Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Black Lives Matter…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
10 Feb 2021
🖨️ Print Article
Black Lives Matter…
Black Lives Matter... / Photo: Photo: Emmett Till

B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you listening to loud music;
shoveling snow; Or own a phone or car…
B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you breaking up a fight; or your
brake light’s broken…

B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you a Chicago child unschooled
in Mississippi apartheid; Unless you a
Man not laughing at un-funny stuff and
looking up from mud into steely blue-
grey eyes; or resisting rapists coming
for your momma, sister, daughter, wife…

B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you smoking a cigarette or making
A turn; Unless you a child scoring sugary
Snacks in the Sunshine State; Unless you
unhoused and have healthy reactions to
homelessness and its insanity…any city…

B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you a doctor describing decent care
to a Mengele medicine man…from your ICU
bed…
B-B-B-Black Lives M-M-M-Matter…
Unless you caught trying to breathe…
between swastika of knee-
o-teen and long white arm of the law…

© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved

BAR’s poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at https://www.youtube.com/user/zigilow

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com 

white supremacy

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
White Power
17 September 2025
The power structure in the U.S. can be boiled down to a system of might, and white, making right.
Jon Jeter
How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Exposes Free Speech as a Tool for American Exceptionalism
17 September 2025
The assassination of a far-right demagogue raises the question: when does 'free speech' become a tool for inciting violence?
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: The King Alfred Plan, Gil Scott-Heron, 1972
10 September 2025
“...white paranoia is here to stay/The white boy's scheming night and day/What you think about the King Alfred Plan?”
Hurricane Katrina man on car
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Remember Katrina
27 August 2025
Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
27 August 2025
"Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The Bad Hombre Defense?
23 July 2025
What? You mean the client list vanished?      Disappeared? Disappeared from the AG’s desk like dropping egg prices?
Jon Jeter
As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
18 June 2025
Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing white
Alina Selyukh
Skulls Once Subject to Racist Study in Germany are Laid to Rest in New Orleans
04 June 2025
Looted African skulls come home after a century in German labs, exposing colonialism's history of dehumanizing "race science." 
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Southern Panther Malik Rahim
14 May 2025
In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling ra
Terri Frick
Black People, Palestine, and the Maintenance of Empire
14 May 2025
Black support for Palestine underscores the fight against empire, revealing how Israel’s violence in Gaza serves U.S.

More Stories


  • asdf
    Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Katrina Victims: Relocated or Forced into Exile?
    27 Aug 2025
    Black Agenda Report's late Executive Editor, Glen Ford, gave this interview a decade after Hurricane Katrina to explore how the narrative of "starting over" is being used to whitewash the forced…
  • Hurricane Katrina man on car
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Why We Remember Katrina
    27 Aug 2025
    Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims. The United States was exposed as a failed state controlled by the cruelties of racialized capitalism.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: This is Criminal, Malik Rahim, New Orleans, September 1st, 2005
    27 Aug 2025
    “It’s not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.”
  • Jon Jeter
    From Jim Crow to Katrina to Gentrification, Tracing the Rise and Fall of New Orleans Working Class
    27 Aug 2025
    A forgotten history of cross-racial labor solidarity in 1890s New Orleans offered a glimpse of a potential future. Its deliberate destruction set the stage for the city's modern transformation into a…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Synergy of the Sacrificed: Katrina and the Praxis of Imperial Domination
    27 Aug 2025
    Twenty years after Katrina, the disaster stands not as an anomaly but as a blueprint. Its aftermath reveals a template for imperial domination, where "natural" disasters become pretexts for…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us