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

What The Left Left At O’Hare
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
18 Jun 2013
🖨️ Print Article

by Raymond Nat Turner

To fly the friendly skies of the National Security State, one must first be prepared to jettison all leftist baggage.

 

What The Left Left At O’Hare

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

I recall, it was like TSA had groped,

Probed and lightened their load:

“You can’t carry independent politics aboard”

“Militant mass-action is forbidden aboard the aircraft”

“Proletarian Internationalism must be dumped out here”

“Revolutionary attitude toward the state is absolutely forbidden beyond the gate!”

“You are allowed to bring aboard:

2oz see-through plastic bottles of social-chauvinism

2 oz plastic bottles of reformism

2 oz plastic bottles of tokenism

Unlimited humanitarian interventions in see through plastic is allowed”

 

Happy campers boarding in ’08,

Gate 1%, O’Hare, via Ronald

Reagan, “the left” powered

Down principles, turned off

Theoretical devices, kept its

Seatbelts buckled low and tight—

Paid high prices for complimentary

Kool Aid, mini-bottles of beer and

Headphones for feature films like

0 Dark 30 looped eight years on

Their non-stop flight—

Making their descent

Three years left in the

Holding pattern, acting as

Floatation devices under one

Seat aboard… Air Force One…

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2013 All Rights Reserved 

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


More Stories


  • Sumona Gupta
    Race to the Bottom: Prison Labor Exploitation in the South
    13 May 2026
    Two car companies are being sued for continuing the southern tradition of exploiting incarcerated workers in Alabama and Georgia factories.
  • Reynoldson Mompoint
    Outsourced: Chad as the armed wing of a low-visibility American strategy
    13 May 2026
    The Chadian troops arriving in Haiti are the visible arm of imperialist intervention in which the United States projects force without putting its own boots on the ground.
  • Pavan Kulkarni
    Thousands of Malians demonstrate in support of the government’s fight against terror groups
    13 May 2026
    Two weeks before, the armed forces had fought off the highly coordinated attacks on six cities by about 12,000 jihadist and separatist fighters on April 25.
  • Kenyan government offers Red carpet for colonizers and a bloody nose for Anti-Imperialists
    13 May 2026
    The Ruto regime claims a Pan-African mandate when it sends police to Haiti, but it attacks and arrests Pan-African delegates when they gather in Nairobi.
  • Struggle La Lucha
    Cuba: New U.S. sanctions aim to starve people, justify military aggression
    13 May 2026
    Communiqué issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba — Havana, May 7, 2026
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us