June Jordan: We are the ones we have been waiting for

Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980

• On Amazon
• On IndieBound

• Author's website
• Audio

I don't think many people realize that a poem by Jamaican-American activist June Jordan shaped the rhetoric of the US presidential election. Specifically, the last line of her "Poem for South African Women":

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Sound familiar? It's been a rallying cry for a number of groups, including a Hopi prayer for the new millenium. Alice Walker took the line as the title of her 2006 collection of essays on activism, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. And all last year, it was in Senator Obama's campaign speeches.

The poem

The poem isn't about party politics, but it's well suited to a political message about emotion, inspiration, and transformation. Here's the full text, from the June Jordan website. Take a read; it's not long. (And then, to segue from sublime to ridiculous, watch the crazy political ad after it :)

Poem for South African Women
June Jordan, 1980

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

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.

I find it very evocative, and it's quite brilliant as an activist poem. It opens with multitudes transforming their land, and closes with still more choosing to join in; and so much of the imagery is about kindling life through imagination or action. The final "We are the ones we have been waiting for" reinforces the sense of a massive community and of a long-developing historic moment. And though it's an activist piece, there's no cynical political commentary; it's heart-on-the-sleeve stuff, inspiring rather than accusing.

(The Poetry Foundation has audio. I don't read the cadence at all as Jordan does, so it's interesting to hear her dramatic reading, and the MP3 includes the Sweet Honey in the Rock a capella song based on the last line.)

The soundbites

So, did June Jordan's poem really shape the rhetoric of the election? I think so.

Consider the response as soon as Obama's speeches started getting serious attention. That closing "We are the ones we’re waiting for" carried an obvious charge, but no one seemed to agree on its meaning. The "we" language, and the blatant call to arms, were so perfectly suited to campaign speech that they could be co-opted for any purpose.

That is, until Oprah dropped the "We" and proclaimed Obama "The One". Overnight, the phrase came to represent hubris and celebrity mania. "The One" and "We are the ones" even became a wacky ad that apparently depicted Obama as the anti-Christ. I'm not up on Armageddonology, so judge for yourself:



(Yes, that's Charlton Heston as Moses!)

Elections being more given to soundbites than poetry, I thought "The One" would alter the meaning of "We are the ones" forever. But in their final election night speeches, both Senator Obama and Senator McCain deliberately moved the rhetoric back from "I" to "we":

Obama: This is your victory. And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

McCain: I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together....

No one on either campaign ever mentioned June Jordan, and there would have been plenty of reconciliatory language even without her poem, but she certainly shaped a major plank for both campaigns. And Jordan herself may be gone, but Alice Walker's still wielding her words. The day after the election, Walker published An Open Letter to Barack Obama. She ended with:

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker