Remembering Renee Nicole Good
At a vigil in Norfolk, VA - Good's former professor reads her poem.
[apologies for the multiple updates on this, a mistake kept showing up in the url and social posts and I could not let it stay]
On Friday hundreds of people from around Hampton Roads held a vigil in front of the Norfolk Federal Building where ICE is based in the region. The anger and sadness over yet another person murdered by ICE officers was palpable.
Local leaders and activists spoke of keeping up the fight against the administration’s anti-immigrant raids, explaining what people can do and how to get involved. 3-D printed whistles that screeched at an extremely high decibel were handed out.
Good's Old Dominion University professor, Heather Weddington, told stories her students love of the written word, the time that Good so was excited to go on a small field trip to see a poet and talk to them. Weddington read Good’s award winning poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” to the crowd - which you can see in the video above.
Kimberly Discua Enamorado, the Virginia Beach director of Refugee & Immigrant Solidarity Coalition (RISC) told me: “I have people close and near and dear to my heart deported. And it’s just so anxiety filled and just so horrible to see all of the ICE prevalence and just fear that is being brought upon immigrants in this community who have built the who have been the backbone of our community, especially since Virginia Beach has such a large Hispanic population. It’s just seeing the fear among their eyes. It’s just so horrible.”
Enamorado is 16 years old, any many of the people organizing this were also in high school. RISC is a youth led organization that does direct support, and engagement with immigrant communities. They are a group that I would highly recommend supporting if you’re looking for a place during this past years escalation of attacks on immigrant communities.
I’ll have my coverage of Saturday’s anti-ICE protest in Newport News up tomorrow. Please subscribe and support my work covering local and national news.
