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

Boots on the ground in Buffalo
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 May 2022
🖨️ Print Article
Boots on the ground in Buffalo

                                                                                      Boots on the ground in Buffalo

I.

He was happy to head East

picking up the birthday boy’s cake at

Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?

White boy? Long gun? Body armor,

Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful

eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel

popped-popped-popped…flashing false

Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot

into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain

tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy

Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—

Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.

False consciousness flooded their homes with

Tears…

II.

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and

loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped

Words…

High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of

“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”

bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at

Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis

firing… babbling “Build Back Better-isms…”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed

with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White

supremacy’s a poison!”

Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.

Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous

Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved

Africans—

Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild

Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy

walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow

walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight

man for Teflon Don acts…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions

in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients

Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,

Northrop Grumman products!

If only the young gunman had driven seven

thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s

Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli…

He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft

before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers…Or

have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and

Impunity…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary

Burials;

Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student

debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever

Generational repair…

Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and

Their families…”

Š 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.



Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;

BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Buffalo
white supremacy

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


Related Stories

Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Trayvon and White Madness
21 October 2026
As Black Agenda Report is poised to celebrate its 20th anniversary, we reprint Glen Ford's commentary on the killing of Trayvon Martin and the
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
The r(AI)cial Divide of Big Tech and Data Center Buildout
14 October 2026
Artificial intelligence and hyperscale data center buildout constitute a new front of environmental racism and a project to optimize white supr
Denise Powell
A Southern Reckoning with the Medical Myth of Race as a Diagnostic Tool
30 September 2026
Race is a sociopolitical construct, not a biological truth.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LYRICS: Bicentennial Blues, Gil Scott-Heron, 1976
01 July 2026
“George Washington/Slave-owner general/Ironic that the father of this country/
Jacqueline Luqman
Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE
28 January 2026
To understand the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement, one must trace its lineage directly to the antebellum slave patro
Dr. Gerald Horne , Anthony Ballas
Shadowboxing with Ghosts: Whiteness, Jake Paul, and the Crisis of U.S. Imperialism
21 January 2026
Jake Paul’s ascent in boxing is a cultural symptom of an empire in decline.
Jon Jeter
How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Exposes Free Speech as a Tool for American Exceptionalism
17 September 2025
The assassination of a far-right demagogue raises the question: when does 'free speech' become a tool for inciting violence?
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: The King Alfred Plan, Gil Scott-Heron, 1972
10 September 2025
“...white paranoia is here to stay/The white boy's scheming night and day/What you think about the King Alfred Plan?”
Hurricane Katrina man on car
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Remember Katrina
27 August 2025
Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
27 August 2025
"Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."

More Stories


  •  F.W. deKlerk: Requiem for a Racist Murderer
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    F.W. de Klerk: Requiem for a Racist Murderer
    17 Nov 2021
    F.W. de Klerk was the last apartheid president of South Africa. But remnants of that system remain, and the struggle continues to completely erase the legacy of apartheid criminality.
  • Industrial Nations Value Capitalism Over People  at Global Climate Conference
    Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Industrial Nations Value Capitalism Over People at Global Climate Conference
    17 Nov 2021
    Inaction on the climate crisis is to be expected when capital is valued more than humanity.
  • Nicaraguans vote - Photo credit Roger D. Harris
    Roger D. Harris
    Nicaragua Has a Public Relations Problem, Not a Democracy Problem
    17 Nov 2021
    Nicaragua's recent elections were conducted with transparency and freedom of choice for voters. The only problem is with the United States and its determination to undo the will of Nicarag
  • COP26 Was a Failure But the People's Alternative Can Still Be a Success
    Monthly Review Online
    COP26 Was a Failure But the People's Alternative Can Still Be a Success
    17 Nov 2021
    COP26 ended the way climate summits always do, with promises for change from countries which have every intention of keeping the status quo.
  • Behind the Scenes at COP26: Developing Countries Fume Over U.S. Pressure to Alter Climate Finance Terms
    Rishika Pardikar
    Behind the Scenes at COP26: Developing Countries Fume Over U.S. Pressure to Alter Climate Finance Terms
    17 Nov 2021
    Rich capitalist nations use a variety of means to escape paying compensation to the Global South for climate change damage. The outcome at COP26 was no different in this regard.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us