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


  • BAR Book Forum: An Excerpt from Belén Fernández’s “Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World”
    Belen Fernandez
    BAR Book Forum: An Excerpt from Belén Fernández’s “Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World”
    05 Jun 2019
    The US is a nation of freedom: the freedom to carry or be shot by a firearm, and to go into eternal debt.
  • Climate Terrorism: The Politically Farsighted Way to Impeach Trump
    Patrick Walker
    Climate Terrorism: The Politically Farsighted Way to Impeach Trump
    05 Jun 2019
    By focusing on climate terrorism, Democrats could show voters that they care more about the common good than their self-serving Russiagate narrative. 
  • Book Review: Bringing Police Torture in Chicago to the Full Light of Day
    Carl Davidson
    Book Review: Bringing Police Torture in Chicago to the Full Light of Day
    05 Jun 2019
    A new book reveals Chicago as a racist police state where the entire criminal justice system was complicit in torture.
  • The Bankers’ “Power Revolution” -- How the Government Got Shackled by Debt
    Ellen Brown
    The Bankers’ “Power Revolution” -- How the Government Got Shackled by Debt
    05 Jun 2019
    There is no reason for the government to borrow trillions from capitalists – except to enrich the financial classes and enforce austerity.
  • The Scandal of Puerto Rico’s Botched Disaster Relief
    Mark Weisbrot
    The Scandal of Puerto Rico’s Botched Disaster Relief
    05 Jun 2019
    The US government appointed a board of fat cats to oversee the “debt” of its mostly black and brown colony, Puerto Rico.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us