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

short school struggle poem
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
02 Mar 2022
🖨️ Print Article
short school struggle poem

                                                                                 short school struggle poem…

                                                        “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice.
                                                                            Then he made school boards.”
                                                                                       —Mark Twain

Ignoring hot tears in tones of cracking voices
Ignoring Town Black and Brown children
parents— Ignoring ravenous bodies of heroic hunger-
striking
Teachers…
Real estate-powered, battery-operated, school board
members
Voted in wee hours to close several precious schools:
capitalism’s eating children/schools/hunger strikers…

Bought and bossed board members gifted Town
Children class struggle college educations—gifted them
mass
matriculation in George Floyd Summer School for an
Arab Spring Semester—promising to last a lifetime…

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;
BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.
You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-town-criers-big-tooth-fund
PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

San Francisco
Public Schools

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    For an ICU VA Nurse
    28 Jan 2026
    "For an ICU VA Nurse" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Austin Cole
    Data Center Boom, Corporate Extraction, and the Obfuscation of the Land Question in the U.S.
    28 Jan 2026
    The grassroots resistance against data centers is about more than zoning and community benefit agreements. It is the latest front in America’s war against the people over land, sovereignty, and who…
  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE
    28 Jan 2026
    To understand the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement, one must trace its lineage directly to the antebellum slave patrols — a system founded on racial terror and complete state control.
  • Aby L. Sène
    Patagonia Forest Fires Reveal Imperialist Theft of Protected Lands
    28 Jan 2026
    The arson attacks that engulfed the protected forests of he Andean-Patagonia region serve as a reminder that Western conservation models, which dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands, are…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Real, And It Obfuscates the Requisite Question of Self-Determination in the Heart of U.S. Empire
    28 Jan 2026
    When political energy is channeled into opposing an individual, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he represents.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us