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 Real Chance for Mumia Freedom
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    A Real Chance for Mumia Freedom
    20 Aug 2018
    “Those hearings that are coming up on August 30th could lead to a new trial for Mumia,” said Orie Lumumba, of Family and Concerned Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal.
  • Underground Fugitives Foresaw US Decline and Repression
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Underground Fugitives Foresaw US Decline and Repression
    20 Aug 2018
    The underground radicals of the 1960s and 70s were prescient in their political analysis, according to Stephen Dillon, author of Fugitive Life: The Queer Politics of the Prison
  • US Banks’ Chief Export: White Supremacy
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    US Banks’ Chief Export: White Supremacy
    20 Aug 2018
    Wall Street bankers brought their brand of racism to the US imperial project in the Caribbean and Latin America, said Peter James Hudson, author of Bankers of Empire: How Wall
  • Imperial Head Doesn’t Know What Imperial Hand Is Doing
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Imperial Head Doesn’t Know What Imperial Hand Is Doing
    20 Aug 2018
    “The whole imperialist system is in a state of severe crisis,” said Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela, at the coalition’s annual conference, in St. Louis.
  • doing the math here...
    Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence
    Doing The Math?
    16 Aug 2018
    Knitting my brow, I’m wondering whether we have a word Problem— numerical, mathematical, logical, or political Problem?
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us