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


  • Shooting and looting started: 400 years ago
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Shooting and looting started: 400 years ago
    03 Jun 2020
    Shooting, looting, scalping, lynching, Raping, torturing their way across the continent—400 years ago— Colonial settler thugs launched this endless crimson tide rolling down on
  • Black Lives Extinguished, Black Ancestors’ Bodies Desecrated
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    Black Lives Extinguished, Black Ancestors’ Bodies Desecrated
    03 Jun 2020
    We are killed in the streets while we are alive and then our bodies are dug up and thrown away like trash when businesses require the land for profit making.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    03 Jun 2020
    This week police brutality and the Coronavirus were on your minds.
  • BAR Book Forum: Sasha Turner’s “Contested Bodies”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Sasha Turner’s “Contested Bodies”
    03 Jun 2020
    Mothers and infants consistently experience positive health outcomes when midwives are incorporated into healthcare systems.
  • BAR Book Forum: Brandon R. Byrd’s “The Black Republic”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Brandon R. Byrd’s “The Black Republic”
    03 Jun 2020
    We should see Haiti as a bellwether for what is occurring throughout the Americas and the world.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us