Welcome to Amped Up.

This is your host, Ryan Knight, and our guest today is Isaiah James.

Isaiah is a Democratic socialist and a Black Lives Matter activist running for Congress to replace a corporate Democrat in New York's 9th District.

Isaiah, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having it.

Yeah, you know, today is Juneteenth.

On this day, 155 years ago, the remaining slaves in the United States were set free.

You know, there's a lot of talk of making this a national holiday, which I think is great.

But I also think that a national holiday is not enough to liberate black people in America, right?

We need to go further and fight for meaningful change that will

dismantle systemic racism and lift up black communities. What are your thoughts on on Juneteenth and how we

should celebrate it and, you know, and so forth? So happy June 10. Yes. To everybody out there.

So America, you're right, the slaves are set free, but they were never set right.

They were never set up.

They were never, you know, set on a path for economic, you know, empowerment.

And we've seen that, we've seen the legacy of slavery carry on to this day where black and brown communities,

particularly black communities, are still way on the bottom of the economic ladder because

America has not undergirded her black community. She has not invested anything into her black

community. So the holiday is nice, and I would like for June King to be a recognized federal

holiday, but America has to have some skin in the game. They have to actually put some, some,

some economic power behind black people in this country. I mean, everybody knows about what

happened to Black Wall Street, where there were black people who had their own town,

...