Midterm…Mo’ Power to the People!
by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know,
You don't know
How glad I am hearing Oakland’s Measure FF won 81%;
60,000 workers will get $12.25 an hour—U.S.’s, highest
Minimum, heading for fifteen; SF’s Prop J’s mirrors FF;
Nebraska, Alaska and Arkansas are also on the case…
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am to hear ‘bout grassroots Richmond
Defeating Chevron’s neo-colonial city council candidates and
Their $3 million mayoral man! “Do people” go door-to-door,
Leather on concrete, bone to wood, collecting peoples’ pennies,
Nickels and quarters? “Do people” believe, like Harry Bridges,
That workers ‘stimulus packages’ reside in their back pockets?
“Do people” meet more than four corners democratically
Building coalitions? Richmond Progressive Alliance People do!
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am to hear from Hawaii ‘bout grassroots Maui’s
Moratorium triumphing ‘gainst Dow Chemical and Mengele
Monsanto, though outspent 87 to 1!
Why Halloween long faces? Was there a two-degree
Climate jump? Have another billion bees disappeared?
Why trembling, hand wringing, frothing at the mouth?
Are sidewalks opening, swallowing us? Are we being
Plunged into decades of darkness, sans Dem majority
On Capitalist Hill? Post-mortems galore, searching for
The dime’s difference in billionaire clubs, two wings of
A vulture, scripted scam-pains, wrestlers’ choreography
Like Theater Security Actors (TSA) taking water away,
Protecting us from terrorists…
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am, not knowing details how Dems took
World Wrestling Entertainment-style ass-whuppins—
Could ‘War of the Week,’ ‘Enemy of the Month’ serials,
A 1ST & 4TH Amendment redacted decade have something
To do with it? Might showering $3 billion annually on an
Apartheid aircraft carrier, slaughtering Palestinians
2,000+ biennially, enter the equation?
Wouldn’t warehousing Black and Brown men as
Commodities sold on the New York Stock Exchange
Become corny as Cosby’s sweaters, Pat Boone’s bucks?
Maybe people went Teddy, singing: “It takes a fool to lose
Twice and start all over again…think we better let him go—
Let him go, ‘cause he looks like another Booker T-KO!”
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know,
You don't know
How glad I am, celebrating tiny triumphs,
Studying small victories, dreaming
Bigger, invoking charms, chants,
Spells, sorcery, black magic, voodoo, science—
Whatever, organizing the People’s Tribunal,
Shoe-Time at the Apollo, trying, shoeing away
Nuremberg Negroz like Unca Jim, Corporate
Black Cash-hounds, Sharlatons, Jesses, takes!
Black masses reigning leather, showering stilettos,
Sneakers, boots, on Negro and lighter-skinned senior
Scoundrels like Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, W, Ashcroft;
Force-feeding Gary Null’s ‘Green Stuff’, Guantanamo-style…
To orange jump-suited Alberto Gonzalez, Holder, Big O
As restless lines wrap three times ‘round the block for
Passes to meet Mumia Abu Jamal, Jamil Al-Amin,
Russell Maroon Shoats, Chip Fitzgerald and other freed
POWs and political prisoners—Black Is Back bursting out
Of Occupy, into Jericho, morphing into 400,000 strong
Climate marchers, metastasizing into Ferguson flavored,
Million Worker marchers Toi-Toiing through Times Square
On their way to Wall Street, proclaiming: This is NOT a test,
We control the docks, streets, trains, runways, radio and TV
Stations, gas, oil, factories, farms, orchards, we control the
Water, the grid— “Hands up, don’t loot!“
Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 All Rights Reserved
A study in The Lancet estimates that unilateral sanctions have caused as much death as wars, with an estimated half a million deaths per year.
Interview with Arnold August, writer, political commentator, and analyst of the North American continent, on the political situation in Canada and its relationship to the US.
The New York Declaration doesn't merely betray Palestine. It weaponizes the language of statehood to formalize the suppression of a people's right to exist without colonial rule.
Gambians from all walks of life – led by the youth-driven GALA movement mobilized across the country on July 23 in an anti-corruption protest as momentum for change grows.
Morocco's colonial project in Western Sahara has persisted not through legitimacy, but through the complicity of other nations and United Nations inaction.
