More than 200 hundred West Virginians, organized by West Virginia Citizen Action Group (WVCAG), Mountaineers Indivisible Citizen Action (MICA) and other gathered in Morgantown on Saturday, June 14th as part of a “No Kings” day of action to protest the rise of authoritarianism in the United States.
“Our neighbors are suffering, and we’re not going to stand for it,” said WVCAG member Mindy Holcomb to WVNews. “The more people who speak their truth in unison, the harder we are to ignore.”
The event was one of one of dozens across the state – in Martinsburg, Charleston, Lewisburg, Morgantown, Flatwoods and more that WVCAG members attended and helped organize.
People’s Action members and member groups played prominent roles in the No Kings protests, which turned out over five million people across the country, from cities to small towns.
In Charleston, WVCAG helped celebrate Juneteenth, despite a refusal by the state’s Republican governor, Patrick Morissey, to acknowledge the federal holiday, which marks the date, June 19th, 1865, when the last enslaved African Americans in the United States, in Galveston, Texas, received news of their emancipation and the end of the civil war from federal troops.
Despite West Virginia’s separation from Virginia in 1862 in order to join the Union, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Sept. 22, 1862, issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery in southern states on Jan. 1, 1863, African Americans were still enslaved for more than two years in West Virginia until Feb. 3, 1865.
Juneteenth was declared a federal holiday by President Joe Biden in 2021, and Morrisey’s predecessor as West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, issued statements four years in a row declaring Juneteenth a state holiday. This year, Morrisey rolled back the holiday for state workers.
WVCAG members celebrated Juneteenth at the State Capitol on the 19th, as well as across the state throughout the weekend.
