Rodney Moncur

Dear Rodney,

I followed you for years before I ever shook your hand.

Long before titles and chambers, you were the voice that found the people the rest of the country had stopped listening to. Through your platform you advocated for the woman selling at the side of the road, the mother holding a household together on nothing, the worker nobody spoke up for. You called them the women dem, and you said it with love, because you believed they mattered when it was not fashionable to say so.

I watched how you did it. You never waited for permission. You never needed a crowd to agree with you before you stood up. You understood something I have carried with me into my own work: that advocacy is not about being liked, it is about being faithful to the people who are counting on you.

You spent five decades being faithful to them. From Black Village to the Senate, you carried the same conviction into every room, and you never let the rooms change you. That is rarer than people know.

So I want you to know what has become of the name you made famous.

The Women Dem will not be only a rallying cry now. It will be a scholarship for a young woman who cannot see how she will finish her degree. It will be a grant for a mother starting over at forty. It will be capital in the hands of a girl on a Family Island who has the courage but not the chance. The words you used to lift people up will now put real opportunity in their hands.

You poured into this country for a lifetime and asked for very little back. I cannot repay you. But I can continue you. That is the promise I am making, in your name and in your memory.

Rest now, Rodney. The advocacy goes on. The women dem are still rising, and they will know who first stood up for them.