This is Our Moment

Jane Fonda said recently
“This is our documentary moment,”
referring to brave, inspiring people
we have admired throughout history,
watched in documentaries:
Harriet Tubman and others
who led their sisters and brothers out of slavery;
the freedom riders who left their dormitories
to register Black people to vote in murderous Klan territory;
the Vietnamese
who stood up to and defeated the U.S. imperial military;
the millions in towns big and small who poured into the streets
when George Floyd said “I can’t breathe;”
the woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty
to say ‘If immigrants aren’t free none of us are free.’
This is our moment.
In “Casablanca,” when suave, cynical Rick
sends the woman he loves away
to join a man who could lead the fight against the Nazis;
in “Andor” when Mon Mothma stands up in the Senate
and rallies people across the galaxy to fight the empire’s tyranny─
this is such a moment.
When Mario Savio told the people of this country:
‘There’s a time when the operation of the machinery becomes so odious,
makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, not even passively.
and you’ve got to put your bodies
upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus
and you’ve got to make it stop.’
This is such a moment.
Now is the time to get up
off the sidelines, take responsibility
to drive out, rout, end, stop
the noxious fascist regime
terrorizing all our dreams
and to fight for a world safe for humans and all living beings.
This is our moment
to be that great wave of brave freedom fighters
the whole world is watching,
needing us to be.

This article was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.