The U.S. Em­bassy Port of Spain to­day raised the Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) flag at its Queen’s Park West com­pound, as Em­bassy staff and lead­er­ship con­firmed their com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, and in­clu­sion, for Em­bassy staff, as well as in all of the pro­grams and ac­tiv­i­ties that the Em­bassy ad­min­is­ters. 

A re­lease from the Em­bassy con­firms that the flag will fly over the Em­bassy all day.  

“The choice of June 30 to fly the BLM flag co­in­cides with an Em­bassy in­ter­nal event in which Em­bassy staff en­gaged in a vir­tu­al open fo­rum on the 2020 mur­der of George Floyd, race and racism, and po­lice-mi­nor­i­ty group re­la­tions,” the re­lease ex­plains.  “The staff fo­rum arose from the Biden-Har­ris Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pri­or­i­tiz­ing di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, and in­clu­sion at all lev­els of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment.”

On Jan­u­ary 26 at a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny dur­ing which he signed four ex­ec­u­tive or­ders to sup­port Amer­i­ca’s racial eq­ui­ty goals, U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden had said:

“We need to open the promise of Amer­i­ca to every Amer­i­can.  And that means we need to make the is­sue of racial eq­ui­ty not just an is­sue for any one de­part­ment of gov­ern­ment; it has to be the busi­ness of the whole of gov­ern­ment.”

At to­day’s BLM flag rais­ing at the U.S. Em­bassy, Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore not­ed that the ini­tia­tive is in align­ment with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy on such is­sues.

“We take the man­date from Pres­i­dent Biden and Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris se­ri­ous­ly,” Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore said. 

“Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken has al­so cre­at­ed a Chief Di­ver­si­ty and In­clu­sion Of­fi­cer po­si­tion for the first time in the his­to­ry of the De­part­ment of State.  That of­fi­cer re­ports di­rect­ly to the Sec­re­tary.  We have a long way to go to cor­rect his­toric, sys­temic, and in­sti­tu­tion­al racism and in­jus­tices.  We have cre­at­ed a plat­form with­in the Em­bassy to dis­cuss these is­sues.  And we have the un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment from the Biden-Har­ris Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s most se­nior lead­er­ship that pri­or­i­tiz­ing di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, in­clu­sion, and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is al­so a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­per­a­tive,” he added.

The mur­der of George Floyd on 25th May 2020, was a flash­point with­in a long­stand­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion around po­lice bru­tal­i­ty against Black Amer­i­cans and per­sons of colour.  His mur­der gal­va­nized a glob­al call to end the in­jus­tices of sys­temic racism in the Unit­ed States and around the world. 

Pres­i­dent Biden signed the June­teenth Na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day Act on June 17, 2021.  June­teenth—or June 19—is an an­nu­al hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate the con­tri­bu­tions made by Black Amer­i­cans to the Unit­ed States, their re­silience and per­se­ver­ance de­spite their his­to­ry of en­slave­ment, and the con­tin­ued fight against sys­temic racism.