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


  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 2, 2019
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 2, 2019
    03 Dec 2019
    Haitians Blame US and France for Corrupt Regime
  • Mumia to Address December 9 Conference in Philadelphia
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Mumia to Address December 7 Conference in Philadelphia
    03 Dec 2019
    The nation’s best known political prisoner will mark his 38th year behind bars by addressing a “Youth Rise Up Against Empire” event in his hometown. Mumia Abu Jamal 
  • A "Fighting United Front” for Community Control of Police
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    A "Fighting United Front” for Community Control of Police
    03 Dec 2019
    Eight hundred delegates to the newly re-founded National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression chose veteran organizer Frank Chapman as their executive directo
  • Dr Gerald Horne: Africans See China as Counterweight to US and Europe
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Dr Gerald Horne: Africans See China as Counterweight to US and Europe
    03 Dec 2019
    In contrast to US hysteria over China’s growing role in world affairs, “in Africa itself, it’s felt that there needs to be a counterweight to the North Atlantic powers, and they feel that China hel
  • Haitians Blame US and France for Corrupt Regime
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Haitians Blame US and France for Corrupt Regime
    03 Dec 2019
    Daoud Andre, of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, said the “clear demand” animating protests that have shut down much of the country is that President “Joven
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us