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


  • Labor and Liberation: An Interview with Margaret Stevens
    The Public Archive
    Labor and Liberation: An Interview with Margaret Stevens
    11 Jul 2018
    “Black working class militancy is THE essential precondition for the fight against racism, but it is not sufficient.”
  • Black Agenda Radio, Week of May 14, 2018
    Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio, week of July 9, 2018
    10 Jul 2018
    Margaret Kimberley on the CBC protecting police as a class, William Hartung on the bloated US military budget, Akile Anai on reparations and protecting the homeless in St.
  • Military Spending = Cash for Corporations
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Military Spending = Cash for Corporations
    09 Jul 2018
    At $716 billion, the US military budget is larger than the defense spending of the next ten nations, combined, yet is mostly wasted, said William Hartung, author of Prophe
  • Scandalizing Homeless Black Men
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Scandalizing Homeless Black Men
    09 Jul 2018
    Uhuru Movement activist Akile Anai is leading a campaign to put reparations and community development on the ballot, next year, in St. Petersburg, Florida.
  • Greens Take on Barbara Lee
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Greens Take on Barbara Lee
    09 Jul 2018
    Green Party candidates won the right to challenge Democratic incumbents, one-on-one, for three California congressional seats, including Barbara Lee’s San Francisco Bay area district.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us