June Jordan and Solidarity with Palestine: In Grateful Remembrance
and in honor of her sacrifice
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
GENOCIDE TO STOP.
- Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L. by June Jordan
Some days, these words, are my tether to this reality, an affirmation that yes, my eyes are seeing, my ears are hearing, my brain is perceiving that this is the world I am in and the time I am moving through. The horrors have been horrific this entire time.
In addition to seeking out tethers, I have been seeking out answers—how can we organize better to confront this empire and hasten its expiration? How can we organize more effectively?
If I can’t — if I can’t pour sugar in the tank, if I can’t throw my body against the odious machine, if I can’t even throw sand in the gears, if I can’t be a menace to my enemies, if I can’t even be a rock in the shoe of those who wish me harm…what can I do?
Someone tell me what to do with my hands.
It is from this place of urgency and desperation that I turn to June Jordan and seek her wisdom, steadfastness, and love.
It is from this place of I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED / GENOCIDE TO STOP. that I turn to June Jordan and ask, how can I stand in principled solidarity with Palestinians against the exterminatory project of zionism?
From this inquiry, I have not found ‘answers,’ because, frankly, there are no answers to be found. Empires do not fall because someone discovers a new piece of information or presents a perspectival shift—it is not that kind of question. Instead, I found in Jordan’s work (that is available online), a life of steadfast, committed solidarity in the face of immense sacrifice.
After the publication of the poem Apologies to All the People in Lebanon, Jordan could not get published for a decade. Her peers, including Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith, participated in her censorship. In fact, though Jordan is not as widely read as Lorde and Smith today, at the time, they were contemporaries—published and read with comparable audiences.1 I am compelled by the argument that Jordan’s advocacy for Palestine destroyed her career and resulted in an attempt to dispose of her in the memory hole. And, I am compelled by the argument (put forth by Magloire below) that the state of Palestine solidarity organizing within the United States today is, in significant part, due to Jordan. Her indefatigable advocacy and agitation left its mark.2
In my attempt to find an approximation to answers and a road map to principled solidarity, in addition to encouraging more readers to seek out and closely study Jordan’s work, I have compiled a list of departure points. Below are a series of poems and essays by or about Jordan. I hope you take the time to read her words. I hope it moves you to mobilize and organize against the genocide now.
Departure points in a suggestive but not carefully curated order
Jordan’s poetry
Essays on the fallout, repercussions of Jordan’s pro-Palestinian advocacy and agitation
June Jordan’s Legacy of Solidarity and Love Remains Relevant by Sriram Shamasunder
The poem Shamasunder references: It’s Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean
Moving Towards Life: Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism3
A forward to this essay by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly in The Black Agenda Report entitled: The June Jordan-Audre Lorde Dispute, Kamala Harris, and Palestine
A podcast episode discussing Jordan and her anti-imperial politics
Audre Lorde and June Jordan’s Black Feminism and Palestine, with Marina Magloire in Getting to the Root of it with Venus Roots (Magloire being the author of Moving Towards Life linked above)
A brief selection Jordan’s essays
“In the Middle of Fighting for Freedom We Found Ourselves Free”: June Jordan’s 1993 tribute to Audre Lorde, her sister-in-arms from the ’60s student protests and beyond with a forward by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Black Folks and Foreign Policy by June Jordan, published in Essence in June 1983
Eyewitness in Lebanon published in the August 1996 issue of The Progressive.
A final suggestion for potential purchase or library borrowing
Some of Us Did Not Die, a collection by June Jordan
Recommended essays: Life after Lebanon, Report from the Bahamas (this essay I cannot recommend enough), and Problems of Language in a Democratic State
As a parting gift, a Jordan poem that quite literally grasps my hand and pulls me forward towards…
I would like to thank Kennedy for introducing me to June Jordan all those years ago—you have given to me one of the most precious, abiding gifts I have ever received. Thank you.
“By thirty, she had gone to Barnard and left Barnard, married, had a son, divorced, moved into public housing, and lost her mother to suicide. In 1964, she collaborated with R. Buckminster Fuller on a redesign of Harlem—her first major burst onto the scene, it seems. Her first book, Who Look At Me, was a children’s book and was published in 1969. It was slated to be written by Langston Hughes, but she was brought in as his replacement upon his passing. She won a Rome Prize and a Rockefeller Grant in 1970. In 1972, her young adult novel, His Own Where, was a finalist for a National Book Award. Her first collection of poems was edited by Toni Morrison and published by Random House in 1977, that same year Leonard Bernstein set her words to music. Writing about the evening of the performance, the Washington Post reported: ‘she is on the brink of fame, not famous enough to command a lot of attention. She is a minor note to the evening.’ She was forty.
At the time of her death, at sixty-five, in 2002, June Jordan was known as the most widely published African American author to date. She had over two dozen books to her credit. She had taught at Yale and Wisconsin, SUNY and CUNY. She landed ultimately in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, where she founded her Poetry for the People program.”
This essay, A Poet for the People by Somaz Sharif, holds informative biographical information.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you Magloire for this generous gift—to readers, to Jordan, and to Jordan’s legacy.