Greensburg rally celebrates federal Juneteenth holiday

Many of those attending Greensburg’s Unity in the Community rally Friday felt they were taking part in a historic event.

About 20 speakers, a dozen human service organizations and a small crowd attended the afternoon gathering in St. Clair Park — held to mark the first federal Juneteenth holiday, which celebrates the end of slavery in Galveston, Texas, by a Union Army order on June 19, 1865.

The event brought Yvonne Taylor of Salem to the park for the first time. She lives near Fairview Park, which was founded in 1945 as the first and only Black-owned amusement park in Pennsylvania.

“I certainly want to celebrate,” Taylor said. “We learn new things, and we celebrate our history. That’s important to me.”

The participating organizations and speakers represented a spectrum of interests ranging from inclusivity and racial justice to support for those struggling with substance use or mental health challenges.

Laurie Wade attended as a representative of Lost Dreams Awakening, a recovery center in New Kensington. But she focused her remarks on the holiday.

“I’m really excited that they have declared Juneteenth a national holiday,” she said. “It’s about liberation.”

Wade noted the nation has come a long way from when people were enslaved, including in Westmoreland County, but she said Americans of all colors are still struggling with that dark past.

“We’re experiencing collective trauma as a result of some of the residuals of systems that were put in place a long time ago,” she said. “We need all perspectives, being a voice sometimes for people who don’t speak up. It really takes us all moving in the same direction.”

Heather McLean, outreach coordinator for Mental Health America of Southwestern Pennsylvania, challenged herself and others to seek friendships with those who are different from themselves.

“We can learn from each other,” she said. “I really believe that’s the only way we’re going to bridge the gap and move forward in our community.”

Mahdi Bey, constituent services adviser for state Rep. Jessica Benham, an Allegheny County Democrat, expressed concern about the recent rash of shootings in Pittsburgh. Bey, 41, credits the outreach work of community organizations for helping him to survive the gang- and drug-dominated environment in the South Hills neighborhood of his childhood.

“It’s going to take everybody, of every creed and every color, coming together to end this epidemic of gun violence, to come back together as a community,” he said.

Cpl. Aaron Allen, who serves with the state police Heritage Affairs Office, said he and his colleagues are deployed to oversee investigations of hate crimes and other incidents involving racial tension or bias, “to make sure the proper thing is being done.”

He noted the office responded to the 2018 mass shooting at Squirrel Hill’s Tree of Life synagogue and the case of Antwon Rose II, 17, who was shot and killed by former police Officer Michael Rosfeld after a June 19, 2018, traffic stop in East Pittsburgh.

Allen said state police cadets receive training in racial profiling awareness, implicit bias and diversity inclusion, as well as de-escalation tactics — training that also is offered to municipal police departments.

“The old school style of policing is over,” he said. “It is now community policing. We need to know the individuals in our communities. We can’t just show up when bad things happen.”

Yukie King, a candidate for Greensburg City Council who identifies as nonbinary/transfeminine, read two poems touching on injustice.

Regarding the importance of the local Juneteenth event, King said, “This isn’t just Black history, this is American history, making sure people are aware of what happened in this country. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free us all.”

King said people need to be aware of “the inequities in the system before we can start to dismantle those.”

Jean Slusser of Blairsville, president of PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays) Greensburg, pointed out that June is Pride Month for members of the LGBTQ community, but Pennsylvania has not joined 22 other states that adopted anti-discrimination protections for that community.

Slusser urged support of the proposed Pennsylvania Fairness Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to anti-discrimination language in the state’s Human Relations Act. Of those who would gain protection through the legislation, she said, Black transgender women are “the most discriminated against and also the most in danger of being imprisoned or murdered.”

Ronel Baccus of Greensburg, who founded the local Unity in the Community group, said she hopes to make the Juneteenth rally an annual event.

“I just want people to come together in unity and celebrate,” she said.

Michael Pardus of Hempfield, who served as master of ceremonies for the rally, took Greensburg officials to task for not attending the event. He also protested that city police shouldn’t have ticketed cars that were parked along adjacent Maple Avenue in light of the holiday celebration. Parking along that section of the street is reserved from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

Mayor Robb Bell later told the Tribune-Review he was sorry he couldn’t attend the rally but was out of town and noted other officials probably were at work.

He said the criticism of the police was unfair. “How is the city supposed to know who those cars belong to?” he said.