And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of collective action and self-reliance in creating change.
In this quote, June Jordan articulates a call to action for individuals to come together in solidarity, suggesting that true change depends on the collective efforts of people. By stating that 'we are the ones we have been waiting for,' she reinforces the idea that we should not wait for external forces to bring about change, but rather take initiative ourselves as a united front, even in the face of challenges.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire a community gathering focused on social justice.
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
Anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.
Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow's reality.
I'm trying as hard as I can to keep pushing the boundaries of what a woman is capable of doing. And it turns out there's a lot we can do. There's a lot we can speak about.
I was hooked on aviation, made model airplanes, and never thought I would be able to fly myself. It cost too much. But then World War II came along and changed all that.
I'm 9, 10, and I'm watching the Apollo astronauts go to the moon. We're sitting on the floor of a school, and they have this... huge TV, and I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking 'Me, I would like to do that.' But it didn't dawn on me then that they were American; I was Canadian. They were men; I was a girl. They were test pilots, military folks.
Angels light the way. Angels do not begrudge anyone anything, angels do not tear down, angels do not compete, angels do not constrict their hearts, angels do not fear. That's why they sing and that's how they fly. We, of course, are only angels in disguise.
Terror of the future can be put out to pasture with psychedelic shamanism.
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