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
  • omnibus

Boots on the ground in Buffalo
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 May 2022
đŸ–šïž Print Article
Boots on the ground in Buffalo

                                                                                      Boots on the ground in Buffalo

I.

He was happy to head East

picking up the birthday boy’s cake at

Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?

White boy? Long gun? Body armor,

Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful

eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel

popped-popped-popped
flashing false

Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot

into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain

tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy

Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—

Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.

False consciousness flooded their homes with

Tears


II.

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and

loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped

Words


High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of

“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”

bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at

Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis

firing
 babbling “Build Back Better-isms
”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed

with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White

supremacy’s a poison!”

Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.

Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous

Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved

Africans—

Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild

Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy

walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow

walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight

man for Teflon Don acts


Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions

in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients

Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,

Northrop Grumman products!

If only the young gunman had driven seven

thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s

Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli


He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft

before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers
Or

have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and

Impunity


Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary

Burials;

Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student

debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever

Generational repair


Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and

Their families
”

© 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 PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Buffalo
white supremacy

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


Related Stories

Hurricane Katrina man on car
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Remember Katrina
27 August 2025
Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
27 August 2025
"Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."
Jon Jeter
As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
18 June 2025
Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing white
Alina Selyukh
Skulls Once Subject to Racist Study in Germany are Laid to Rest in New Orleans
04 June 2025
Looted African skulls come home after a century in German labs, exposing colonialism's history of dehumanizing "race science." 
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Southern Panther Malik Rahim
14 May 2025
In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling ra
Terri Frick
Black People, Palestine, and the Maintenance of Empire
14 May 2025
Black support for Palestine underscores the fight against empire, revealing how Israel’s violence in Gaza serves U.S.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
07 May 2025
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
SPEECH: White Supremacy in U.S. History, Theodore W. Allen April 28, 1973
09 April 2025
“The principal aspect of United States capitalist society is not merely bourgeois domination but
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LECTURE: A Humanist View, Toni Morrison, 1975
26 March 2025
Toni Morrison on art, archives, knowledge, and the long history of white supremacy in the United
Mark P. Fancher
The Folly of So-Called Foundational Black Americans
26 March 2025
So-called Foundational Black Americans may tell themselves they are noble protectors of ancestral legacy, but they are, in fact, little differe

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Fog of Class War
    12 Mar 2025
    A class consciousness among the working masses, one that takes the issue of race seriously, is critical at this moment. Still, the democrats are working to disrupt this effort to organize against the

  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Atiya Husain’s Book, “No God but Man”
    12 Mar 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Atiya Husain. Husain is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College

  • Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team
    Nuestra América and the Black Radical Peace Tradition
    12 Mar 2025
    The Black Radical Tradition is the rich legacy passed down by revolutionaries. It is an important tool today as we struggle to turn the Americas into a Zone of Peace.
  • Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Lawfare in PerĂș: Trial of Rupture
    12 Mar 2025
    The trial of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, the victim of a 2022 lawfare-style coup, has begun. The legal process used against him is a sham covering up the human rights abuses

  • Janvieve Williams Comrie
    Panama’s Outrage Over Deportations: A Reckoning with a Reality Long Ignored
    12 Mar 2025
    Trump administration interference in Panama has brought about a reckoning on migration and human rights throughout the region. These issues can no longer be ignored.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us