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

Poor Peoples’ March
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
22 Jun 2022
🖨️ Print Article
Poor Peoples’ March
Rev. Ralph Abernathy leads the Poor People's March from Resurrection City to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, June 24, 1968.

                                                                                                                   Poor Peoples’ March

                                                                                                “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”  

                                                                                                                            —Aristotle

Rainbow drum majors

arrived down from broken

hearted Buffalo—up from

Uvalde—Down south; Out

south; Up south. Trekkers,

drivers, flyers, bus riders arrived.

Essential Workers—a few months

ago; for a minute—arrived from their

robotic jobs…Over-worked/underpaid.

Children from COVID-canceled families

Arrived. Food workers on blistered, swollen

feet and un-operated on knees arrived.

Toilers under poverty’s knee and low-wealth’s

swastika-tatted arm arrived.

Grassroots, salt of the earth, everyday people

arrived.

Hurt first/hurt worst Black, Brown, Indigenous

impacted people arrived.

Inflation-riddled poverty scholars from food

apartheid bantustans arrived.

Labor’s soldiers, siloed sea to shiny sea, arrived.

Standing shoulder to shoulder Juneteenth

on un-ceded Anacostan Ancestral land, galvanizing,

mobilizing—flashing glimpses of 30s/60s greatness

from Arab Spring, Occupy, George Floyd Summer,

Strike-tober reflections…

Carving cursive initials in granite of a 100 year-old

Healthcare for ALL fight…

© 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 and PayPal.

 

Poor People's Campaign
Poor People's March

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


Related Stories

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Resurrection City: The Dream…The Accomplishments, Jesse Jackson, 1968
18 February 2026
“The Poor People’s Campaign is the greatest single challenge ever unleashed upon our colonial system.”
The Poor People's Campaign and the Moral Dilemma of Liberalism
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
The Poor People's Campaign and the Moral Dilemma of Liberalism
04 May 2022
The demands for justice at home and abroad must not be sacrificed on the altar of what is called pragmatism.

More Stories


  • Neocolonial African Conservation Inspired by “Tarzan”
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Neocolonial African Conservation Inspired by “Tarzan”
    01 Jul 2020
    Ann Garrison responds to a critic of neocolonial nature “conservation” in Africa, and discusses US-backed threats to national sovereignty and all forms of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  • Syria, Corporate Media Lies, and the True Face of Imperialism: An Interview with Richard Medhurst
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Syria, Corporate Media Lies, and the True Face of Imperialism: An Interview with Richard Medhurst
    01 Jul 2020
    If independent media want to be a real counterweight to establishment media, they must challenge the status quo in its entirety.
  • How Do You Spell Desecration of African Burials?: “Nigger!”
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    How Do You Spell Desecration of African Burials?: “Nigger!”
    01 Jul 2020
    Much of the nation may be repudiating white supremacy, but not Montgomery County, Maryland, which is paving over sacred  Black ground in an attempt to bury its own racist history.
  • Amiri Poem for Boss Tweet
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Amiri Poem for Boss Tweet
    01 Jul 2020
    Who tolt us ‘bout an unknown 19th of June— who the TikTok teens cast as buffoon? Who? Who say Douglass alive and doin’ good work— who turn the War House into a grifter perk? Who?
  • Is “Black Lives Matter” a Therapeutic Mantra for White Guilt?
    Mark P. Fancher
    Is “Black Lives Matter” a Therapeutic Mantra for White Guilt?
    01 Jul 2020
    Many who took to the streets were out there to engage in a form of mass group therapy.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us