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

Managers
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
01 Mar 2023
🖨️ Print Article
Managers
Mayors Eric Adams of New York, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, and Sylvester Turner of Houston. (NY Times photographers An Rong Xu, Erin Schaff, Akilah Townsend, Michael Starghill Jr.)

                                                                                                        Managers

 

Pomp and circumstance! Praise Dancing

precarity!

Knighting ‘em ‘enlightened,’ ‘progressive!’

Crowning ‘em ‘reformers!’

Or, tagging ‘em transparent Bassackwards

Tribesmen like Strong-arm Williams.

Like Thom-ass Clarence. Like Raytheon’s

Raven. Like woke Drone Ranger—Or

Calling ‘em/her/they/them…Big Mama or

Tiny Tim…

Color ‘em music stand black, mocha

expresso, high yellow, or coco brown…

Tag ‘em BIPOC, Hip Hop, Homegrown,

Transgender, Disabled, with two PhDs!

Pronouns We The People! Names like:

Martin Lou Harriet Douglass X III!

Still the ship of state stays its course…

Can’t turn on a dime—can’t reverse itself!

They’ll check hip boxes—

Coronating them President, Police Chief,

Mayor, White Supreme Court justice,

Capitalist Hill careerist, Governor, Warden…

but be ‘bout the business of business. Remote

controlled, battery-operated, omnidirectional—

Intersectional instruments of corporate class rule.

State apparatus—still coming at us!

Supervising sweeps of howling belly, cupped hand

Encampments. Sweeping ‘em under rugs of the rich.

Sweeping crumpled signs/crossed red lines up into

Gun towers/grey bars concertina wired to Wall Street;

Managing misery in capital’s tilted table, thumb on scale,

loaded dice casino; Where even the Race Card’s

marked…



© 2023. 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.

Black Face in High Place

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


Related Stories

Musings from the Margins #2: From Atlanta and Haiti, to Niger, the Western War Against Africans and Collective Humanity Intensifies
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Musings from the Margins #2: From Atlanta and Haiti, to Niger, the Western War Against Africans and Collective Humanity Intensifies
09 August 2023
The war against Africans intensifies, the puppets and stooges do as they are ordered, while others are satisfied with empty gestures.
The Super Bowl and the Trouble with First Black Symbolism
Gus Griffin
The Super Bowl and the Trouble with First Black Symbolism
08 February 2023
Whether Super Bowl quarterbacks, or presidents, or police chiefs, unquestioned admiration of the "first Black" should come to an end.
Laboring Beyond Black Representation
Too Black
Laboring Beyond Black Representation
06 April 2022
The allure of Black representation in high places can be very dangerous.
Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power
03 November 2021
Black politicians may be openly conservative or pretend leftists but their constituents rarely get what they need.

More Stories


  • China Congo
    Dee Knight
    Disappointing “rush to judgment” on China’s Role in the Congo
    14 Feb 2024
    Dee Knight’s comments on a review by Ann Garrison in Black Agenda Report, of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
  • Austin Cole
    Roberto Sirvent , Austin Cole
    Black Liberation and Anti-Imperialism: An Interview with Austin Cole
    14 Feb 2024
    Book Forum Editor, Roberto Sirvent, interviews Austin Cole about his organizing work and political writing.
  • GDF and US troops in Guyana for Exercise Tradewinds
    Tamanisha John
    Exercise Tradewinds: 40 years of U.S. Counterinsurgency in the Caribbean
    14 Feb 2024
    Exercise Tradewinds has historically been a show of military might and a threat to other nations in the Caribbean and Latin America that the West would exert force if they dared to stray from…
  • Rally against sanctions
    Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Peoples to Peoples Encounters: Venezuela’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America In Dialogue with Local Organizations and Social Movements in New York
    14 Feb 2024
    Venezuela's Vide Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Ron, recently met with representatives from various organizations and social movements to discuss the latest U.S. effort to destabilize the…
  • Haitian person holding their fist in the air at a protest
    MOLEGHAF
    MOLEGHAF: Public Statement on the Country's Situation
    14 Feb 2024
    MOLEGHAF released a statement calling for support of the Haitian masses mobilizing for popular sovereignty and vehemently rejects the continued attempts by the United States and the West to force a…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us