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

$campaigns & $elections
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
13 Apr 2016
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR's poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

This week the poet briefly contextualizes the candidates and campaigns of the capitalist parties running for the White House in 2016.

$campaigns & $elections

by BAR's poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

“Promises, promises, promises” morphing into big lies—

January snowing “appointments” of Wall Street guys

Bloody war criminals wedded in one Plutocratic Party

Warring their way to banks, laughing loud and hearty—

Playing a most reliable con game of bait and switch;

Sorting out which warlord faithfully serves the rich…

Their nonstop, smokescreen $elections and $campaigns

Red, white and blue Kool-Aid—for bathing of brains

With blather, drowning out the resonant radical voices

With Thug-in-a-Rug-Golda-Plated Iron Lady “choices:”

Mike and Ike, good cop, bad cop foils from the jump—

Bogeymen like Bush, McCain, Romney, and Trump!

Absent independent politics—November sows danger:

Reaping crimson “hope and change,” like Drone Ranger…

Pentagon pimps propagandizing through the Apollo

Proving again, where cash flows, “leaders” will follow—

But the 99% need not wait every four years to mobilize:

Strikes, boycotts, rallies, marches that build—organize,

Raise consciousness, raise money, canvass, phone bank

For salt of the earth, the masses, grassroots—the rank!

Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved
Raymond Nat Turner is Artistic Director of the JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge, and a regular contributor to Dissident Voice, aaduna, and Struggle Magazine. Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia McKinney, radical sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan and a Steering Committee member of the New York Chapter of the National Writers Union 

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


More Stories


  • "Kamala Auntie’: On the Vulgarity of Bourgeois Identity Politics in 2020
    Julie Kuttappan
    "Kamala Auntie": On the Vulgarity of Bourgeois Identity Politics in 2020
    26 Aug 2020
    Harris’ identity as a woman of color has been propped up to cover for her decades-long loyalty to the ruling class, locking up working-class and poor people and deporting migrants.
  • Open Defecation Zones and the Shaming of Africa 3.0
    Zanga Chimombo
    Open Defecation Zones and the Shaming of Africa 3.0
    26 Aug 2020
     â€śVoluntourists” in Africa are actually jihadists for the West who defecate all over the continent in every way that defecation is possible.
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of August 24, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of August 24, 2020
    25 Aug 2020
    Creating Ownership, Equity and Income for College Athletes
  •  Getting Out the Word: #PrisonsKill
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Getting Out the Word: #PrisonsKill
    25 Aug 2020
    The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, IWOC, “is committed to the militant organizing of prisoners that takes its leadership and focus from those on the inside,” said Joergen Ostens
  • To Ignore Political Prisoners is Hypocrisy
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    To Ignore Political Prisoners is Hypocrisy
    25 Aug 2020
    “Any movement that seeks to bring radical changes to society that does not incorporate at the top of the list freedom for our freedom fighter that have gone before, is hypocritical,” said J
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us