Highlights

Excerpt from a Paper done by Vassar College Students on Faith Based Agencies/Churches and Our Library's Womens Group: Women of the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library There is also an important group of women of color from different spiritual traditions that are emerging around a Women's Group in the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library. They have regular meetings, weekly yoga on Monday nights, and weekly African dance and drumming Friday nights. Here are just a few of the women emerging from what could develop into a very potent spiritual and social force in the City of Poughkeepsie.

Jah’Queen Gisel and Sis Kaya Isesajah describe their faith as Rastafarian, Rastafarians that recognize Christ and have Christian values. They are Founders of the Nzingha Women, who model themselves after strongwomen of color in the past and the present.

Ranahnah Afriye is a fashionable person who wears big earrings, wide headbands and long dreadlocks. She also has special gifts for laughter and music, the spiritual tip-offs to her talents for personal and community empowerment.

Sister Zakiyyah is a Muslim community activist with a keen sense of order and tradition. She is also open to collaborative human service efforts.

Juliet Thigpen, a long-time community activist and co-founder of the Family Partnership Center, exudes a confident optimism that springs from a visionary poetic sense of the future of our community.

There was a recent conference in which Ranahnah Afriye, Kaya IsesaJah and JahQueen Gizel were prominent organizers. The intergenerational conference, “Sisters HerStory: a Day of Rejuvenation for Spirit, Mind & Body,” for women and girls of color ages 14 and up, was held at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center.

The conference aimed to “create a space for women of color, ” with sessions ranging from “Ending the Cycle of Violence” and “Natural Birthing and Holistic Health for Mama and Baby” to “Stress Reduction” and “African Drumming.” Yet all of the sessions reach for a social solidarity beyond the specific issues.

Take a look at how they handle racism: Far from blaming white people for racism, they start with assuming the effects of racism in the spirit of every person of color. Then they encourage a healing introspection to identify the personal effects, whether its low self-esteem or anger or whatever. Then they seek out strategic alliances with other people who have been empowered in this way.

Here’s their point: blame, justified or not, won’t do the job. In very practical terms, blame can’t heal the oppressed and never enlightens the oppressor. Their method of introspection and alliance creates genuine personal and political power. Poughkeepsie’s street-level activists’ spirituality has a long tradition that came together in the person of Lateef Islam, a community activist who died a year ago. He was a hopeful, charismatic person that bridged differences of race and social class with singular ease.

Lateef was a driving force behind the founding of the Family Partnership Center and continues to exert a spiritual influence that shows itself in unusual amounts of trust among the many people that were influenced by him. Poughkeepsie is Experiencing Unity As a Result of the Collaborations.

Our Brother Lateef's Funeral: A Concluding Scene Lateef Islam was laid out in artfully crafted Muslim garb as his funeral service in the Beulah Baptist Church, presided over by Rev. Dwight Bolton of the AME Zion Church with Bishop Deborah E. Gause, of the Holy Light Pentecostal Church, preaching about social justice. Several of this report’s themes converge in this important community image fromlast year’s funeral for Lateef Islam. We see interfaith cooperation in this service to celebrate a human service leader who also possessed strong, abiding ties to an activist street-level spirituality.

Vassar College sees the Possibilities: A Recommendation -We suggest a configuration of faith-based energy for human services using the Family Partnership Center as a denominationally neutral focus for services in collaboration with secular professionals and activist, spiritually motivated people.