Life as Activism: June Jordan's Writings from the Progressive

by June Jordan, Angela Davis (Foreword), Stacy Russo (Editor)

This volume is a complete collection of June Jordan's columns for The Progressive, published between 1989 and 2001. Jordan (1936-2002) was a poet and UC Berkeley professor who is celebrated as a great human rights activist and social critic. Through her work, she taught a concept of "life as activism," based on inclusiveness, consistency, honesty, and identification with the oppressed. Far from being a purely idealistic and unsustainable approach to life, Jordan demonstrated that "life as activism" can be a way of engaging with the world that is accessible to all people who are committed to social justice. The writings collected here can be read as a road map to such a life of activism. These columns provide a critical study of important issues from the end of the twentieth century, as well as a clear illustration of the intersections of many forms of injustice and oppression, celebrating a movement away from single-issue politics to a far-reaching activism.

Genres: Poetry, Politics, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Activism, Feminism

264 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2014

About the author

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet and activist.

Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.

She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

June Jordan was a visionary. This book is a collection of essays she wrote for THE PROGRESSIVE between 1989 and 2001, and yet many of these essays read as if they could have been written today.

This is just one of the many passages that resonated with me.

I love how fiercely political the message is:

"Freedom is indivisible or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few. 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."

We're talking truly world-changing stuff.

[Mandy E · Rating 5 out of 5]

June Jordan's essays are as powerful as her poetry. The same outrage and sorrow that impassioned her verse electrified her responses to political and cultural events during the 90's. Her honesty and candor in naming injustice and asking demanding and difficult questions is paralleled only by her seemingly boundless optimism.
Notes:
"I do not believe that we can restore and expand the freedoms that our lives require unless and until we embrace the justice of our rage." (19, "Where is the Rage?" The Progressive, Oct 1989)
"As you descend deeper and deeper into media hysteria about alleged or impending 'violations of the canon' and 'rape of the foundations of Western civilization,' the smell of brain rot and unmitigated white supremacist ideology becomes unmistakable." (76, "Toward a Manifest New Destiny", The Progressive, Feb 1992)
("I am Seeking an Attitude", The Progressive, May 1993)
"—hesitation and restraint make tenderness and generosity and altruistic interaction possible and even likely./ Hesitation and restraint quiver quietly alive someplace opposite to violence and domination. And I wonder about that apparently unequal equation./ Is that the problem worldwide?/ Is the female of the species some kind of noble/virtuous set-up for her male counterpart?" (145, "We Are All Refugees", The Progresive, Jul 1994)
"And maybe the unity of resistance to hatred that will stop that hatred seems improbable. […] But, meanwhile, I am moving on an irrepressible wish that all of us will: all of us will build that circle of our common safety that all of us deserve./ I'm saying, 'Are you hunting for Jews? You're looking for me!'" (220, "The Hunters and the Hunted", Oct 1999)

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant articles about issues that are still with us.