Memorial Day: Remembering the True Origins—And What We’re Fighting For
Memorializing democracy, Black history, and those who gave their life fighting the leadership we see running our country today
This Memorial Day, I’m not just mourning the dead— I’m mourning what they gave their lives to protect.
I’m mourning our democracy.
I’m mourning a country led by an authoritarian white supremacist.
Because freedom, for which over 1.3 million gave their lives to safeguard, is under assault by this White House and its followers. Their ideology aligns with what those who died fought against: authoritarianism, racism, and tyranny.
I’m mourning a country I love and the values that once defined us—freedom, equality, justice—being desecrated by the man who now occupies the White House.
But today, I’m not just grieving.
I’m recommitting to the fight, the future, and the work of saving this country from the harm done in our name.
Yesterday, May 25, marked five years since Police Murdered George Floyd.
His death ignited a global uprising for racial justice. Millions took to the streets demanding a country where Black lives matter, and justice is more than a slogan.
But five years later, that movement is under attack.
Just this week, Trump’s DOJ ended federal police reform efforts, rescinded consent decrees in cities like Minneapolis and Louisville, and opened the door to pardons for officers convicted of civil rights violations—including Derek Chauvin, the officer who murdered George Floyd. We’re seeing official efforts to end and progress made by the movement for Black lives and the successes of the protests five years ago by this White Supremacist-in-Chief.
🇺🇸 And on Memorial Day—when we should have honored the fallen...
Donald Trump posted an all-caps tirade, calling his political opponents “scum,” judges “USA-hating,” and declaring that dissenters should “go to hell.”
He desecrated the very idea of service, sacrifice, and country with white nationalist rage.
📚 Here’s what most schools still don’t teach:
Black Americans created Memorial Day. David Blight, a Yale historian, uncovered.
On May 1, 1865, just weeks after the Civil War ended, more than 10,000 newly freed Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, organized the first large-scale tribute to Union soldiers who died to end slavery. They called them the Martyrs of the Race Course.
Black children marched with flowers. Pastors preached. They sang “John Brown’s Body” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a mass grave site that had been a Confederate prison camp. It was a defiant, sacred ritual born from freedom’s struggle.
That truth was later buried—erased by white historians and replaced with a sanitized, Confederate-influenced version of patriotism.
Just like our democracy is being whitewashed now.
And here’s what else we must remember:
The best part of this country has always been its people, especially the immigrants who came here seeking a better life, fleeing tyranny, and helping build something beautiful together.
They are the dreamers. The workers. The fighters.
They are the people Trump targets, scapegoats, and dehumanizes.
And they are the people who make this country worth saving.
✊🏾 This Memorial Day, I’m not celebrating.
I remember.
I’m resisting.
And I’m recommitting to the fight for a shared future where we respect our history, we value immigrants, where no one is illegal, where white supremacy is not in the White House, where true history is taught and not scrubbed from the books and our official government websites.
I honor the dead by fighting for the living.
I honor the soldiers, especially Black and Brown ones, who gave their lives for rights often denied to them.
I reject the hate, the fear, and the fascism now wrapped in the flag and waved from the White House.
And I say with love, rage, and resolve:
Black Lives Matter.
Immigrants Matter.
Our Future Matters.