Hope you will join us to help write the community poem at Sister’s Uptown Bookstore & Cultural Center!

The lesson plan was written by June Jordan and Samiya Bashir, and excerpted from the book June Jordan’s Poetry for the People (Expanded Edition): A Revolutionary Blueprint (Haymarket Books, 2026). It is a modular, accessible, and public-facing project, rooted in June’s lived principles: democracy, shared authorship, service, voice, collective literacy, community. Designed for: classrooms, community groups, libraries, prisons, parks, Zoom rooms, youth programs, organizing spaces, and multigenerational groups. Purpose: Build a shared poem generated by a group’s lived experience, collective imagination, and democratic process. The goal is not to produce a seamless text, but to create a record of many voices speaking in relation to one another.