Politics & Power Quote by Barbara Jordan

Invigorated is doing the sneaky work here: Barbara Jordan frames government not as a machine that occasionally breaks, but as a living body that can be energized or allowed to go slack. That choice pushes against the default American cynicism that treats politics as something done to us by distant professionals. Jordan flips the script. Government, in her telling, is only as vigorous as the citizens who show up to animate it.

The line also stages a deliberate redistribution of responsibility. “Each of us” sounds warm, even flattering, until you notice its edge: no opting out, no blaming “Washington” as an abstract villain. Participation isn’t a hobby or a badge of virtue; it’s the condition for legitimate power. The subtext is civic consent as a daily practice, not a one-day ballot ritual.

Jordan’s context sharpens the stakes. As a Black woman who rose through Texas politics into national prominence, and as a constitutional voice during the Watergate era, she understood how fragile democratic norms look from the margins and how quickly institutions corrode when people decide the system isn’t theirs. “Shaping the future of this nation” is aspirational, but it’s also corrective: the future gets shaped either way, by organized interests or by an engaged public. Jordan is arguing for agency as a counterweight to capture.

It works because it refuses despair without resorting to cheerleading. It’s an invitation that doubles as a warning: democracy doesn’t die only from attack; it withers from nonparticipation.