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
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
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
If We Respond to the Genocide in Palestine the Same Way We’re responding to the Climate Crisis, We Should Expect Many More Loss of Lives
23 July 2025
The climate crisis and genocide in Gaza share the same root: capitalism’s willingness to sacrifice the masses.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The fire this time … (as Amiri tolt me)
29 January 2025
“Scratch a lie—find a thief !”
Black Alliance for Peace
Los Angeles Fires: The Santa Ana Blowback of Capitalist Climate Change Neglect
15 January 2025
The fires that have been raging in southern California for days are destroying the cities and homes of tens of thousands of people.

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio June 12, 2026
    12 Jun 2026
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the Delaney Hall immigration jail in New Jersey. Detainees have been on hunger strike in protest of inhumane conditions, and protests and arrests have taken place…
  • Delaney Hall
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Delaney Hall Immigration Jail, U.S. Human Rights Abuses, and the World Cup
    12 Jun 2026
    Delaney Hall is an immigration jail located in Newark, New Jersey. It has been the focal point of protests ever since it reopened last year, with detainee escapes, a hunger strike, and further…
  • World Cup
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for a Boycott of the World Cup
    12 Jun 2026
    The Black Alliance for Peace and other organizations have called for a boycott of the 2026 World Cup being held in the United States. Before any matches were played, the U.S. banned players, fans,…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil
    10 Jun 2026
    Barack Obama bailed out the banks, deported millions, and devastated nations and millions of people through wars of aggression. The $850 million Obama Center is a monument to his role as the "more…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: All the World’s a Ball, Eduardo Galeano, 1998
    10 Jun 2026
    “Professional soccer does everything to [destroy] that energy of happiness, but it survives in spite of all the spites.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us