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

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
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
Malcolm X, Black Nationalism and the Cold War
19 February 2025
United States intelligence agencies kept close watch over developments in the African American struggle for freedom, justice, equality and self
JP Sloan
all their deaths were ruled suicide
15 January 2025
for Aiyana, for Tommie, for Jordan

More Stories


  • Jon Jeter
    How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Exposes Free Speech as a Tool for American Exceptionalism
    17 Sep 2025
    The assassination of a far-right demagogue raises the question: when does 'free speech' become a tool for inciting violence? Nations like South Africa and Brazil have decided that some speech is not…
  • Africa Climate Summit
    Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Africa Climate Summit Reflections Part 2: The Youth Are Getting Restless…and That’s a Good Thing
    17 Sep 2025
    “The youth are getting restless. I can't hear you, Let them hear you all the way to Washington, The youth are getting restless, Own creation, The Youth are Getting Restless, And once again a nation,…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    School Shooting Du Jour. War Of The Week
    17 Sep 2025
    "School Shooting Du Jour. War Of The Week" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • R.E. Wilson
    Bolsonaro and Brazil at the Edge
    17 Sep 2025
    Bolsonaro’s conviction is not a victory for democracy but a revelation of its fragility. It exposes a military that remains the armed wing of the ruling class and a fascist project dedicated to…
  • Francis Phillip
    The Imperial Contradiction Behind the 2023 Fuel Subsidy Removal in Nigeria
    17 Sep 2025
    Nigeria’s inability to refine its own oil is a legacy of British and US imperialism designed to maintain dependence. President Tinubu’s removal of the fuel subsidy was not an economic reform but an…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us