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

Boots on the ground in Buffalo
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 May 2022
🖨️ Print Article
Boots on the ground in Buffalo

                                                                                      Boots on the ground in Buffalo

I.

He was happy to head East

picking up the birthday boy’s cake at

Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?

White boy? Long gun? Body armor,

Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful

eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel

popped-popped-popped…flashing false

Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot

into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain

tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy

Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—

Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.

False consciousness flooded their homes with

Tears…

II.

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and

loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped

Words…

High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of

“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”

bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at

Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis

firing… babbling “Build Back Better-isms…”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed

with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White

supremacy’s a poison!”

Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.

Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous

Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved

Africans—

Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild

Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy

walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow

walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight

man for Teflon Don acts…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions

in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients

Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,

Northrop Grumman products!

If only the young gunman had driven seven

thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s

Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli…

He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft

before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers…Or

have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and

Impunity…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary

Burials;

Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student

debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever

Generational repair…

Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and

Their families…”

Š 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.



Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;

BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Buffalo
white supremacy

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


Related Stories

Dr. Gerald Horne , Anthony Ballas
Shadowboxing with Ghosts: Whiteness, Jake Paul, and the Crisis of U.S. Imperialism
21 January 2026
Jake Paul’s ascent in boxing is a cultural symptom of an empire in decline.
Jon Jeter
How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Exposes Free Speech as a Tool for American Exceptionalism
17 September 2025
The assassination of a far-right demagogue raises the question: when does 'free speech' become a tool for inciting violence?
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: The King Alfred Plan, Gil Scott-Heron, 1972
10 September 2025
“...white paranoia is here to stay/The white boy's scheming night and day/What you think about the King Alfred Plan?”
Hurricane Katrina man on car
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Remember Katrina
27 August 2025
Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
27 August 2025
"Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."
Jon Jeter
As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
18 June 2025
Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing white
Alina Selyukh
Skulls Once Subject to Racist Study in Germany are Laid to Rest in New Orleans
04 June 2025
Looted African skulls come home after a century in German labs, exposing colonialism's history of dehumanizing "race science." 
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 ra
Terri Frick
Black People, Palestine, and the Maintenance of Empire
14 May 2025
Black support for Palestine underscores the fight against empire, revealing how Israel’s violence in Gaza serves U.S.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
07 May 2025
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio January 23, 2026
    23 Jan 2026
    In this week’s segment, we cover state repression and regime change efforts. While the corporate media parroted state narratives about a popular uprising in Iran, all evidence indicates that recent…
  • ICE Protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    ICE Domestic Repression in Minnesota
    23 Jan 2026
    Mnar Adley is the founder and director of MintPress News, an independent media outlet. She joins us from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Donald Trump's ICE enforcement is used as domestic police…
  • Iran
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    U.S. and Israel Attempt Regime Change Against Iran
    23 Jan 2026
    Nina Farnia is an assistant professor at Albany Law School in New York. She is a legal historian, focusing on the role of modern imperialism in U.S. law and politics, and a member of the Anti-…
  • Tobi Raji
    RFK-backed Infant Vaccine Study in Africa to Proceed Despite Backlash, U.S. Says
    21 Jan 2026
    U.S. funding for a study on the timing of hepatitis B vaccine doses in infants in Guinea-Bissau violates accepted standards of medical ethics.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Racist, Imperialist U.S. Vassal Denmark Now Cries Over Greenland
    21 Jan 2026
    Donald Trump and other U.S. presidents are gangsters who will sometimes steal from their own crew. The Greenland heist is but the latest example, as the Denmark colonizers cry that they were robbed…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us