Stop the War Makers. Hands Around the Lab. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Never Again!
Aug 10, 1:30pm - 3pm, Robert Payne Park, 5800 Patterson Pass Road (at Vasco), Livermore

March for Immigrant Rights
Sep 20, 11am Assemble at Yerba Buena Gardens (Mission St. between 3rd & 4th), San Francisco; 12pm - March up Market St.; 1:30pm - Program & Festival at Civic Center.

Rally and March to Defeat Proposition 54
Sep 25, 12:00noon - Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley

Reportback from Palestine
Sep 27, 6:30pm - Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby Street, Berkeley

End the Occupation! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Sep 28, Noon - Dolores Park, San Francisco - 12pm. Gather at Dolores Park, march to: 2pm - Rally at Civic Center

Forum: Defend Environmntal Justice, Defeat Prop. 54!
Sep 30, 7:00 PM - Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way, Berkeley.

In Celebration of the Free Speech Movement: The Berkeley ACLU Presents Larry Fly
Oct 6, 7:00 PM - Pauley Ballroom West, Berkeley campus

Stop the FTAA and School of the Americas
November 19-23, Miami and Colombus, GA.

Buy Nothing Day
November 28, Everywhere.

The pleasure that was June:
Honoring Poet, Writer, Activist June Jordan
by Shanesha R. F. Brooks

The Memorial Service for June Jordan was held on an exquisitely sunny afternoon on September 15, 2002 in Wheeler Hall Auditorium. It was surreal in its attempt to capture the whole of June, and who she was to the world. Even three hours of song, poem, and praise didn’t, couldn’t do justice to “the pleasure that was June.”

When I first heard about June’s cancer I made it my personal duty to meet her. The Black Scholar had a great book sale in May, and there I bought a superb collection of her poetry entitled Naming our Destiny, which captures Jordan’s spectacular poetry from the beginning of her career up until the time the book was published. In my mind, she was going sign it, but this never happened.

At the memorial service there was an eclectic fusion of presentations, poetry readings, solos, and film clips of June. Some in attendance were actor Danny Glover, who read from “Some of Us Did Not Die” (2002). Poet and writer Alice Walker (via video) described her encounters and experiences with the passionate June. Reflecting on June’s rich and immense vision, poet and activist Adrienne Rich gave us a portrait of their relationship as fellow poets and as friends. Junichi Semitsu, current “Poetry for the People” instructor, rapped Jordan’s “Ode to Eminem” which was featured in Vibe magazine.

Also present were many of June Jordan’s former “Poetry for the People” students, who ended the celebration with a recital of renga, a Japanese poetic form that alternates with stanzas of 5-7-5 syllables (like the haiku) and 7-7 syllabic stanzas. With this poetic form as a frame, the students were able to engage in a dialogue with one another, each attempting to write words in the voice of June.

I was in attendance at the African American Studies/Black Graduation, and after Dr. Charles Henry read a tribute to June, she was pushed out onto the stage in a wheelchair. Immediately, tears swelled up in my eyes. I cried because I had never met her and I was deeply saddened by her worsening condition. I cried more because rich legacy, such beauty, embodied in such a passionate woman, was withering away.

I never had the opportunity to take a class with June Jordan. “Poetry for the People,” a poetry workshop usually offered four to seven p.m. on Wednesdays through the African American Studies Departments, always conflicted with meetings that I had Wednesday evenings. Nevertheless, every time I read her work I am empowered with a sense that poetry can do anything; words on the page become thoughts in the mind, and those become actions, actions, actions.

Her words da

nce

sk—ip

tri

p

s e

m l

i

l a hahaha ugh

and even chide the page, for its lack of upset:

Burgeoning words, spilling over out of her heart and her mind, the work of this Jordan was something divine:

We need, each of us, to begin the awesome difficult work of love: loving ourselves so that we become able to love other people without fear, so that we become powerful enough to enlarge the circle of our trust and our common striving for a safe, sunny afternoon, near to flowering trees and under a very blue sky.

(from Affirmative Acts, 1994)

June Jordan
July 9, 1936 - June 14, 2002

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