a letter for Juneteenth 2025

To the beautiful person who sees this,

Today is June 19th, 2025. Juneteenth.

Today many of us working corporate, white-collar jobs in the United States will have the day off. And many of us will take this day without realizing its implications, without knowing its history. 

And while we “celebrate” Juneteenth by shopping at Target or picking up a “sweet little treat” at Starbucks, these very corporations — both the ones that pay us and the ones we spend our money with — are actively backtracking on their DEI commitments. The commitments that arose from the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and too many others at the hands of the police. The commitments that were supposed to uplift the people whose cultural and genealogical lines stem from the enslaved people in Texas who celebrated their legal emancipation on this day 160 years ago. 

At the same time, today is the 19th day of Pride month. But what is Pride in a moment when the transness of this movement is being erased, when access to gender affirming care is being systematically dismantled, when we are facing an epidemic of suicidality in our queer community? It’s a reminder. A reminder that the first Pride was a riot. A riot led by poor, black and brown, trans, queer people. 

At the same time, today we wait in fear of news that access to healthcare has been stripped away from the most vulnerable in our country. The proposal to defund Medicaid strips poor and disabled folks of the meager support they can find in our exploitative, for-profit US healthcare system. Simultaneously, access to reproductive healthcare is shrinking across this country, and we are faced with the ever growing threat of mass casualties and displacement from climate disasters.

At the same time, this month, we have watched in horror as our immigrant friends and family are kidnapped and forced into detention centers hundreds of miles away from their communities. This same type of carceral violence has been perpetrated against black and brown communities in the US for generations. This is the same carceral violence that has been inflicted upon indigenous children in boarding schools, our Mad siblings in psychiatric institutions, the peoples of occupied Kashmir and the West Bank, and many others.

And, at the same time, we mark over 620 days of Israel’s newest phase of genocide in Gaza.

The intersection of these moments shows us that all these struggles are intertwined. 

It reminds us that “freedom” is not a signature on paper. It’s not a half-hearted acknowledgement of your existence. Freedom cannot be given, because it is our inherent right as human beings. But freedom can be ripped away by oppressive forces.

Now, you may ask, why is a yoga collective talking about these things? 

There are many reasons. Beyond the obvious fact that we hold identities that are directly impacted by these actions; we are also practitioners who honor the roots of yoga. As a yoga collective, we are bound to the values of satya (truth), ahimsa (non-harm), and ishvara pranidhana (collective consciousness). Yoga is and always has been a political act.

It is in that spirit that we answer the call from Yogis for Palestine and Tejal Yoga to join the global movement to reimagine International Day of Yoga in solidarity with Palestine — to refuse the dehumanizing narrative pushed by the Zionist state and western media, to grieve the over 55,000 lives torn from this world, to do our part to bring attention to the voices of Palestinians, and to prepare ourselves for the work needed to halt the senseless murder and impending famine in Gaza. 

This Sunday, June 22nd atmosphere yoga collective invites you to bring your grief, your rage, and your joyful resistance to our Slow Flow & Meditation class at 10am ET/9am CST. This is an accessible, online yoga class with all proceeds going to the Al Jawad School for displaced children in Gaza.

Know that we bring you this offering while holding and honoring all these complex truths at once:

None of us are free until we are all free.

I am not free,
you are not free,
until our
poor,
trans,
disabled,
Palestinian
sister
can live a safe, honest, and dignified life
anywhere in this world.

With hope & sincerity,