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


  • Report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti:  How People Protect Their Communities in the Absence of the State
    Jean Ronald Montas
    Report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti: How People Protect Their Communities in the Absence of the State
    03 May 2023
    Note that all western coverage of Haiti over the past ten months has centered on “gang violence” and not the protests by the people against an illegitimate Prime Minister, unending U.S. imperial…
  • Mayotte Crisis: Putrid Leftover of France’s Imperialist and Colonialist Scrooge?
    Gilbert Mercier
    Mayotte Crisis: Putrid Leftover of France’s Imperialist and Colonialist Scrooge?
    03 May 2023
    Mayotte is a French overseas territory located in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is also near the Comoros Islands, whose citizens travel to Mayotte as undocumented…
  • Slavery and Prior Accumulation in Venezuela: A Conversation with Enrique Rivera
    Cira Pascual Marquina
    Slavery and Prior Accumulation in Venezuela: A Conversation with Enrique Rivera
    03 May 2023
    The brutal exploitation of life in colonial Venezuela was key in the making of capitalism, but the process also met fierce resistance from enslaved peoples.
  • Black Agenda Radio April 28, 2023
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio April 28, 2023
    28 Apr 2023
    In this segment we discuss the shooting of Black teenager Ralph Yarl, how restoring voting rights of those convicted of felonies increases public safety, and Margaret Kimberley's thoughts on Joe…
  • Gerald Horne on U.S. Foreign Policy - Part 2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne on U.S. Foreign Policy - Part 2
    28 Apr 2023
    Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us