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
  • omnibus

Anthem of Banksters & War Profiteers
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
07 Sep 2016
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Why does San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick choose to sit when the Star Spangled Banner is played before football games? Evidently he is one of many who know the real intention and import behind those bombs bursting in air...

Anthem of Banksters & War Profiteers…

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

“I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
—Marine General Smedley Butler at his retirement, 1933

I.

No Iroquois or Seminole National Anthem,

No Hawaiian or Mexican National Anthem,

Before bombers fly over stadiums schools and

social services were sacrificed for on altars of austerity;

No Ohlone or Navajo National Anthem,

No Iroquois or Seminole National Anthem,

No Hawaiian or Mexican National Anthem,

Before rockets red glare/bombs bursting in air

Over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bosnia, Libya,

Panama, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen…and

Others, soon to be announced…

II.

The bleeding baby with blown off arms and stumps for legs

Dies in a ‘surgically struck’ hospital while you drain kegs?

Commander’s quarterback, bloody band wrapping his wrist,

Running old red zone, war-profiteer plays from his kill list?

Are other peoples’ children ‘collateral damage expendable—

Like leftovers lost when your fridge became undependable?

Why’s the fight for ‘our freedom’ usually where there’s oil?

Why’s it where mineral wealth’s buried beneath foreign soil?

How about freedom fighting without tanks, planes and boats—

Freeing: Fitzgerald, Peltier, Gilbert, Bell, Jamal, Shoatz…?

Ain’t ‘Incarceration Nation’ Slave State, by its other name—

Ain’t it the darker side of a barbaric, brain-damaging game?

Black players: interception, sack, fumble, loss from N-word

Inches from lynching by the intoxicated mob, the racist herd—

Of Hitler-loving, hair-trigger thugs, masquerading as fans…

Always seconds away from true team colors of their klan’s!

Raymond Nat Turner Š 2016 All Rights Reserved
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. Find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

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


More Stories


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: A Black Man’s Protest, Lamine Senghor, 1927
    14 May 2025
    “It is a lie that slavery has been abolished. It has only been modernized.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Southern Panther Malik Rahim
    14 May 2025
    In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling racism and fighting for peace and environmental justice.
  • Jon Jeter
    Fleeing Imaginary Persecution at Home, South African ‘Refugees’ May Find the Grass is Not Greener in America
    14 May 2025
    The Trump administration’s decision to fast-track asylum for white South Africans—claiming "persecution"—is a political stunt, ignoring that they remain among the wealthiest globally, still…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    How the GOP is Saving the Fossil Fuel Industry From Trump…With Help From the Democrats
    14 May 2025
    Despite Trump’s tariffs battering the fossil fuel industry, bipartisan policies, including Democrat-backed subsidies, are rescuing Big Oil, locking in climate destruction while working-class…
  • Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team
    The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for Resistance Against the Accelerating Imperialist War on Black/African Peoples in Our Americas
    14 May 2025
    Accelerating crises of imperialism in Haiti, Ecuador, and beyond highlight the urgent need for regional Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist unity and strategy.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us