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


  • Glen Ford on the End of Affirmative Action
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Glen Ford on the End of Affirmative Action
    07 Jul 2023
    Black Agenda Report co-founder, the late Glen Ford, spoke to the Real News Network after another affirmative action ruling in 2013.
  • New Documents Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    New Documents Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners
    07 Jul 2023
    Orisanmi Burton is an assistant professor at American University’s Department of Anthropology.
  • Building the Peoples' Senate
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Building the Peoples' Senate
    07 Jul 2023
    Shannon Jones is a member of the Spirit of Mandela’s Peoples' Senate Coordinating Committee.
  •  The Supreme Court and Political Corruption
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Supreme Court and Political Corruption
    05 Jul 2023
    The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions.
  • POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001
    05 Jul 2023
     A poem from the late Amiri Baraka questions the myths of U.S. exceptionalism that engulfed the nation after 9/11 attacks, contextualizing them with a history of the West’s centuries-long…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us