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


  • Bruce Dixon, In His Own Words
    Bruce Dixon
    Bruce Dixon, In His Own Words
    03 Jul 2019
    I was born to working class parents, and raised on the south side of Chicago.
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 1, 2019
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 1, 2019
    03 Jul 2019
    Margaret Kimberley, Jeff Bryant, Howie Hawkins, Mumia Abu Jamal, Bobbie Bottoms Brown   Corporate Media Monger for War
  • Freedom Rider: U.S. Prisons are Concentration Camps
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: U.S. Prisons are Concentration Camps
    03 Jul 2019
    There were already thousands of concentration camps in the United States before Donald Trump began his reign of terror over asylum seekers. They are called prisons.
  • U.S. Militarism and the One-Sided Class War
    Ajamu Baraka , BAR editor and columnist
    U.S. Militarism and the One-Sided Class War
    03 Jul 2019
    While the Democratic presidential candidates rehearsed their anti-Trump lines for the debates, most of the Democrats in the Senate voted for Trump’s record-breaking war spending bill.
  • Anti-imperialism is the Only Antidote for Austerity
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Anti-imperialism is the Only Antidote for Austerity
    03 Jul 2019
    Privatization, predatory lending, and endless war are all preconditions to finance capital’s hegemony.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us