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
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.
Krys Cerisier
COP29 Contradiction and the Climate
18 December 2024
Journalist Krys Cerisier attended the COP29 climate conference, where they reported and conducted interviews with activists f
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
COP29 Summit Marked by Acrimonious Debate Over Emissions and Finance
27 November 2024
Annual climate gathering reflects divisions between the industrialized states and the Global South.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Unprincipled, Unstrategic, and Unsustainable: e(U)logy for the U.S. Climate “Movement”
13 November 2024
The ineffectiveness of the climate movement during the 2024 election signals its inevitable collapse.

More Stories


  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE
    28 Jan 2026
    To understand the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement, one must trace its lineage directly to the antebellum slave patrols — a system founded on racial terror and complete state control.
  • Aby L. Sène
    Patagonia Forest Fires Reveal Imperialist Theft of Protected Lands
    28 Jan 2026
    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, are…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Real, And It Obfuscates the Requisite Question of Self-Determination in the Heart of U.S. Empire
    28 Jan 2026
    When political energy is channeled into opposing an individual, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he represents.
  • Hanna Eid
    Iran and the Strategy of Tension
    28 Jan 2026
    The Cold War-era "strategy of tension" has evolved into a modern system of hybrid warfare targeting sovereign nations that challenge Western hegemony.
  • Julia Wright
    The Photos of a Five Year Old ICE Terror Doesn't Want Us to See
    28 Jan 2026
    The arrest of a five-year-old captured public attention and ignited a prisoner revolt inside a U.S. ICE detention center. Powerful imagery is a useful tool for the people, but dangerous in the hands…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us