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

 For Brother Bruce
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
03 Jul 2019
🖨️ Print Article
 For Brother Bruce
 For Brother Bruce

Here’s the FOIA requested,
Redacted part of the story they never tell
You. 

Baby Bruce was wandering
the Midwest with Dorothy and Toto—
Before they picked up the Tinman in 
Pittsburgh, the Scarecrow on Staten Island,
the Cowardly Lion in Los Angeles
Baby Bruce had a baby brain, a huge
heart and fully formed courage that
would be schooled and steeled at the 
point of production—
Molding a straight-up soldier on
The Long March; A rank-in-file, 
meet ‘em where they’re at,
shoe leather, serve the people, 
door-to-door knocking, 
troublemaking organizer;
Chitown stubborn kinda fella— 
stubborn as a Georgia mule—
Refusing to slip, on Iceberg Slim
posing as community organizer…

He had huge heart, big brain and 
courage. Barrel of his pen blazing—
welcoming me from the wilderness,
Cali isolation, to fight side by side
Against the masked man— The
Drone Ranger; when icons and 
Legends were losing their minds

and Slutty Professors dangled
on the dick of Deporter-in-Chief!

When Bruce’s 404 popped up on my phone
It was business—but personal—laughing, joking, 
we’d cover the waterfront with lunch bucket language…
I pray The Wizard put a Bruce Dixon Organizer’s App
 on my phone countering some spyware…

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Bruce Dixon

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


Related Stories

The Courage to Write the Truth: Where and When Bruce Dixon Enters History
Dr. Matthew Quest
The Courage to Write the Truth: Where and When Bruce Dixon Enters History
21 August 2019
Bruce entered history as the most distinguished critic of the Black political class during the Age of Obama.

More Stories


  • BAR Book Forum: Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar’s “Deadly Biocultures”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar’s “Deadly Biocultures”
    24 Jun 2020
    Market logics, commodification, extraction, and exploitation condition our possibilities for life and expose many to ever-expanding forms of precarity.
  • BAR Book Forum: Lola Olufemi’s “Feminism, Interrupted”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Lola Olufemi’s “Feminism, Interrupted”
    24 Jun 2020
    The political project we are invested in will require long term conviction and must be internationalist in its orientation.
  • Hold Prosecutors Accountable, Too
    Kate Levine and Joanna Schwartz
    Hold Prosecutors Accountable, Too
    24 Jun 2020
    Police violence is tied to other agents in criminal law enforcement, including and especially prosecutors.
  • A Moment or a Movement? The Blowback Will Tell
    Wilmer J. Leon III
    A Moment or a Movement? The Blowback Will Tell
    24 Jun 2020
    You cannot separate the racist police aggression in the streets of the US and the racist US aggression against Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Libya and Syria.
  • Ungentrifying International News Reporting from Brazil to Ecuador and Beyond
    Julian Cola
    Ungentrifying International News Reporting from Brazil to Ecuador and Beyond
    24 Jun 2020
    So-called “racial democracy” has systematically excluded and kept black people at the dirt end of the socioeconomic totem pole in Brazil, as reflected in its media.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us