Waller vigil honors Brown death a year ago
Teen killed in Ferguson was among those highlighted in rally against racial injustice
When they were students at Prairie View A&M University, Ahmad Hygh and Jeremyah Payne’s performance ranked among the best in the nation at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational.
Roughly seven years later, Hygh and Payne found themselves performing again to mark Sunday’s first anniversary of the death of Michael Brown — the unarmed 18-yearold killed by police in Ferguson, Mo. The death spurred the national Black Lives Matter movement, a cause championed by the more than 100 who gathered outside the Waller County Jail, where Sandra Bland, 28, died in custody on July 13, three days after she was arrested in a routine traffic stop went awry.
“One stop too many to be arguing my word against his, my compliance vs. defiance, my open palms against the closed fists,” recited Payne, a 31-yearold poet whose artistic name is “The Fluent One,” to a crowd that included Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, activist Deric Muhammad and the Rev. Hannah Bonner of St. John’s United Methodist Church in down-
town.
Leaders of the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit group, said they hope to use this momentum to educate young people on activism. “Right is right, and wrong is wrong. And when wrong happens, we should all stand in together for what’s right, because if we don’t stand in together for what’s right, nothing’s ever going to change,” TOP member Yolanda Modique, 34, said.
Waving money in the air, Muhammad told the crowd that Waller County was and still is financially dependent on Prairie View A&M.
“The colors for Prairie View are purple and gold. Purple represents royalty,” Muhammad said. “Gold represents money.”
Waller County, Muhammad said, does not see the purple when they look at the university — they see only the gold. “So if we take the gold and put it back in our pocket, then we force them to respect us,” Muhammad said.
‘They still speak’
After she told the audience that Bland and Brown still speak, activist Brandi Holmes asked them to shout out other names. Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and “all the unknowns” were some of the names in the air.
“All the unknowns, all the unidentified, all the unrecognized,” said the 32-year-old, who is a member of advocacy group Truth 2 Power. “They still speak. And we speak today as we remember them.”
Shortly later, Holmes asked the crowd who will carry the names of Rice, Freddie Gray and Christian Taylor, among others. With each name called, people, including Rep. Green, volunteered to hold the signs that were being passed out — signs with a sketch of the person, along with their name and birth and death years.
Not forgotten
With their poetry performance over, Payne said his motivation to come to the rally was to “remember and respond.”
“A lot of times, people think just because a protest happens, or they think just because there’s a little bit of social media or trending hashtags, that after that fades out, that everything is forgiven, everything is forgotten,” Payne said. “And that’s not the truth. That’s not the case, and we refuse to let it be that way.”
His poetry partner Hygh said he wants to know what happened to Bland.
“We want people to know that this isn’t a joke,” said 30-year-old Hygh, whose artistic name is Nyne the Poet. “It isn’t something to be small about. It’s a problem where you can’t tell police no, you can’t have an opinion, you can’t be within your rights because having the knowledge of that will get you killed. So we want people to know they’re playing with our lives out here.”