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. June Jordan More Quotes by June Jordan More Quotes From June Jordan In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways. June Jordan motherhood names children There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage. June Jordan communication media men But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966. June Jordan mothers-day inspiring friendship My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant. June Jordan tyrants hero father I am the history of the rejection of who I am June Jordan rejection who-i-am Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways. June Jordan motherhood children thinking To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. June Jordan differences forever children ... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other. June Jordan determination self blood and if i if i ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate i o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. (from i must become a menace to my enemies) June Jordan hatred tree reality 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 June Jordan taught fighting father I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest. June Jordan honest able thinking That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes. June Jordan political fighting attitude I am working never to be late again. June Jordan late Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day. June Jordan rainy-day new-york order 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! June Jordan color different views I believe that love is the single, true prosperity of any moment. June Jordan prosperity love-is believe That a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty. June Jordan hurt littles children In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience. June Jordan issues america thinking South Africa used to seem so far away. Then it came home to me. It began to signify the meaning of white hatred here. That was what the sheets and the suits and the ties covered up, not very well. That was what the cowardly guys calling me names from their speeding truck wanted to happen to me, to all of me: to my people. That was what would happen to me if I walked around the corner into the wrong neighborhood. That was Birmingham. That was Brooklyn. That was Reagan. That was the end of reason. South Africa was how I came to understand that I am not against war; I am against losing the war. June Jordan names home war We survive our love because we go on loving. June Jordan our-love goes-on love-is
