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


  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    10 Feb 2021
    This week you discussed the multilayer crisis facing American people.
  • BAR Book Forum: Anthony Reed’s “Soundworks”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Anthony Reed’s “Soundworks”
    10 Feb 2021
    This week’s author views black aesthetics as a practice of freedom that imagines and conjures alternative social arrangements.
  • BAR Book Forum: Moya Bailey’s “Misogynoir Transformed”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Moya Bailey’s “Misogynoir Transformed”
    10 Feb 2021
    The author maintains it is a myth that digital activism is less important than the organizing being done on the ground.
  • Black Lives Matter Inland Empire Announces Break WIth BLM Global Network
    Former Inland Empire BLM
    Black Lives Matter Inland Empire Announces Break WIth BLM Global Network
    10 Feb 2021
    Black Lives Matter Inland Empire, in an open letter, last week announced its departure from the cash-heavy Black Lives Global Network.
  • Slave-built Infrastructure and Reparations
    Joshua F.J. Inwood and Anna Livia Brand
    Slave-built Infrastructure and Reparations
    10 Feb 2021
    US cities from Atlanta to New York City still use buildings, roads, ports and rail lines built by enslaved people.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us