by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Prescient, pertinent and pointed questions to each other, and to our alleged betters about what we have, what we are, what we deserve, and what we settle for, posed by BAR's poet in residence.
Can We Have A Talk With You?
by BAr poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Can little you phone in plays for a big pro sport?
Can bought politicians run without your support?
Can they take over the schools and school board?
Can they make your children pray to their lord?
Can they wash millions of brains in a large box?
Can the get their Goebbels-walk on...on FOX?
Can they keep the masses asleep and uncritical?
Can they make a people, a-historical, apolitical?
Can they keep scaring you shitless in September?
Can they, then—presto—change after November?
Can they pay all Blacks less than whites?
Can they say that voting exercises rights?
Can fools unlearn voting is democracy?
Can cold figures not lie about plutocracy?
Can big money make pols into yes-men?
Can they then move about like chessmen?
Can they also lie like printing machines?
Can they even play Capone with marines?
Can they lie almost every time they speak?
Can they produce nearly a war each week?
Can they, uh,—oops—overtax you in error?
Can they use it fighting their ‘war on terror?’
Can they make trillions, uh, just, disappear?
Can they make killings on their wars and fear?
Can they give you more hope and change?
Can it come straight from the rifle range?
Can they shoot some blacks and belt beers?
Can they do it over again every four years?
Can they deliver change you can believe in?
Can you use more black clothes to grieve in?
Can they lace your rivers and aquifers with lead?
Can they just put six slugs in your child’s head?
Can they keep increasing peoples’ debt exposure?
Can they cause workers even more foreclosure?
Can they poison peoples’ drinking water in Flint?
Can they double— and even quadruple your rent?
Can they coolly ethnic cleanse your neighborhood?
Can they claim your home for the corporate good?
Can they send billions to the apartheid settler state?
Can they tell Motown that it will just have to wait?
Can they keep killing socialized medicine?
Can they keep conning—like Con Edison?
Can they forevermore lie about socialism?
Can the ‘white’ ‘race’ card stay the schism?
Can ‘white’ knaves know wealth Trumps all?
Can the black ones get over the Hil in free-fall?
Can some old fools, dupes, dopes even learn—
Hope and change is back and Feelin’ the Bern?
Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved
In this week’s segment we hear about the origins of Black August with a former political prisoner, and we hear analysis of the U.S. response to the recent military coup in Niger. But first we discuss…
Leah Goodridge joins us from New York City to talk about that city’s loss of its Black population, 200,000 people in the last 20 years.
In August 2020 the late Glen Ford spoke to former political prisoner Jihad Abdulmumit of the Jericho Movement about the origins and importance of Black August.
Wilmer Leon and Margaret discussed the true reasons for antipathy towards Niger, and why other African nations are used as proxies for western interests.
Eritrea is an example of an independent and self-determining African state. Its people are rightly proud of their history.
