”We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” I love that phrase. I don’t know who first said it, but I’ve heard it said by former President Barack Obama, and I’ve read them in one of my favorite poems by poet June Jordan in her, Poem for South African Women, in Commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who, on August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against the “dompass” or pass laws that prevented movement of Africans in South Africa, the capital of apartheid. The poem was presented at The United Nations, on August 9, 1978. Or perhaps, it’s the memory of the group Sweet Honey in the Rock, singing those words soulfully in their song, We are the Ones.
The first half of 2020 has come and gone. And, the world over has changed. I don’t know about you but I’m sitting on pins and needles waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop on 2020’s second act.
As we start this second act, we begin it in the celebration of freedom. Yet, this freedom is coming at a price for all of us. Us, We the People. And I don’t know about you, but I know we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We, who are the Mothers, Fathers, Teachers, Leaders, Activists, Pacifist, Liberals, Republicans, Progressives. We who live in the Urban core, Appalachia, Rural, Mountains, Coastal, or Suburbia. We, who are Black, White, Brown, Red, Yellow. We are the people, and we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
But, waiting to do what? Our children and grandchildren are waiting for us to stop being afraid of each other. They are waiting for us to believe that the human experience is one that is shared by every man, woman and child. They are waiting for us to stop destroying each other and the planet. They are waiting for us to admit that our laws have been derived on inequality. They are waiting for us to make the world a better place.
They are waiting on us to stop judging one another on skin color, socio-economic status, education, gender, religion, size, hair color, eye color, language, sexual orientation. They are waiting. And we are the ones they are waiting for.
As tense as our communities are, we are standing on the precipice of change. To move our communities forward it will take voices of change, voices of anger, voices of reconciliation. No great change has ever come without great disruption.
I’m a disruptor, and I’m ready to leave the world better than I found it. I’m ready because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the people.
And, “That’s A Brilliant Glimpse of Insight.”
Photo credit: Jeffery Erhunse
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