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

Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo? and Move African-American History Month to Black August?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
09 Feb 2022
Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo? and Move African-American History Month to Black August?
Illustration by Michael Kennedy

                                                                                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.

Black August
Black History Month
NFL
Kaepernick Protest

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


Related Stories

Safiya Bukhari
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: On the Question of Political Prisoners, Safiya Bukhari,1995
07 August 2024
To commemorate Black August, read Safiya Bukhari's essay on political
Counter-insurgency and Black Studies: An Interview with Tea Troutman
Tea Troutman , Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Counter-insurgency and Black Studies: An Interview with Tea Troutman
30 August 2023
LETTER: For George, The Seventh of August Movement, 1971
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LETTER: For George, The Seventh of August Movement, 1971
16 August 2023
A letter commemorating George Jackson speaks to the origins of Black August.
Black August for the Pendleton 2
Too Black
Black August for the Pendleton 2
16 August 2023
Black August is an important month of political education, but it should not solely be about the past.
Nehanda Abiodun and the Legacy of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex
Abayomi Azikiwe
Nehanda Abiodun and the Legacy of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex
31 August 2022
The late Nehanda Abiodun was an African American revolutionary who exemplified the movement to end national oppression and the criminalization
ESSAY: Racial Genocide: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, William L. Patterson, 1969
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Racial Genocide: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, William L. Patterson, 1969
24 August 2022
For Black August, read William L. Patterson on racial genocide, the law, and the Martinsville Seven.
ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
17 August 2022
To commemorate Black A
Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
Charles Brooks
Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
10 August 2022
Black August is the commemoration of actions carried out by revolutionaries ranging from Nat Turner to George Jackson.
Ruchell Magee: US Prisoner, Political Thinker, Rebel, and Still Fighting for Release After 67 Years
Natalia Marques
Ruchell Magee: US Prisoner, Political Thinker, Rebel, and Still Fighting for Release After 67 Years
10 August 2022
Ruchell Magee has been incarcerated for 67 years and is the longest serving political prisoner in the world.
Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979
Black Agenda Review
Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979
04 August 2021
DOCUMENTS: Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Tell Congress, No War on Iran!
    18 Jun 2025
    If Trump asks congress for approval to wage a war on Iran, he will probably get it.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Iran And Beyond: Total War Is Still On The Horizon, Glen Ford, 2007
    18 Jun 2025
    “So they go forward with the old plan, the only one they've got. Attack Iran.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Somaliland, US Ally in the New Cold War
    18 Jun 2025
    Somaliland aspires to be an “independent” US military enclave in the Horn of Africa.
  • Jon Jeter
    As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
    18 Jun 2025
    Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing whites turn to violence against their own people.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Only Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East are zionism, U.S./Western Imperialism and Israel’s Nukes
    18 Jun 2025
    The Middle East’s only real weapons of mass destruction are Zionism, U.S. imperialism, and Israel’s nuclear arsenal—a toxic trifecta fueling endless war.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us