Several hundred people gathered at the Edmonds Waterfront Center Thursday for the 2025 Juneteenth at the Beach – Celebrating Freedom event, co-hosted by the Lift Every Voice Legacy (LEVL), the Waterfront Center and the Edmonds Food Bank.

The event included a community meal and screening of the movie Hidden Figures, plus speakers, music and arts and crafts activities. In addition, donations were collected for the food bank. Juneteenth – also known as Emancipation Day and Freedom Day – is a portmanteau of June 19th and marks the day when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, in 1865 and informed the last enslaved outpost of African Americans in the Confederate South that they were no longer under bondage.

“It’s an honor for the Edmonds Food Bank to be a part of this event this year,” said Executive Director Casey Davis. “This event recognizes freedom, and we need to recognize that freedom is not just a moment in history. It’s a moment that we need to nourish every single day of our lives.” Juneteenth, she added, “is a celebration of something we talk about a lot at the food bank — liberation, resilience and community — by reminding us that the people who face food insecurity in our community you help us know that no one should be left behind. They shouldn’t have been left behind in Galveston, and they shouldn’t be left behind in Edmonds.”

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen noted that 2025 “marks 160 years since the news of the emanicipation proclamation finally reached enslaved people in the deepest part of the confederacy. We’re celebrating the strength and resiliency of Black ancestors who endured slavery and fought for their freedom.” He stressed that Juneteenth this year demands more than a celebration — it demands action. “I think we can look at celebrating the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion — core principals of the United States,” he said.

Seattle actress and storyteller Eva Abram said that “democracy is like a mountain. Mountains look like they will last forever. But they get hit by rain and snow and they get pounded by hail. Those things can slowly wear down the mountain and take little pieces of it away. An earthquake or volcanic eruption can break big chunks of it off, severely weakening that mountain. The same has been happening to our democracy, the founding ideas that provide our freedom.

“When we allow freedoms to be taken away because people are different, be careful,” she added. “Your rights may be next.”

She concluded with a quote from John Quincy Adams, who served as U.S. president from 1825-29: “You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you make good use of it.”

— Photos and reporting by Julia Wiese