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

Boots on the ground in Buffalo
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 May 2022
Boots on the ground in Buffalo

                                                                                      Boots on the ground in Buffalo

I.
He was happy to head East
picking up the birthday boy’s cake at
Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?
White boy? Long gun? Body armor,
Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful
eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel
popped-popped-popped…flashing false
Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot
into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain
tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy
Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—
Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.
False consciousness flooded their homes with
Tears…

II.
Mass shooting of the week—
Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—
star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and
loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped
Words…
High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of
“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”
bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at
Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis
firing… babbling “Build Back Better-isms…”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—
Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed
with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White
supremacy’s a poison!”
Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.
Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous
Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved
Africans—
Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild
Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy
walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow
walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight
man for Teflon Don acts…

Mass shooting of the week—
Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—
Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions
in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients
Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,
Northrop Grumman products!
If only the young gunman had driven seven
thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s
Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli…
He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft
before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers…Or
have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and
Impunity…

Mass shooting of the week—
Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—
NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary
Burials;
Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student
debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever
Generational repair…
Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and
Their families…”

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;
BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.
You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Buffalo
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

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
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.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
07 May 2025
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
SPEECH: White Supremacy in U.S. History, Theodore W. Allen April 28, 1973
09 April 2025
“The principal aspect of United States capitalist society is not mere
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LECTURE: A Humanist View, Toni Morrison, 1975
26 March 2025
Toni Morrison on art, archives, knowledge, and the long history of wh
Mark P. Fancher
The Folly of So-Called Foundational Black Americans
26 March 2025
So-called Foundational Black Americans may tell themselves they are noble protectors of ancestral legacy, but they are, in fact, little differe
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Essay: The Caucasian Problem, George S. Schuyler, 1944
12 March 2025
“While we may dismiss the concept of a Negro problem as a valuable dividend
Jon Jeter
From Bernhard Getz to George Zimmerman to Daniel Penny: Using Vigilantes to Police a Racist Social Order
18 December 2024
The state and vigilante lynchings of Black men and boys in the U.S.
Jon Jeter
The White Settlers’ Bizarre Economic Strategy of Terrorizing Black People
11 December 2024
Jordan Neely's killing and the subsequent acquittal of Daniel Penny can be seen as part of the reactionary existential panic felt by whites whe

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 30, 2025
    30 May 2025
    In this week’s segment we talk about jails and prisons in New York City and State and the end of city control of the infamous Rikers Island jail. But first a Washington DC activist analyzes how the…
  • Democratic party where are you
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Afeni on Fighting the Bipartisan Fascist Consensus
    30 May 2025
    Afeni is an activist and lead organizer with Herb and Temple in Washington, DC. She joins us from Oakland to discuss politics in the U.S. and how the people can fight the fascism produced by the…
  • Rikers protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Eric Adams Loses Control of Rikers Island to Federal Receivership
    30 May 2025
    Our guest is Melanie Dominguez, Organizing Director, New York with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. She joins us from New York City to discuss the federal takeover of Rikers Island…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Charles Rangel and the End of Black Politics
    28 May 2025
    The late Charles Rangel served as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than 40 years. But the goals of Black politics and electoral politics are not necessarily the same.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: The Intellectual Origins of Imperialism and Zionism, Edward Said, 1977
    28 May 2025
    “In theory and in practice, then, Zionism is a degraded repetition of European imperialism.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us