$campaigns & $elections

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

13 Apr 2016

by BAR's poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

This week the poet briefly contextualizes the candidates and campaigns of the capitalist parties running for the White House in 2016.

$campaigns & $elections

by BAR's poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

“Promises, promises, promises” morphing into big lies—

January snowing “appointments” of Wall Street guys

Bloody war criminals wedded in one Plutocratic Party

Warring their way to banks, laughing loud and hearty—

Playing a most reliable con game of bait and switch;

Sorting out which warlord faithfully serves the rich…

Their nonstop, smokescreen $elections and $campaigns

Red, white and blue Kool-Aid—for bathing of brains

With blather, drowning out the resonant radical voices

With Thug-in-a-Rug-Golda-Plated Iron Lady “choices:”

Mike and Ike, good cop, bad cop foils from the jump—

Bogeymen like Bush, McCain, Romney, and Trump!

Absent independent politics—November sows danger:

Reaping crimson “hope and change,” like Drone Ranger…

Pentagon pimps propagandizing through the Apollo

Proving again, where cash flows, “leaders” will follow—

But the 99% need not wait every four years to mobilize:

Strikes, boycotts, rallies, marches that build—organize,

Raise consciousness, raise money, canvass, phone bank

For salt of the earth, the masses, grassroots—the rank!

Raymond Nat Turner is Artistic Director of the JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge, and a regular contributor to Dissident Voice, aaduna, and Struggle Magazine. Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia McKinney, radical sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan and a Steering Committee member of the New York Chapter of the National Writers Union

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