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

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


  • Palestine Action
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    UK State Repression on Behalf of Israel
    11 Jul 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss how the UK supports…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    New York Times Joins a White Supremacist In Attacking Zohran Mamdani
    09 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani, the choice of Democratic Party voters in New York City, is anathema to the billionaire class. So much so that the New York Times elevated the work of a white supremacist in an effort…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EDITORIAL: Even During Disaster, The Pittsburgh Courier, 1927
    09 Jul 2025
    “Neither disaster, catastrophe, nor calamity can take precedence … over the color-caste system.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    UN Group of Experts on DRC Report, June 2025
    09 Jul 2025
    The UN Group of Experts on DRC reports the obvious, that Rwandan President Paul Kagame intends to annex DRC’s Kivu Provinces.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Collaborators Like Al Sharpton Can’t Assist Zohran Mamdani with Circumventing Pigmentation Politics and the Black Misleadership Class…But Principled Black Radical Organizing Can
    09 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani’s victory rattled NYC’s political elite. But to win Black voters and defeat the Democrat machine, he must reject Al Sharpton’s co-optation and align with radical Black organizers.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us