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


  • Cops and Spies Chase Blacks and Leftists While Violent Whites Grow Bolder
    Alice Speri 
    Cops and Spies Chase Blacks and Leftists While Violent Whites Grow Bolder
    29 Jan 2020
    The cops can’t find white terrorists in plain sight, but they have turned technology to the task of criminalizing Black and Left dissent.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    29 Jan 2020
    This week readers discuss Democratic Party racism and the abuse of Martin Luther King’s legacy.  We share your letters for “
  • BAR Book Forum: Fikile Nxumalo’s “Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Fikile Nxumalo’s “Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education”
    29 Jan 2020
    The author rejects ways of teaching that distort Black young people’s relationships with the natural world.
  • BAR Book Forum: Cindy Milstein’s “Paths toward Utopia”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Cindy Milstein’s “Paths toward Utopia”
    29 Jan 2020
    The author believes we are at a crossroads between fascism and/or extinction, and a path of communal care.
  • Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms
    Randal Maurice Jelks
    Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms
    29 Jan 2020
    Long before the Civil War, Black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us