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


  • Pan-African Community Action
    Occupation Forces Upheld by Federal Judiciary Demonstrates DC’s Need for Community Control
    14 Jan 2026
    While politicians debate legal procedure, residents of Washington DC live under a sustained military deployment, exposing how both federal and local power collaborate against them.
  • Hanna Eid
    Hyperscale Data Centers and the Production of Waste
    14 Jan 2026
    The A.I. revolution has a hidden cost. Its massive data centers create huge amounts of waste and decimate labor and humanity.
  • Willie Mack
    Trump 2.0: A dark mirror into our past
    14 Jan 2026
    The Trump 2.0 administration is demonstrating the logical endpoint of a state project built on racial oppression. Trump’s actions show continuity with past history.
  • Vijay Prashad , Carlos Ron
    The Current Situation in Venezuela: A Government in Charge, a People Resilient
    14 Jan 2026
    While the U.S. works to manufacture chaos and regime change, the Venezuelan government holds the line, revealing the gap between Washington's narratives and the realities on the ground.
  • Adam Mahoney
    After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area
    14 Jan 2026
    Four million Americans live within 1 mile of a data center. The communities closest to them are “overwhelmingly” non-white.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us