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

F Train Lynching: Papa Cop’s wink and nod
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
08 Jan 2025
🖨️ Print Article
Jordan Neely

I.

Blessed with beautiful voice, and chops for
Moonwalking moving trains. Trains and
train stations his stages, his concert halls.
Smiles, cheers, applause, crowds fed him.

He was 14 when death stole the show—
danced down his youth, his joy.
He was 14 when his Mother—the one he
Loved most—was murdered.

Plasticity of an un-molded mind: PTSD be-
came his dance partner after testifying
at his Mother’s murderer’s trial. He lived with
Aunts between peaks/valleys. Between dances.

II.

Broadway-Lafayette station. Yellow-taped F Train
Car and platform. Organized crime-scene of cruel
Capitalism—
Its rotten ass revealed again International Workers Day!

And Black Lives Matter again. Like cigarette butts on
Minnesota streets; Staten Island sidewalks; back roads
Of Georgia… 1st day of Mental Health Month: Young,
Gifted Black man’s mental health treated on train floor!

And Papa Cop’s ‘plan’ calls for criminalizing
Poverty.  1,000 Vitamin S-fueled badges—
Purging rolling refuge of the unhoused—
‘Sweeping’ flesh and blood ‘trash’ from trains!

Papa Cop’s ‘plan’ calls for never scenting un-ceded Leni-Lenape
Land with sawdust! Never acting Amish—raising roofs! Never
Accenting city noise with Go-Go hammers/screaming saws/re-
Bar-bending/concrete pouring for the poor!

III.

Pentagon groomed; self-deputized; 2nd Amendment-minded
Man—blu gravitational pull toward policing Black bodies.
Killed in Kabul? Baghdad? Tripoli? With impunity? Boarded
Aircraft before farmworkers, teachers, nurses, nannies, cooks?

Chokehold concert? Long white arm of a vigilante: 30-45 seconds…
Stopping blood flow to brain. Unconscious. Bravo! 6-15 minutes…
Dancer’s lean legs flailed.
Life’s last sparks wrung from his hungry, thirsty, limp Black body.

Now’s the time: flip the script! Dish the dirt! Unearth arrests! Let character
Assassination games begin! Paper of record/Fox-box-foot-soldier-scribblers
Weaponize Papa Cop’s words: “He got what was coming to him!” Presto—
Parasitic, avaricious, ethnic-cleansing rentier class views lynching fondly!

IV.

F Train Executioner not charged as denizens of darker hue. Viral video?
Don’t trust your lying eyes! “There are many, many things we don’t know,”
says Papa Cop,
“Allow the investigation to run its course…”

And People of All Seasons: Arab Spring, George Floyd Summer,
Strike-tober, Occupy respond—
Passing shoe leather legislation on tracks—shutting down
Business as usual … Warming our planet with Street Heat!

© 2023. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

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 and PayPal.

New York City
Jordan Neely
state repression
state violence

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


Related Stories

Johari Diata Osei , Dhoruba bin-Wahad
The Black Panthers Didn't Start in Oakland. The History We Tell Does.
28 October 2026
The Black Panther Party did not begin in Oakland on October 15, 1966, but emerged from earlier organizing in Harlem and Lowndes Count
Ryan Kost
A Judge Said Queens Prosecutors Hid Evidence. A Secret Committee Cleared Them Anyway.
19 August 2026
The mass incarceration system demands thousands of Black bodies behind bars.
Jacqueline Luqman
Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE
28 January 2026
To understand the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement, one must trace its lineage directly to the antebellum slave patro
Imani Nile
Every Winter, the Bronx Burns
22 October 2025
The cause of the explosion at Mitchel Houses in the South Bronx harkens back to the arson-for-profit schemes of the 1970s that caused
Erica Caines
“Crime”, The Trojan Horse For Colonial Control
24 September 2025
The rhetoric of crime prevention has always served to enforce colonial order.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Breaking it Down with Barron: The New York City Mayoral Race, New York City Politics, and a Primer for an Independent Black Revolutionary Polity
30 July 2025
Charles Barron dissects the NYC mayoral race, Mamdani’s struggles with Black voters, and why independent Black radical politics are e
Jon Jeter
Mamdani’s Train is Running But Blacks Wonder if There is Space for Them
02 July 2025
Zohran Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision won NYC’s primary but lost Black voters to scandal-plagued Cuomo by 20 points, exposing the l
Black Alliance For Peace
From George Floyd Back to the Structural Violence of Capitalism
28 May 2025
With the ritualistic murder of George Floyd by the occupation forces referred to as the police that roam the streets and barrios of the Black a
Jon Jeter
The Only Language the White Settler Speaks: Ohio Police Say Grieving Black Father Avenges Son’s Slaying By Killing One of Theirs
07 May 2025
The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Racism and the American University, Addison Gayle, Jr., 1971
16 April 2025
The appraisal of American universities as liberal institutions remains one of the purest examples

More Stories


  • Black Church Complicit in Marking Black Females as Hypersexual
    Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Church Complicit in Marking Black Females as Hypersexual
    27 May 2019
    The Black church has preserved and fostered slavery-based views of Black female sexuality, causing Black women and girls to be labeled as “Jezebels,” said Tamura Lomax, author of&n
  • Regime Change Through Social Media
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Regime Change Through Social Media
    27 May 2019
    The CIA’s Digital Innovations Division is now as strategic a tool of regime change as the old cloak and dagger methods of subversion, according to Doug Valentine, author of&nb
  • NAACP Worked with CIA to Subvert African Liberation
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    NAACP Worked with CIA to Subvert African Liberation
    27 May 2019
    During the 1950s, the NAACP conspired with the CIA to lure South African Black liberationists into the US orbit, said Dr.
  • ballot access 2020
    Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    The Battle For Ballot Access is a Century Old. It's Time to Break it Open
    24 May 2019
    In 1916 a socialist ran for president of the United States.
  • Malcolm, Russiagate and the FBI
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    Malcolm, Russiagate and the FBI
    23 May 2019
    NBC is hawking a wild tale about Black Identity Extremists, scheming Russians, and military training camps in Africa. 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us