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


  • Black Agenda Radio October 28, 2022
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Black Agenda Radio October 28, 2022
    28 Oct 2022
    The white warlords of Haiti and their role in destabilizing their country Part 2, the white nationalist American Renaissance Conference will take place in Tennessee, and Dr. Gerald Horne discusses…
  • Haiti's White Warlords, Part 2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Haiti's White Warlords, Part 2
    28 Oct 2022
    Jafrikayiti, also known as Jean Saint-Vil, is an Ottawa-based author, radio host and social justice activist who publishes in English, Kreyòl and French on his blog Jafikayiti.com. He recently wrote…
  • White Nationalists Will Convene at American Renaissance Conference
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    White Nationalists Will Convene at American Renaissance Conference
    28 Oct 2022
    Daryle Lamont Jenkins is Executive Director of the One People’s Project, which seeks to combat right wing groups and individuals by exposing their threat to the world. He joins us from New Brunswick…
  • International Realignments and the Absence of Progressive Voices in the West
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    International Realignments and the Absence of Progressive Voices in the West
    28 Oct 2022
    Dr. Gerald Horne was a guest on Sputnik's The Critical Hour, with Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon. He discussed the realignment of African nations away from the US and former colonizers and towards…
  • DOCUMENT: Prologue: The Global Fragility Act, April 2022
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: Prologue: The Global Fragility Act, April 2022
    26 Oct 2022
    The US is ushering a new foreign policy doctrine through “The Global Fragility Act.” We need to not only understand these new forms of imperial practice, but to also see the cunning use of language…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us