Humble to her core, Rye speaks of privilege in a way that oozes compassion for the community. While she admits to being as enthralled as the rest of the sports world by the ESPN documentary “The Last Dance,” she also expresses heartfelt concern about members of the community who were led to purchase the Air Jordan 5 only one week after Georgia’s governor lifted the state’s stay-at-home order.
“I think that there are many of us who use online platforms to educate us on history, on culture, on politics and certainly the news,” she explains. “I think that that moment teaches us that our folks aren’t always using these platforms, and some don’t have access to these platforms in the ways that we do. They don’t know what sites to look at for news to hear about how bad things are, [they] may not know what the CDC is or what their health department may be saying … and so I’m trying really hard, from a point of privilege, to not be judgmental, to not be hypercritical, and to understand what mental toll this pandemic has had on people and having to shelter in place.
“Many of us are privileged with shelter, and you just don’t know what people are going through. What I would say … is just love yourself enough and the people who you love to not risk your life or theirs, especially not behind the shoe.”
Being emotionally tied to the community and fighting for the rights of the people is nothing new to Rye. The daughter of an agitator and an activist, she learned early on that knowing the law and speaking her truth into existence was a way to ensure change.
“I was raised in a house where I was allowed to have an opinion as a small child,” she says. “And that doesn’t mean that there was no evolution of my voice. But I think it’s always been pretty consistently for the people. There was no other way to be in the house with Eddie and Andrea. That is just what we did. Being in service to the community was not like, ‘Oh, good for you.’ It was an expectation.”
While Papa Rye never actually practiced law, his only daughter has always insisted that he is “authorized” to do so because of his fierce dedication to the political system and the legal process. Fittingly, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. For all the transitions she’s made from Capitol Hill to her phenomenal work on CNN, recurring appearances on “The Breakfast Club,” her “On 1” podcast and master class, her “#SAYWORD?!” Instagram Live debates and more, Angela Rye the cultural icon, remains a devout servant of and for the community.
She will fight for your rights, our rights, at every turn.
“I’m going to push hard as hell to ensure that you’re not marginalized, that there are dollars being invested into our communities and that people know they have to answer to us,” she declares. “That is over. Those days are over. We’re not giving away anything without real demands, and we will be demanding that people respond to us at every single level. This is a redistricting year, so this is the year that districts for the state legislature and Congress are drawn. I’m going to be pushing so that we have more Black elected officials in every state in this union and more members of Congress who look like us in every state in this union.
“We deserve better. And we won’t get better until we understand how much power we have to reshape and shift how systems work.”
Story by N. Ali Early
Images by Naja Mix
