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


  • soledad bros 02
    Nellie Bailiey and Glen Ford
    Former “Soledad Brother” Fights for Parole
    29 Jan 2018
    Students at Southern University Law Center (SULC) have asked the UN Human Rights Commission to intervene in the case of John Clutchette, the former “Soledad Brother” who was charged, along with Geo
  • Baltimore Cops Worse Than Thirties Gangsters
    Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Baltimore Cops Worse Than Thirties Gangsters
    29 Jan 2018
    The Baltimore police officers charged with robbing and planting guns and drugs on citizens are “worse than gangsters back in the Thirties, because it’s the law doing it,” said Carl Dix
  • Good Jobs First
    Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Beware of Amazon Bearing Corporate Gifts
    29 Jan 2018
    Greg LeRoy, of Good Jobs First, warns the remaining 20 cities bidding to become Amazon’s second headquarters not to believe the corporation’s promises of $5 billion in investments
  • Salute To Shift Holders!  (Down With Boss Tweet!)
    Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence
    Salute To Shift Holders! (Down With Boss Tweet!)
    25 Jan 2018
    He’s, obviously, not a New Yorker, riding trains 4 and 5 in the morning. Trains packed with hoodie-crowned; shuttered chocolate, mocha, peanut
  • seriously?
    Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    Intersectionality is a Hole. Afro-Pessimism is a Shovel. We Need to Stop Digging, Part 1 of 3
    25 Jan 2018
    The US left has a fundamental problem, perhaps the root of most of its other problems.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us