We Are The Ones
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
June Jordan wrote this line in 1978 to honor the fifty thousand South African women who marched against the pass laws in 1956, refusing to wait for permission to move freely in their own country. The phrase became one of her most repeated lines, later echoed by organizers and speakers far beyond the poem's original context, because it names a truth people keep needing to hear. It is not a call to keep hoping for rescue from somewhere else. It is a reminder to notice the strength, the skill, the people already in the room, already available, already enough to begin.
Reflection
Jordan wrote this line to remind a movement that the help it needed was already present. What do I already have that I once hoped for?