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


  • Tunde Ozasua
    Building the Movement to Shut Down AFRICOM
    29 Sep 2021
    October 2021 is the 13th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM.
  • The newly created AUKUS alliance is the latest futile effort to end China's rise as an economic super power and competitor for global influence.
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Revenge of White Colonialism Motivates the AUKUS Alliance Against China
    29 Sep 2021
    The newly created AUKUS alliance is the latest futile effort to end China's rise as an economic super power and competitor for global influence.
  • U.S. Congress Outlines New Phase of Economic Attacks and Hybrid War on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government
    Ben Norton
    U.S. Congress Outlines New Phase of Economic Attacks and Hybrid War on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government
    29 Sep 2021
    The US Congress invited neoconservative regime-change strategists to discuss the next stage of hybrid warfare on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
  • Frantz Fanon
    David Marriott
    BAR Book Forum: David Marriott’s “Whither Fanon?”
    28 Sep 2021
    BAR Book Forum: David Marriott’s “Whither Fanon?” David Marriott
  • 20 years After Durban: Africans and Afro-Descendants Colonized or Emancipated?
    Mireille Fanon Mendes France
    20 years After Durban: Africans and Afro-Descendants Colonized or Emancipated?
    26 Sep 2021
    The 20th anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) is an opportunity to analyze the state of African descended people.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us