The premise of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is that there is a revolution that will liberate Black people from the damage of a racist American culture. The speaker creates urgency by condemning Black passivity and creating an explicit call to action.

The speaker calls the addressee “brother” (Line 1), an effort to include the addressee in a community of Black people committed to liberation. In the first stanza, the list of things the addressee will not be able to do are all related to activities that deaden the senses and disconnect the addressee from reality, including television, heroin (“skag” [Line 3]), and alcohol. The implication is that the addressee has managed to “skip out” (Line 4) on doing the work of revolution by failing to do the internal work, which requires a clear understanding of the Black self.

The poem is also a call to action. The first line—“You will not be able to stay home, brother” (Line 1)—associates home with passivity, a place where people are either by themselves or with a small group of people. Being an activist requires mass action rather than focus on the individual. When the poem closes, the speaker emphasizes that the moment for action is fleeting since there “will be no re-run” (Line 59) and since the “revolution will be live” (Line 60).