Quotes from June Jordan

What is the moral meaning of our own gods?

I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience.

Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.

Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

Let me just say, at once: I am not now nor have I ever been a white man. And, leaving aside the joys of unearned privilege, this leaves me feeling pretty good.

My father was both the person who gave me reason to learn how to fight and the one who taught me the basics of fighting. He would tell me that if it was a big fight, it would probably be uneven, it wouldn't be fair.

Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.

CORE was committed to nonviolence, but I was not.

So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here!

But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.

It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.

My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.