Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo?
Gridiron gods please remind
Kansas City fans how Indigenous
People pleaded with them to
drop
the
‘Chop’ and their Faux Native noises
for decades; How they’ve beseeched
the owners to do the right thing in the
Name game, do like movements made
the Commanders do…
Gridiron gods please remind
49ers fans about a front office fielding its
Curse of Kap 7 months every year. Remind ‘em that Physical Xs and Os may
not be enough for them to Overcome it—
wet, cold, Wikileak washing scales from barber
shop, bar, factory floor, campus, stadium seat
Eyes. He kneeled—and revealed Plantation
Nation behind the shield—trigger-happy, bellicose Business partners, black-
washing bloody reputations Laundering dark, dirty warmongering money…
Gridiron gods please remind
Raiders fans of owners abandoning sport’s best
Black/Brown/blue collar/longshore/autoworker
fan base not once, not twice—but three times—when Games go up in flames; And
tragedies pile up like goal line stops; And Firsts are burned beyond recognition: 1st
Mexican-American QB/coach;1st modern-era African American coach; 1st female
executive; 1st cheerleaders looking like Tha Town…
Gridiron gods please remind
NFL fans about the band of billionaires—their Mickey Mouse Rooney Rule/their racist
recycling machine of mediocre men; their extorting struggling cities; and
weaponizing Private profit playthings and playground palaces—just kickoffs away from
honeycombed colonies of unhoused
Sidewalk sleeper cells, tents, tarps, cardboard mattresses…
Remind them that their threatening theme song about “Bombs bursting in
air/rockets’ red glare;” their maudlin Militarist pomp and circumstance/war-
mongering flyovers Fail to
drop
2x4s
rebar
bricks
hammers
nails saws…
Fail to
drop
masks
gowns
gloves
tests…
How many tests/how much housing would one foolish flyover pay for?
Move African-American History Month
to Black August?
Are our customs and celebrations discretionary?
Or, to quote Don Corleone, “Is this necessary?”
Who digs up a Black or Indigenous cemetery?
African-American History teaches: Be wary…
…in a coal mine and spotting a dead canary—
Who sang most musically and insurrectionary…
Sent this modest proposal to the powers that be—
through back channels of the black bourgeoisie—
We demand ’31 days’ of African-American history
’28 days’ just don’t cut it—that ain’t no mystery!
No mini month slashed by marketing of the NFL
with its war-profiteering and bloodthirsty clientele
Post 9/11, football slid into February—
feinting that their slick move was only temporary
They just super bowled into our truncated month—
greedy billionaires chasing a league trillionth!
Ever deeper into our twenty-eight days they’ll go—
Silencing Black truth-tellers Omalu, ‘Kap’ and ‘Flo!’
Once upon a time their season ended in December— back when they’d play a
’63 Sunday in November… We ain’t claimin’ the klan Act or RICO or antitrust
‘Cause—since1619— it’s all-ways us who must adjust— to lynch mobs,
massacres—involuntary wanderlust!
Maybe it’s time we move AAHM to Black August?
We’d bleed into the Labor Day and top off September— kids returning to school with
hot dates all would remember minus NFL cooptation—and lethal cash lust—
Maybe it’s time we move AAHM to Black August?
© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
The U.S. is careening towards economic and military disaster, a moment when the Black radical tradition is missing but badly needed.
“We salute all peoples who are fighting/We honor all those who have died/For the cause of freedom.”
This lecture was delivered on February 3, 2026, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) for the monthly series “Black History and the Project of Black Studies.”
Dan Kovalik and Jeremy Kuzmarov’s Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change was published on September 1, 2025. What can it teach us now that the empire has pulled the trigger on three more nations…
"Everything they touch turns to rubble" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
