Stable working class neighborhoods are the bane of speculators, developers and capitalist politicians.
Lording over the landscape like giant
Insects sucking soul, blood, chocolate
into multi-colored mushrooms
Metastasizing citywide.
Officers ordering vacant storefronts,
lined up like soldiers, to make money,
while brothers with cupped hands
platoon on plastic crates at entrances to
$4-a-cup coffee shops with belligerent baristas.
Beneath fiery crimson skies,
afternoon freeways are fuming parking lots.
Capitalismās poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters donāt care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed buttsātents and jails.
First come the cranesāthen the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgagesāthen the
Rentsā¦ money, money, money for military
Bases in far off placesābut, itās āPie in the
sky,ā to demand affordable living spaces!
Basketball teamās outgrown The Town,
football teamās slipping off to Sin
City after slurping at the troughā¦
Capitalismās poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters donāt care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed buttsātents and jails.
First come the cranesāthen the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgagesāthen the
Rentsā¦ money, money, money for military
Bases in far off placesābut, itās āPie in the
sky,ā to demand affordable living spaces!
And we play dress-up in grown folksā clothesā
Tiny red, white and blue stickersā pretending
weāre fixing it in 20 minutesā¦ every 2-4 years ā¦
Ā© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The arson attacks that engulfed the protected forests of he Andean-Patagonia region serve as a reminder that Western conservation models, which dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands, areā¦
When political energy is channeled into opposing a figurehead, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he merely leads.
The Cold War-era "strategy of tension" has evolved into a modern system of hybrid warfare targeting sovereign nations that challenge Western hegemony.
The arrest of a five-year-old has ignited the first major prisoner revolt inside a U.S. ICE detention center, exposing the difference between enforcement propaganda and reality.
The Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja has held out against violent Israeli settlers ā until now.
