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

Mayday 2020
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
06 May 2020
🖨️ Print Article
Mayday 2020
Mayday 2020

(For Ferguson, Baltimore, Million Workers March, 
Arab Spring, Standing Rock, Occupy, Jackson Rising, 
Fight for Fifteen, Extinction Rebellion, #Me Too…)

Magnolia scents of class
Struggle fill early morning air.
Rippling heat waves of resistance
rise up, up, up in refreshing spring 
breezes from the Black Belt south
Coronavirus is lighting
Wildfires in eyes of fighters—
130 wildcat strikes in two months!

Sans eloquent arguments;
blockbuster books; clever
conversations appealing to 
sleazy senator so and so—
Young class struggle students are
Mastering more in a month than
in a business as usual decade.
Normal 
Ain’t welcome here anymore… 

They’re refusing to be slaughtered
as sacrificial lambs on gilded
altars of obscene profits!
They’re choosing, instead, to 
Organize
Organize
Organize
Themselves—

By any means necessary…

© 2020. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

BAR’s poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com .

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

poetry

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


Related Stories

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: Poem for Walter Rodney, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, 1981  
11 June 2025
“any where or world where there is love there is the sky and its blue free
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
A few lines for the Poet Ojenke...
21 May 2025
RIP: Rise In Poetics to Ra
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: Reflections after the June 12th March of Disarmament, Sonia Sanchez, 1982
18 December 2024
“I have come to you tonite not just for the stoppage
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Love My Black Job
11 September 2024
Love my Black Job— Black Student Union Job! Hired at L.A. City College As “The Peoples Poet!”
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: Enemy of the Sun, Samih al-Qasim, 1970
29 May 2024
Read against the terrible incineration of Rafah today, this poem of resistance and refusal, by Pa
Image of Refaat Alareer sitting in a crowd of graduates
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: If I Must Die, Refaat Alareer, 2023
13 December 2023
Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, a martyr of zionist state genocidal violence, has left us with a tale of resistance and hope.
Protest for Palestine at the White House
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Trigger Warning
22 November 2023
Trigger Warning Palestine’s the Answer— What was the Question?
Another June 1
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Another June 1
07 June 2023
                                       
BAR Book Forum: Jon Jon Moore’s “The Calling: Poems”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Jon Jon Moore’s “The Calling: Poems”
16 February 2022
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
Our ‘democracy’
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Our ‘democracy’
23 July 2021
Shangri-La—untaxed, socially-distanced champagne- caviar, Cayman Island, yacht crowds who

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Synergy of the Sacrificed: Katrina and the Praxis of Imperial Domination
    27 Aug 2025
    Twenty years after Katrina, the disaster stands not as an anomaly but as a blueprint. Its aftermath reveals a template for imperial domination, where "natural" disasters become pretexts for…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    "Inequality in Kenya: View from Kibera" Documentary Premieres August 28
    27 Aug 2025
    Join political activist and Black Agenda Report’s contributing editor Ajamu Baraka and members of the Communist Party Marxist-Kenya on a trip to Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Ethnic cleansing called Katrina
    27 Aug 2025
    "Ethnic cleansing called Katrina" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Jaribu Hill
    Solidarity, not Charity—End Jim Crow Recovery—Restore All Communities
    27 Aug 2025
    Jaribu Hill, Executive Director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, recounts the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and the efforts to organize on behalf of the people.
  • Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
    27 Aug 2025
    "Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us