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


  • The Problem with Juneteenth
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Problem with Juneteenth
    15 Jun 2022
    Juneteenth was a people's holiday with deep meaning for the descendants of enslaved people. But the declaration of an official federal holiday has turned it into an opportunity for corporate…
  • Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    Sean I. Ahern
    Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    15 Jun 2022
    Hubert Henry Harrison was one of the foremost Black socialist and nationalist thinkers of the early 20th century. He was known as "the father of Harlem radicalism." This is the second of of a…
  • EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    15 Jun 2022
    José Martí’s account of the 1889 Pan-American Congress offers lessons for last week’s failed Summit of the Americas.
  • The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    15 Jun 2022
    The emerging multipolar world is the result of struggles for national sovereignty and self-determination, which are connected with the world wide class struggle.
  • Democrats Aren’t the Only Game in Town for Ethiopian American Voters
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Democrats Aren’t the Only Game in Town for Ethiopian American Voters
    15 Jun 2022
    Teddy Fikre is an Ethiopian-American independent candidate for Congress in Virginia. He discusses the challenges that his community faces in advocating for their homeland through U.S. electoral…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us