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


  • Anti-Imperialist Summit
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Anti-Imperialist Summit
    17 Jun 2022
    Erica Caines is Co-Coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Haiti and the Americas Committee. She is also co-editor of the Hood Communist blog. She discusses the recent anti-imperialist summit…
  • A Guantanamo Defense Attorney Speaks
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    A Guantanamo Defense Attorney Speaks
    17 Jun 2022
    Bryan Bullock is an Indiana based attorney who specializes in employment discrimination and civil rights cases. But from 2005 to 2011 he served as habeas counsel for 3 detainees held at Guantanamo…
  • January 6 Hearings
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    January 6 Hearings
    17 Jun 2022
    The congressional hearings investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol are a diversion for desperate democrats. They also ignore the constant threat of mob violence caused by racist…
  • A Quarter Century of a Western-backed War of Aggression Against the Congolese People
    Maurice Carney
    A Quarter Century of a Western-backed War of Aggression Against the Congolese People
    17 Jun 2022
    Rwanda and Uganda have carried out attacks against the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 25 years. Their aggressions are carried out with the backing of the U.S. and European nations who aid…
  • Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    Farooque Chowdhury
    Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    16 Jun 2022
    The U.S. effort to control the narrative at the Summit of the Americas ended as a diplomatic and foreign policy disaster. The imperative to dominate blew up in the collective faces of the Biden…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us