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

 For Brother Bruce
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
03 Jul 2019
🖨️ Print Article
 For Brother Bruce
 For Brother Bruce

Here’s the FOIA requested,
Redacted part of the story they never tell
You. 

Baby Bruce was wandering
the Midwest with Dorothy and Toto—
Before they picked up the Tinman in 
Pittsburgh, the Scarecrow on Staten Island,
the Cowardly Lion in Los Angeles
Baby Bruce had a baby brain, a huge
heart and fully formed courage that
would be schooled and steeled at the 
point of production—
Molding a straight-up soldier on
The Long March; A rank-in-file, 
meet ‘em where they’re at,
shoe leather, serve the people, 
door-to-door knocking, 
troublemaking organizer;
Chitown stubborn kinda fella— 
stubborn as a Georgia mule—
Refusing to slip, on Iceberg Slim
posing as community organizer…

He had huge heart, big brain and 
courage. Barrel of his pen blazing—
welcoming me from the wilderness,
Cali isolation, to fight side by side
Against the masked man— The
Drone Ranger; when icons and 
Legends were losing their minds

and Slutty Professors dangled
on the dick of Deporter-in-Chief!

When Bruce’s 404 popped up on my phone
It was business—but personal—laughing, joking, 
we’d cover the waterfront with lunch bucket language…
I pray The Wizard put a Bruce Dixon Organizer’s App
 on my phone countering some spyware…

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Bruce Dixon

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


Related Stories

The Courage to Write the Truth: Where and When Bruce Dixon Enters History
Dr. Matthew Quest
The Courage to Write the Truth: Where and When Bruce Dixon Enters History
21 August 2019
Bruce entered history as the most distinguished critic of the Black political class during the Age of Obama.

More Stories


  • Gerald Horne
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne Discusses His New Book on Armed Struggle in California in the 1960s and 1970s
    02 Aug 2024
    Dr. Gerald Horne talks to us about his latest book, “Armed Struggle: Panthers and Communists, Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California, Through the Sixties and Seventies.”
  • Abandon Biden campaign poster
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Abandon Biden Campaign Continues
    02 Aug 2024
    Hudhayfah Ahmad joins us to discuss how and whether the Abandon Biden campaign will change in the wake of Biden’s departure from the race and the elevation of Kamala Harris to the role of…
  • Baraka Iversen show
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Kim Iversen
    Observer On The Ground In Venezuela Says US Is Threat To Global Democracy
    31 Jul 2024
    Ajamu Baraka, Chair of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace, and columnist and editor at the Black Agenda Report, is on the ground in Venezuela and joined The Kim Iversen Show…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    How to Protest for Sonya Massey
    31 Jul 2024
    Sonya Massey’s brutal murder at the hands of the police has resulted in anguish and anger but no difference in how state violence is protested. Instead, we see surrender to the crumbs of condolences…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music, Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1976
    31 Jul 2024
    For the late Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Black music was a tool in the struggle for Black liberation, and not what it has mostly become today: a retrograde appendage to neoliberalism and white power.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us