On this fifth day of Kwanzaa, we celebrate Nia, which means purpose, and also surges in popularity as a name every time Nia Long releases a film. “Imani” is the only other principle that even comes close, according to research from the Love Jones Institute for Boyz in the Hood.
My aunt Kujchagulia Ujima Jenkins disagrees. But I digress.
So yes, Nia is a word you have most likely heard, and the woman who embodied it for 2019 you have most certainly heard of. But before we get to that, we give a head nod to those who exemplified Nia 2018, the founders of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and in 2017, Colin Kaepernick.
But for this last year of the decade, the woman who epitomizes true purpose is none other than Maxine Moore Waters, aka “Auntie Maxine,” who almost to the day three years ago said she would fight that Orange Menace “every step of the way.”
No, Auntie Maxine didn’t utter the words “impeach the motherfucker” first, but she is one of millions of black women who has ensured that her colleague Rep. Rashida Tliab’s prescient words have not only come to pass, but wore them as mantra against President Trump’s brazen illegalities, flagrant stupidity, and incessant insults, most notably against black women like herself.
So she didn’t say impeach the MF, but she did say—in our delicious AAVE— “We’ve got to stop his ass!”
“Donald Trump is someone who found his way to the presidency of the United States of America. I still don’t know how. But he’s someone that I’m committed to getting. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a con man. He is someone who will do whatever is necessary to get over at the moment. We’ve got to stop his ass.”
Well, Auntie Maxine had a purpose, she had a moral compass, she had a no-bullshit o’ meter that saw through Trump’s jive-ass like glass. And so, here we are.
Salute to Rep. Waters—to whom we bow down, curtsey, body roll, and circle snap to—your badassery, your strength in speaking truth to power (and not flinching when power spoke back); your not-with-the-shits-today everydayness, your LEEEGENDARY shade and everyday flyness (cuz no one does it better than a black woman when she wants to get fresh) and your clear purpose in ably serving the people of this country.
We will never forget that it was a black woman, like Rosa, like Harriet, like Angela and Ida, who said, “Nah.”