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


  • Freedom Rider: Justice and Paul Manafort
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Justice and Paul Manafort
    13 Mar 2019
    Now that Trump’s sleazy associates are facing prison, lots of Democrats that never gave a damn about mass Black incarceration are self-righteously blasting the criminal injustice system.
  • Stephon Clark Killed Twice by U.S. imperialism
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Stephon Clark Killed Twice by U.S. imperialism
    13 Mar 2019
    The world’s most ambitious predators -- candidates for US president, like Clinton and Biden -- are also the most likely to condemn young Black men as “predators,” and to wreak mass death, worldwide
  • Chelsea Manning Defies Secret Grand Jury, Julian Assange Scoops Michael Cohen
    Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
    Chelsea Manning Defies Secret Grand Jury, Julian Assange Scoops Michael Cohen
    13 Mar 2019
    Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is jailed for refusing to testify against Julian Assange, whose confinement in Ecuador's London embassy puts the lie to much of the Russiagate fantasy.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    13 Mar 2019
    This week readers engaged with the question of reparations for slavery and Black America’s stake in environmentalism. Strong responses came for 
  • BAR Book Forum: Alys Eve Weinbaum’s "The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Alys Eve Weinbaum’s "The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery”
    13 Mar 2019
    Slavery is everywhere banned, but the ethos of the slave trade thrives in the baby-buying business.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us