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


  • A “Pathway to Freedom” for Mumia
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    A “Pathway to Freedom” for Mumia
    08 Jan 2019
    A recent court ruling that “there was, in fact, judicial bias” in denying Mumia Abu Jamal’s appeal of his conviction in the 1982 death of a cop shows that “this is a different moment in American hi
  • Black Is Back Chairman: US System in Trouble
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Is Back Chairman: US System in Trouble
    08 Jan 2019
    “The entire system is held in high disregard,” said Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela,” and that’s why you see the disappearance of the so-called ‘center’” in the tw
  • US China Sanctions Endanger Global Economy
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    US China Sanctions Endanger Global Economy
    07 Jan 2019
    “The ultimate suicide bomber is in Washington, DC,” said Dr Gerald Horne, warning that US moves to weaken China could plunge the capitalist world into depression.
  • Michelle Obama's Memoir "Becoming" -- Lots of Stories, Few Lessons
    Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    Michelle Obama's Memoir "Becoming" -- Lots of Stories, Few Lessons
    03 Jan 2019
    If anybody else had written it, the first hundred pages of Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming” would stand as a brief, but warm and fuzzy memoir of growing up on the black south side of Chicago.
  • Yes, White People Are Also Killed by the Mass Black Incarceration Regime
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    Yes, White People Are Also Killed by the Mass Black Incarceration Regime
    03 Jan 2019
    The WSWS site has done a disservice to Marxism and to the Black Lives Matter movement with its ideologically driven study of police killings in the U.S., focusing on dead white people.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us