Hope for Us is a Deep Current
For Ken Jenkins, the first Black County Executive of Westchester County
by Phylisha Villanueva
This is legacy
covered by ancestral winds
a generational ebb and flow
continuously rising like rain returning to the sky.
A poet at a podium,
books are banned
history blurred,
and freedom of speech
a light switch
flickers under hands
that try to shut it off.
The babies are watching.
We need someone
that will help us believe,
serve steady with trust
to reflect the sun like the Hudson,
a river that never forgets
the villages and voices
that carried us here.
So we gather like a tide,
pulled by something greater,
because hope for us
is a deep current.
It moves with persistence,
shaped by natural forces.
It is inevitable, a gift,
a force that carves through barriers,
connects past to present.
To move like the Hudson
To hold both storm and stillness.
is to know the weight of ice,
the promise of tides returning.
To hold both resistance and renewal,
to carry what came before,
what could not hold itself,
and still push forward.
Every step forward
a chance to write the truth.
And we do not need just metaphors,
we need movement.
We need voices
to rise beyond the podium,
to shape the world like water,
to break silences
the way the Hudson breaks against the shore.
This is legacy
covered by ancestral winds,
a generational ebb and flow
continuously rising like rain returning to the sky.
Hope for us is a deep current.
Leadership that sounds like care
and feels like courage.