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A Year Later: What Therese Okoumou’s Fourth of July Mission Statement Will Always Represent
The Fourth of July is once again upon us, and a year after Therese (not Theresa!) Patricia Okoumou’s momentous quest to stand up for migrant children, that were being ripped away from their hysterical mothers and fathers — the national crisis has grown even more precarious.
The media faithfully depicts the horrific conditions that Brown migrant babies are enduring— under the watchful eye of the GOP, that continues to stroke the ego of a White supremacist dictator.
When Okoumou broke away from the organized protest, staged by activist group, Rise and Resist, and valiantly attempted to scale the top of the Statue of Liberty with the fascinated gaze of an entire nation, there was an immediate sisterhood that linked me with the Congo-born naturalized American citizen.
As I fixated my gaze on her movements, there was a sense of pride and envy that swelled as I contemplated the characteristics that separate the doers from the talkers. As a Black woman living in a country that barely affords her the privileges that her White counterparts are bequeathed, there she was, actively pursuing the fundamental rights of Brown migrants, who were facing the unfair consequences stemming from this administration’s crimes against humanity.
