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

What The Left Left At O’Hare
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
18 Jun 2013
🖨️ Print Article

by Raymond Nat Turner

To fly the friendly skies of the National Security State, one must first be prepared to jettison all leftist baggage.

 

What The Left Left At O’Hare

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

I recall, it was like TSA had groped,

Probed and lightened their load:

“You can’t carry independent politics aboard”

“Militant mass-action is forbidden aboard the aircraft”

“Proletarian Internationalism must be dumped out here”

“Revolutionary attitude toward the state is absolutely forbidden beyond the gate!”

“You are allowed to bring aboard:

2oz see-through plastic bottles of social-chauvinism

2 oz plastic bottles of reformism

2 oz plastic bottles of tokenism

Unlimited humanitarian interventions in see through plastic is allowed”

 

Happy campers boarding in ’08,

Gate 1%, O’Hare, via Ronald

Reagan, “the left” powered

Down principles, turned off

Theoretical devices, kept its

Seatbelts buckled low and tight—

Paid high prices for complimentary

Kool Aid, mini-bottles of beer and

Headphones for feature films like

0 Dark 30 looped eight years on

Their non-stop flight—

Making their descent

Three years left in the

Holding pattern, acting as

Floatation devices under one

Seat aboard… Air Force One…

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2013 All Rights Reserved 

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


More Stories


  • Nicholas Mwangi
    Youth-led anti-corruption movement surges in The Gambia
    06 Aug 2025
    Gambians from all walks of life – led by the youth-driven GALA movement mobilized across the country on July 23 in an anti-corruption protest as momentum for change grows.
  • Isabel Lourenço
    The Only Fair Negotiation Between Morocco and the Polisario: When, Not If, to End the Occupation
    06 Aug 2025
    Morocco's colonial project in Western Sahara has persisted not through legitimacy, but through the complicity of other nations and United Nations inaction.
  • Nicholas Mwangi
    Angola: 22 killed during mass protests against fuel prices
    06 Aug 2025
    Angola, one of Africa’s top oil producers, is in turmoil after protests erupted over a sharp fuel price hike driven by IMF-backed subsidy cuts.
  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio August 1, 2025
    01 Aug 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss football, why it isn’t popular in the US, how it can be, sports as consciousness raising, and the nation of Brazil and its Black population. But first, we have the…
  • Erica Huggins
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins
    01 Aug 2025
    Mary Frances Phillips is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She joins us from Detroit to discuss her biography of Ericka Huggins, "…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us