This post is part of the Breathing is Brilliant reprise of the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus for Black History Month 2019.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” came from June Jordan’s “Poem for South African Women.” She wrote that poem to honor a tradition of effective, inspiring direct action through which South African women took to the streets to demand justice.
This phrase, which has been used by politicians (most notably Barack Obama) and other authors (including Alice Walker) over and over again offers an activating theory of time and impact. If “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” then the time is now. This phrase has been a rallying cry for movements and generations of oppressed people committed to changing history.
But today, I want to think about the pronouns in “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” the “we.” The double we, including us in both the categories of the waiting and the waiting for, the wanting and the wanted, the captive and the liberator suggests that we are not who we thought we were, we are more than we thought we were. And more than that that our wanting, what we perceived as a lack, was actually rich with the insight of how the world must change. I thought about this when I read Aishah Simmons’ forthcoming anthology Love With Accountability in which Black survivors of child sexual abuse offer leadership towards the transformative love our communities deserve. (June Jordan survived physical abuse as a child and slept with a knife under her pillow to defend herself by the way.) The various Black survivors in the anthology share not only the depth of the harm they experienced when their families were not accountable for the abuse they suffered, but they also share a wealth of insight about exactly how the world must change if we are to live in a society where silence and submission are replaced by accountability and action in all areas of life, including politics, education and environmental justice.
Because as June Jordan also said, “Love is lifeforce.” (You can read the whole speech in Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.) And if “love is lifeforce” then, Jordan continues “we must make love powerful” because every system of oppression, every act of environmental degradation, every act of interpersonal violence depends on the suppression of love in order to continue. If we fully acted in alignment with our love, we would not allow child sexual abuse to continue, we would not allow one more war, we would not poison our own water. And yet we do. But what if we are not who we thought we were. What if “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
What if the exact same people (we) who are afraid of almost every necessary action, what if the exact same people (we) who learned early on that our voices did not matter, what if the exact same people (we) who are riven with heartbreak and cancer and economic desperation and the horror of watching our people killed in front of us were also—not despite all of those things, but indeed because of all those things—expertly familiar with the consequences of the containment and belittling of love (oh and forget hallmark). What if because of all that expertise in what happens when fear takes the place of love, we are abundantly qualified to design and demand a loving world? We are. And June is with us.
June Jordan, a survivor of child abuse and multiple sexual assaults as an adult, forever the smallest in her classes at school, the only Black girl at summer camp, the protector of a nervous laugh throughout her life, the bad typist who often could not pay the phone bill, the visionary educator who loved and sometimes also feared her students, the Black feminist who considered plastic surgery, the revolutionary who got so angry with her friends sometimes and who came in swinging to defend sisters she wasn’t even sure liked her, the small woman who went to Nicaragua when Reagan was threatening to bomb the place with an empty stomach and fogged up glasses, the divorced mother who said “poems are housework,” the Barnard dropout who said “wrong is not my name” is with us. I say, the architect who couldn’t pay her rent on time while sketching “a skyrise for harlem,” the sought after journalist who was blacklisted for her support of Palestine, the professor dying of cancer whose medical leave was denied, the prophet who died too young and who is yet still with us. June Jordan is we. Supremely qualified to design and demand a loving world today. We. (Or as our Haitian siblings in revolt would also say Wi! Yes.) We. Exactly who we have been waiting for.
What does what you have been wanting, what you have been waiting for, what you have been painfully denied show you about the world you can build? How does it connect you to a collective of revolutionaries?
In honor of June Jordan we reclaim love out of the bounds of its containment by patriarchy heternormativity, a culture of sexual violence and the state. Because we are the ones who have been harmed by a deadening suppression of love, and love is lifeforce. We ready. Chant along with us in this guided meditation inspired by the divine June Jordan.
And of course, this is what we cultivate all the time at Brilliance Remastered if you want to stay connected to Brilliance Remastered and be among the first to hear about our events and online offerings as they emerge, join the email list here.
And here are links if you want to support the Black Feminist Bookmobile Project and the ongoing work of the Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library and Archive.
Loving you with every breath (because breathing is brilliant,)
Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs