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The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.

June Jordan

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June Jordan
Age: 65 †
Born: 1936
Born: July 9
Died: 2002
Died: June 14
Essayist
Lgbtiq+ Rights Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Harlem
New York
June Millicent Jordan
United
Revolutionary
Social
Enormous
Retrograde
Supreme
Grievances
Become
Court
Recourse
States
Ultimate
Grievance
Even
Economic
Reliable
Justice
Distress
Law
Progressive

More quotes by June Jordan

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Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.
June Jordan
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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
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Reproductive choice is not some trendy item to toss or keep around the house. If you cannot get an education or a job, if you cannot choose what will or will not happen with your own body, then what freedom do you have?
June Jordan
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The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think
June Jordan
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But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.
June Jordan
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In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage none of these is normal.
June Jordan
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As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth - whatever the truth may be - that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.
June Jordan
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We need everybody and all that we are. We need to know and make known the complete, constantly unfolding, complicated heritage that is our black experience. We should absolutely resist the superstar, one at a time mentality that threatens the varied and resilient, flexible wealth of our Black future.
June Jordan
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The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.
June Jordan
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I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.
June Jordan
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Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.
June Jordan
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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
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... 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
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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
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Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.
June Jordan
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Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.
June Jordan
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There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.
June Jordan
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Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?
June Jordan
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What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?
June Jordan
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I am the history of the rejection of who I am
June Jordan