Remembering/praisesong for vicki white

[nattyreb]

Peace, beautiful Sista, well done ...


Remembering Vicki White
------------

Vickie was, in the words of a friend, "a firebrand, a fierce champion
for justice and a very caring person."

Comrade Vickie will be missed by all engaged in the battle for peace,
justice, freedom and equality. As the chairwoman of the Central NJ
branch of the People's Organization for Progress and of POP's Katrina
workteam, Vickie made the right-to-return and the battle to rebuild
New Orleans a material issue to folks in NJ.

Vickie brought high school student from Jersey down to New Orleans
after Katrina, and as an educator as well as an activist, Vickie made
each and every fight for survival both comprehensive & comprehendible.

As POP built NJ's largest urban-based Peace & Justice Coalition,
Vickie took the lead there too!

Those who knew and loved her were made more whole by her activism. Her
legacy of struggle will only be fulfilled if we continue the battle
for justice, rather than mourn. In the words of legendary IWW labor
troubadour and organizer, Joe Hill, "Don't mourn, organize!"

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via: the truly incomparable Bro. Zayid Muhammad

for the late vicki white, a great black woman and a great comrade, i offer this...

oriki* 4 vicki white

a baaadd sister
one of the baddest i have ever known…
a pure heart
a brave heart
a daddys girl
a great comrade
a sister so good she must be the mold from which
the contemporary good sister was kut
a gentle giant
who knew not how to say no
enuf…
a doer
not a talker…
a humble heroine
uncomfortable receiving love and praise
but deserving every single buttered drop
she got and a whole lot more…
incredibly patient
amazingly tolerant
an x’ceptional listener
a modest okra-eyed bearer of vision and the possible…
totally committed
totally committed to peace justice and our liberation…
the essence of the organizer as vanguard
a black woman centuries wise beyond her years
a beautiful natural black woman
comfortable in her own beautiful
kolanut sweet brown black skin…
martinesque in her grace
a sterling credit to her footfancy but beleaguered race…
a smiling volcano
yall lucky she aint ever blow up on ya
a stronnnnng black woman…
a reparations rocker
a revolutionary road dog of the highest order
rolled into a Katrina-krushed new orleans no mans land
with nothing but some seeds of rebirth
some courage
and some kids who wanted to do something real…
a baaadd black woman!…
cd walk in the secret creases of the whirlwind
as if they were her own secrets…
a child of Yemanya
the solution to the problem
the answer to the question
the affirmation to the nastiest negations
of our oppression…
a seedsower in a dense desert of desolation and despair…
a pure heart
a smiling volcano
a stronnnng black woman
in a long line of nile valley long strong black women…
a black woman who dared
a most supreme doer
o how we marveled at how u just got things done!...
giving the all of yr life
to replenish the meaning in ours
sunflower!
sunflower!
sunflower!
sunflower!
we are here because u
with yr golden solar radiant commitment
showed so many of us
how
to
be
sunflower!
sunflower!
by the grace of the god of our weary years
god of our silent tears
how grateful are we to have been blessed
to have had u in yr fullbloomed
brown sugar baaad prime!
and may our deep sea of salty blue tears for u
help root
so many seeds u have sown
with yr selfless enormous life labor of love…

*oriki a nigerian praisepoem form where someone is given a praisename, but that name is called until the end…

*martinesque, as in martin luther king, in that they both were able to reach across the racial divide and extract commitments from the other side…

Yemanya, pronounced (yem mi yaa) refers to the goddess who in the Ifa tradition a west afrikan spiritual tradition that survived in the west, embodied the nurturing principle…

Sunflower…the praise name for a sister who planted sunflower seeds in toxic torn and ravaged land plots devastated and abandoned in the Katrina hurricane devastation and genocidal govt abandonment…

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‘bro.zayid’