Christmas, dealing with annoying relatives: activities and experiences that dominate our attention and define every holiday. People get so caught up in the rituals and minutiae of holidays that they lose sight of what they are celebrating. As much as holidays are a celebration of an event or person, they are, more fundamentally, a call for the remembrance of the virtues symbolized by those people and events.
Christmas is not about who has the most valuable present waiting for them under the tree. Independence Day does not stand as an anti-British holiday. Thanksgiving certainly does not celebrate the history of European and Native American relations. They celebrate some of the foundational pillars of virtue our country rests upon: the generosity and the privilege of having enough to give, the proclamation of, and fight for, liberties and rights still enjoyed, the power of love and unity as shown through sacrifice. They remind us of what it took to get here and what it will take to go further.
Juneteenth does not celebrate the freedom allowed to the fewer than 10,000 unpaid forced laborers living in 1865 Galveston, Texas. It is remembrance of what the bloodiest war in United States history was fought over. A country, founded on the right to liberty, self--determination, and life, became a country willing to give up all three, merely to keep those rights away from those they considered lesser. It is a symbol of the pain of millions of Black forced unpaid laborers. And, above all, a reminder that "truth, like freedom, is worth defending."
Let Juneteenth be a reminder to defend those hard-fought freedoms. The holiday that best enshrines American values and best reminds us of the rigor the never-ending fight for freedom takes. Strategy and strength are core to battle. Understanding the weapons and advantages of your opponent is the only way to compete. Outreach, advocacy, and education are essential to building an understanding populace that will not allow these attempts to erase the suffering of Black people from history, nor allow their subjugation to continue.
Understanding the role of resources and having the power to ensure incumbent powers (regardless of if they are government, corporate, business, or legal) must fight for you and your values, regardless of whether those powers are government, corporate, or business. Financial markets are key to efficiently organizing resources and garnering merit required for political influence in the modern world.