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


  • For Biden Administration, Black Lives Don’t Matter in Haiti!—A BAP Statement on Haiti
    Black Alliance For Peace
    For Biden Administration, Black Lives Don’t Matter in Haiti!—A BAP Statement on Haiti
    17 Feb 2021
    The new US administration has already shown its support for paramilitary terror and political suppression in Haiti.
  • Black Liberation in Context: Political Prisoner Speaks on Torture at 2005 Human Rights Conference
    Sundiata Acoli
    Black Liberation in Context: Political Prisoner Speaks on Torture at 2005 Human Rights Conference
    17 Feb 2021
    Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army political/prisoner of war Sundiata Acoli told human rights activists “torture is nothing new” in U.S.
  • Medical Racism Has Shaped U.S. Policies for Centuries
    Deirdre Cooper Owens
    Medical Racism Has Shaped U.S. Policies for Centuries
    17 Feb 2021
    A Black medical truth-teller traces the link between a 1793 yellow fever epidemic and today’s coronavirus racial disparities.
  • DNA and Our Twenty-First-Century Ancestors
    Duana Fullwiley
    DNA and Our Twenty-First-Century Ancestors
    17 Feb 2021
    Home DNA ancestry kits include no ancestors, instead comparing customers to other present-day people based on assumptions about race and ethnicity. 
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of February 15, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of February 15, 2021
    15 Feb 2021
    Neoliberals Seek to Establish Their Own Brand of Fascism
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us