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


  • Roger D. Harris
    US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test
    20 Aug 2025
    The U.S. State Department's latest human rights report on Venezuela follows a familiar pattern of lying about a nation declared to be an adversary while human rights in the U.S. are violated in a…
  • Frances Madeson
    “Defeatism Has No Place” in Liberation Struggles, Frantz Fanon’s Daughter Says
    20 Aug 2025
    For Black August, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France sets the record straight on her father’s revolutionary legacy.
  • Gary Wilson
    The Alaska summit and the crumbling proxy war in Ukraine
    20 Aug 2025
    Washington's strategy of endless war in Ukraine is collapsing under its own weight. The Alaska summit isn't a victory for diplomacy but a stark admission of its defeat.
  • State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China
    Full text: The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2024
    20 Aug 2025
    A new report from Beijing reveals the hypocrisy of U.S. human rights rhetoric, revealing a nation where gun violence, political corruption, and poverty are not anomalies but features of a broken…
  • Mohammed El-Kurd
    Guilty by Affiliation
    13 Aug 2025
    The Israeli murder of heroic Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif was bookended by accusations that he was part of Hamas. For many of our allies, the instinct is to prove his innocence by proving…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us