Health and well-being highlight Juneteenth celebrations in twin cities

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — As Juneteenth Celebrations With last-minute preparations completed on Saturday, a relatively new type of movement was already underway in Golden Valley.

For the second year, and with twice as many people, people celebrating June 16 ran. Some, only half a mile, others, 5 km. Either way, it was a step forward in many ways.

“The mission was just to get people to come,” said Deanna Perkins, who helped the Loppet Foundation organize the race. “It’s about bringing the community together to celebrate Juneteenth, celebrate freedom, celebrate community and togetherness and be active together.”

It’s fitting, Perkins says, that Saturday’s events began with an emphasis on being active. Before her first race, she and other organizers honored Beverly Propes, a public health nurse whose ongoing work to keep Black Minnesotans healthy helped
form a generation.

“To me, it’s like giving back to the community by helping someone in the community while they’re still alive here,” Perkins said. “And maybe inspire others to take control.”

Propes recalled Minneapolis’ first Juneteenth celebration in 2007, which had already established its goals to improve health and well-being.

“We had a huge sanitation tent,” Propes said. “In that tent, all the health care providers trying to reach this community had tables and shared what they could do to make sure the people in this community were healthy.”

At the Saturday, June 16 ‘We are the Noise’ event, doctors at the University of Minnesota worked to keep that tradition alive.

“Trying to do outreach at events like this is great because it’s a way to let people come to know us,” said Dr. Aarabhi Rajagopal, a medical fellow at the U of M Children’s Hospital. that people who come from backgrounds of “Color see that there are people like them who are within medicine, that those goals are achievable.”

“We need health and wellness just to be well,” Perkins said. “Just to be well, face life, move forward, what we talk about Juneteenth is about celebrating freedom. How can you celebrate freedom without being healthy?”