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

We were L.A.—way before they…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
19 Oct 2022
🖨️ Print Article
We were L.A.—way before they…
Protesters at Los Angeles City Council, October 11, 2022 (Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)

“Ignorance allied with power  

is the most ferocious enemy  

justice can have.”  

—James Baldwin

 

Venom-drenched recorded

conversation of rattler city

council criminals—with

Labor serpent fluent in

Forked Tongue—poisoned

the smog—City of Angels

Ruled by devils…

Not our Chicano Moratorium,

MEChA memories of the way

WE were…Could it be that

Class struggle was so simple then?

We were Black and Brown poets

named Myles, Miguel, Alejandro, Raymond…

Named Guzman, Proctor, Mugia, Turner…

burnished by Breakaway sun, singing

songs of solidarity

We were Black and Brown poets

walking vertically, wearing oneness on

our sleeves; standing shoulder to shoulder in

Struggle, filling Compton and L.A. libraries

and stages with four-alarm fire—

WE were L.A.—way before they!

We were Black and Brown poets

carrying compasses: South/East L.A.

We celebrated piping hot pinto beans, juicy

collard greens, hand made tortillas, buttery

cornbread, Jazz, wine, weed and Mariachi

We celebrated boycotted grapes,

brazen black cats, brown berets

and commemorated martyrs—

WE were L.A.—way before they!

We were Black and Brown poets

Sankofa birds flocking, flying forward faster

Resisting Pentagon with the Wind—sausage machine

in South-east Asia gobbling up, grinding down steeled

squads of ghetto/barrio warriors suited for service on

the home-front…

We were ‘Red Car’ babies with complicated

handshakes, Embraces—

way before Black faces in high places

way before Brown faces in high places

white supremacy places at the expense of

Salt of the earth—

WE were L.A.—way before they!

We were Black and Brown poets

Before cesspool plotters/planners backed by

bloody, badged Bandito/Executioner armed wings

arresting

dreams in tarp, tent, cardboard mattress Skid

Rows— Before Huxtabullshitters looking down

Pinocchio

noses at calloused hands, blistered feet of lunch bucket

Brigades…

Before battery-operated, corporate-controlled self

serving ethnic cleansers—treacherous white supremacist

strongmen/women with their worldwide networks—still,

WE were L.A.—way before they!

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



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 and PayPal.

Anti-Black Racism
Los Angeles
Black Brown unity

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


More Stories


  • On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen’s Analysis Still Resonates
    Jeffrey B. Perry
    On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen’s Analysis Still Resonates
    13 Jan 2021
    “White supremacy” wrote Allen, is “both the keystone and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy.”
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 11, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 11, 2021
    11 Jan 2021
    Cops Colluded  with Trump Mob at Capitol
  •  Black Feminism Informed by “Sensuous Knowledge”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Feminism Informed by “Sensuous Knowledge”
    11 Jan 2021
    Because of historical exclusion, “Black women’s social and political desires have always had to be shaped outside of the dogmatic and the normative – inside of the liminal, the fugitive and the ima
  •  Black Anarchists Prefer “Non-Hierarchical” Activism
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Anarchists Prefer “Non-Hierarchical” Activism
    11 Jan 2021
    Ebony “Sima Lee” Outlaw, the activist and Marooncast host based in Baltimore, was inspired by “Black anarchists who very much wanted to end imperialism, but chose to do so through
  •  Cops Colluded with Trump Mob at Capitol
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Cops Colluded with Trump Mob at Capitol
    11 Jan 2021
    “If this had been a Black-led effort, it would have been a massacre,” said Mara Vanderheyden, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice, which is demanding a “fully public” i
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us