"In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play"
About this Quote
1967 sits in this quote like a live wire: not just a date, but a hinge moment when a campus could become an engine of Black cultural power. Danny Glover isn’t name-dropping Baraka, Sanchez, Bullins, and Cleaver for prestige; he’s sketching the circuitry of a movement. The phrasing is almost modest to a fault - “invited,” “attracted,” “what emerged” - but the subtext is forceful: institutions don’t simply “host” radical art and politics without consequences. San Francisco State, on the brink of the Third World Liberation Front strike, was a pressure cooker where literature, theater, and organizing weren’t separate lanes. They were the same road.
What makes the quote work is how it demystifies origin stories. Glover doesn’t present activism or artistry as a calling bestowed on a chosen few. He frames it as proximity and participation: a poet comes to campus, a constellation forms, a program gets named, and suddenly the infrastructure exists for people to make work that speaks outward. “Community communications program” sounds bureaucratic, even bland - a strategic camouflage. Under that neutral label is a radical proposition: communication as community self-defense, storytelling as political practice, culture as a shared resource rather than a commodity.
Then the kicker: “I got involved in a little play.” It’s disarmingly small language for what’s actually being described - the birth of an artist inside a movement ecosystem. Glover’s point is that careers don’t begin in isolation; they begin when communities build stages and insist their voices belong on them.
What makes the quote work is how it demystifies origin stories. Glover doesn’t present activism or artistry as a calling bestowed on a chosen few. He frames it as proximity and participation: a poet comes to campus, a constellation forms, a program gets named, and suddenly the infrastructure exists for people to make work that speaks outward. “Community communications program” sounds bureaucratic, even bland - a strategic camouflage. Under that neutral label is a radical proposition: communication as community self-defense, storytelling as political practice, culture as a shared resource rather than a commodity.
Then the kicker: “I got involved in a little play.” It’s disarmingly small language for what’s actually being described - the birth of an artist inside a movement ecosystem. Glover’s point is that careers don’t begin in isolation; they begin when communities build stages and insist their voices belong on them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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