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


  • First They Came for Alex Jones, then RT and Syrian TV
    Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
    First They Came for Alex Jones, then RT and Syrian TV
    12 Sep 2018
    Russian and Syrian news services in the US have been censored, but you can still get streaming jihadist propaganda from al Qaeda-controlled Idlib Province.
  • Censored Documentary Exposes Israel’s Attack on Black Lives Matter
    Max Blumenthal
    Censored Documentary Exposes Israel’s Attack on Black Lives Matter
    12 Sep 2018
    Israeli operatives and their US lobbyists sprang into action when the Movement for Black Lives came out in support of the boycott Israel movement.
  • New Film Reveals Life of Civil Rights Activist Jack O’Dell
    Paul Buhle
    New Film Reveals Life of Civil Rights Activist Jack O’Dell
    12 Sep 2018
    Nobody was a bigger influence on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. than Jack O’Dell, the communist -- which is why O’Dell had to be jettisoned.
  • BAR Book Forum: Jeanne Theoharis’ “A More Beautiful and Terrible History”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Jeanne Theoharis’ “A More Beautiful and Terrible History”
    12 Sep 2018
    Today’s seekers of social justice need to grapple with what the legacies of past freedom fighters actually demand of us.”
  • BAR Book Forum: Vincent Lloyd’s “Black Natural Law”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Vincent Lloyd’s “Black Natural Law”
    12 Sep 2018
    Black natural law allows us to identify the ideas of the powers that be, the ideas of the wealthy and the white, and demolish them.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us