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

Save the Children..from maturity
BAR Poet-in-Resident Raymond Nat Turner
25 Sep 2019
🖨️ Print Article
Save the Children..from maturity
Save the Children..from maturity

Why do I cry when I
see sixteen year-olds
Fearless and wise beyond
their years, wielding swords
of science—slaying share- 
holders’ senators and clean-coal 
congressmen on Capitalist Hill?

Why do I cry when I
see sixteen year-olds
Fearless and wise beyond
their years, teaching lobotomized
Lilliputians climate justice
ain’t neurosurgery or rocket science?

Why do I cry when I
see sixteen year-olds
Fearless and wise beyond
their years, speaking truth
to People—99%—real Power
in D.C., L.A., New York, 
Paris, San Francisco, London—
163 countries and counting?

Why do I cry when I
see sixteen year-olds
Fearless and wise beyond
their years, teaching old fools 
in four year-long sandboxes
how infantile “supporting”
charlatans huffing and puffing 
Hot air is?

Why do I cry when I
see sixteen year-olds
Fearless and wise beyond
their years, steer themselves clear
of Foundation Father seduction,
Speak Truth To Power careerists and
Drone Ranger-Slick Willy war criminals?

Maybe it’s because my Mom put me 
on a picket line at nine; dropped me
off in Compton at eleven with a ream
of flyers and instructions to go
Door-to-door; meet her in a parking
lot when I finished?
Maybe it’s because sixteen year-olds are
realizing it takes hundreds, thousands—
millions of street heat degrees raising 99%
Consciousness 
to 
cool 
our
planet
1 
degree

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

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

Climate Crisis

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


Related Stories

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
A Climate “Movement” Homonym: (Or, How the Big Apple’s Annual Environmental Gathering Surfaces an Imperative Inquiry, Climate Week or Climate Weak?)
16 September 2026
The climate movement has been captured by a professional managerial class that prefers charity galas and virtue signaling to building
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
White Supremacy and Climate Change: A Sinister Symbiosis
19 August 2026
The climate movement will never be effective as long as it refuses to confront white supremacy within its own organizations and as a
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Marco Rubio Represents a Clear and Present Threat to Global Climate Liberation…So Why is the U.S. Climate “Movement” Ignoring Him?
22 July 2026
The climate crisis is first and foremost a crisis caused by the U.S.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Documents of Disaster and Conferences of Calamity: Rhetorical Questions, Questions of Rhetoric and the Transition  from Fossil Fuels
29 April 2026
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels produced a People's Declaration.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
A Final Solution to The Human Surplus Problem (Or, How the End of EPA’s Endangerment Finding Also Ends the Farce of Trump “Populism”)
18 February 2026
Trump's EPA denies that greenhouse gases endanger public health.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
The EPA’s Zero Sum Game Surfaces a Dialectical Paradox That Should Be Celebrated, Not Decried
04 February 2026
The debate over the EPA's new math misses the point.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Theme From the Bottom: Post COP 30 Reflections and the Case for a Global Bottom/Up Collective Intervention of Oppressed and Colonized People
26 November 2025
The path to climate liberation requires a radical break from failed leadership and a serious commitment to class analysis.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright , ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
COPing Out In Brazil: How The United Nations Reduces its Legitimacy More Than Global Emissions
19 November 2025
Despite being held in Brazil, a nation with the largest Black population outside of the African continent, COP30 has continued a thirty-year pa
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Mother Earth Is Angry!
01 October 2025
Mother Earth's angry! She’s shaking herHead and sistar-gurling her hands on herHips … She’s saying, “Enough dinosaur-
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
The Paris Climate Agreement is the Global Climate “Movement’s” Two State Solution
01 October 2025
The Paris Climate Agreement is akin to a two-state solution for a planet on the brink, a falsehood giving the ecocide perpetrators cover for th

More Stories


  • Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?
    20 Apr 2022
    The Biden administration and corporate media cover up the existence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine. They are disappeared from the official narrative in order to get public buy-in for…
  • MANIFESTO: Africa in the Post-War World, San Francisco, April 1945
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: Africa in the Post-War World, San Francisco, April 1945
    20 Apr 2022
    When a new international order came into being with the organization of the United Nations in 1945, African people proposed their own visions for the post war world.
  • The Battle Against COVID-19 in Shanghai: A Human Rights Disaster?
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Battle Against COVID-19 in Shanghai: A Human Rights Disaster?
    20 Apr 2022
    China's "zero covid" strategy prevented the large number of deaths seen in the United States. But the challenges of stopping the Omicron variant in Shanghai, a city of 25 million people,…
  • BAR Book Forum: Interview with Matthieu Chapman
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Interview with Matthieu Chapman
    20 Apr 2022
    This week’s featured scholar is Matthieu Chapman. Dr. Chapman is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz.  His essay is “‘Away, You Ethiop!’: A…
  • Through the fire of fighting Amazon Workers…
    BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
    Through the fire of fighting Amazon Workers…
    20 Apr 2022
    Through the fire of fighting Amazon Workers…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us