#happy juneteenth

Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, the film centers on a group of incarcerated men involved in the creation of theatrical stage shows through the program. It stars professional actors Colman Domingo, Sean San José and Paul Raci, alongside many real-life formerly incarcerated men who were themselves alumni of the program during their incarceration, including Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin and Jon-Adrian "JJ" Velazquez.

Many of us are taught that slavery came to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but for enslaved people in Texas, freedom didn’t come until June 19, 1865.

I've been thinking of how LaVonte looks at HJ and how that look has changed the more HJ feels like himself. "stop shimmying" "don't make eye contact with me". HJ's body language towards LaVonte taunts and invites him to join him in releasing the inhibitions, to feel and move with that feeling, to be free in their mind and bodies. But I think LaVonte can't quite or doesn't quite want to get there, because that freedom is scary.

One of the facets of socioeconomic oppression is the policing of embodiment and feeling. There are consequences to that freedom.

Growing up as a Black child and being a Black man, being a Black vampire in and despite the institution of the Camarilla, LaVonte has likely experienced or witnessed the consequences of that freedom. The consequences of not following the rules. The consequences of not having your shit in a way amicable to the white supremacist, colonial, and capitalist cisheteropatriachy. Those cops listened to him because he was a Black business owner in 2025; unlikely they would have in 1960, 1970, or 1980. His life has literally been threatened multiple times by white Camarilla elders.

I started feeling that freedom recently and it truly is free. But it can also be scary. To look at how you have been conditioned, pressured, and forced to be as a Black person and choose to not comply, to resist, and be in your body, mind, and spirit, is a hard thing.

The easier thing is to aspire to acquire the power that has been wielded against you. And the way to do that is being orderly as order has been defined by those powers. To be a Black capitalist. So LaVonte did that, does that. He sucks while being sucked as it feels him in ways that obscure the emptiness he doesn't want to feel. As he said looking at his stark white room, it makes him feel whole.