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

We can no longer …
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
08 May 2024
Protest sign saying "resist"

We can no longer…

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” 
—Honoré de Balzac

I’m not a nuanced
Negro
Complicating,
Contextualizing, centering,
Unpacking, drilling down
Inter-sectionally into the
weeds beneath capitalism’s
‘Hood …

Yet, point blank,
full stop— I say:
We can no longer
Afford the rich …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their Wars of the
Week! Their bloodletting beheading babies;
blistering bodies like hotdogs on exploding 
hospital grills! Their turning the world’s streets
into crimson rivers/salt ponds of tears—Their
Fattening vampire shareholders’ profits Q1-Q4!

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their School Shootings du Jour served
in absurd sauces! Like ‘strapping’ overtaxed 
Teachers in paper-starved/pencil-depleted
classrooms! Growling belly symphony classrooms; class-
rooms prostrate beneath obscene profits of High Priests of Violence!

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their champagne-caviar frivolity—Forgetting how many 
Houses they have—while tarps and tents are popping up like
pastel mushroom clouds … And the capitalist cancer of card-
board mattresses metastasizes … Skid Rows across the country …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their $campaigns and $elections infesting
Capitalist Hill with larcenous lobbyists, sleazy
senators, corrupt congress members. And their
stuffing White Supreme Court slots with bought and
Bossed black-robed klansmen—Tali-banning abortion—
Otherwise partnering with War House genocidal geriatrics

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their bomb trains hurtling over rickety tracks encircling
our homes! Their chemical warfare/fiery explosions/flaming
faucets/exploding wells! Their weaponized pollutants poisoning
Our rivers/oceans; pumping plastic/lead into our children’s brains

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their supply-chain fairytales for food price-gouging …
Their class war on poor working-class children of Africa—
Their ruthless, bloody, monkey business extracting coltan and
cobalt sweat beads, powering PCs and EVs of comfortable ones

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their standing armies of strikebreakers; free speech
suppressors; freedom of assembly bashers— 1st and 4th
Amendment redactors … Truncheon-taser-wielding thugs 
Draining city and county coffers …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And must disarm them:
Snatching our
Minds from their bloody hands—
and announcing, "Normal don't
Live here no mo’, Mr. Mutha-Fukkka, 
And Business As Usual took off
running—moment he heard our …
Our footsteps!"

© 2024. 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.

War and Empire
imperialism
Capitalism
Class struggle

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


Related Stories

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The Bad Hombre Defense?
23 July 2025
What? You mean the client list vanished?      Disappeared? Disappeared from the AG’s desk like dropping egg prices?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Don’t point fingers. Don’t ask evil questions.
16 July 2025
This was a one in One Hundred Year Event! One in Five-Hundred Year Event! One in One Thousand Year Event—
Aiyana Porter-Cash
False Promises of Protection Embedded in U.S. Militarism and Carcerality
11 June 2025
"Protection" is a lie—a pretext for state violence, militarism, and control, targeting the marginalized while masking harm as care.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
One Big Beautiful Bank Job!
28 May 2025
Masked. Armed to the teeth. Synchronized
Jocelyn Figueroa
Working Homeless People: Laboring Without a Roof
23 April 2025
For millions, a job is no longer enough to afford housing—yet the myth that homeless people don’t work still dominates public opinion.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
DEI (Drunk, Epicurean, Incompetent) War Criminals (Nod to Allen)
02 April 2025
“But, war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Chasing Chuck Tumor's testicular cancer—or building Resistance to Stage 4 Capitalism?
26 March 2025
Billionaire bought and bossed talk shop. Alcohol, Geritol and Protocol reign shares traded on the floor. Well-off windbags—
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
The Fog of Class War
12 March 2025
A class consciousness among the working masses, one that takes the issue of race seriously, is critical at this moment.
Chuck Squatriglia
Feds Lend Tesla $465 Million to Build Model S
26 February 2025
Elon Musk is Donald Trump's right-hand man and viewed as an evil incarnate, but it was Barack Obama's administration which bailed out Tesl
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The fire this time … (as Amiri tolt me)
29 January 2025
“Scratch a lie—find a thief !”

More Stories


  • Horace Campbell
    The Fraudulent Peace Accord between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda signed in Washington DC, June 2025
    23 Jul 2025
    Campbell interrogates the recent DRC-Rwanda peace accord brokered in the US which he terms fraudulent; and poses the question: can the US and Qatar support peace in Africa amidst the militarization…
  • Caitlin Johnstone
    AOC Is a Genocidal Con Artist
    23 Jul 2025
    She’s actively stopping American politics from moving any further left than the nightmare we see before us.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Trump's Concentration Camps Are Not New to the U.S.
    16 Jul 2025
    Outrage over ICE raids rings hollow while 2 million languish in prisons. America has always had concentration camps. We just reserve our anger for the ones with TV cameras.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EDITORIAL: After the Olympics: Buying off Protest, Harry Edwards, 1969
    16 Jul 2025
    “Racists don’t give up easily, we learned, and the racists in sports are especially dedicated.”
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Don’t point fingers. Don’t ask evil questions.
    16 Jul 2025
    "Don’t point fingers. Don’t ask evil questions." is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us