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


  • To End Racial Capitalism, We Will Need to Take On the Institution of Policing
    Henry A. Giroux
    To End Racial Capitalism, We Will Need to Take On the Institution of Policing
    23 Jun 2021
    The same activists who are working to defund the police are also part of a collective movement to bring an end to neoliberal capitalism.
  • x
    Gregory P. Downs
    The Hidden History of Juneteenth
    23 Jun 2021
    “We knowed what was goin’ on in [the war] all the time,” said Felix Haywood, dismissing the notion that his fellow Texas slaves were ignorant of the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • Juneteenth: “The Day is Ours” 
    Nicholas Brady
    Juneteenth: “The Day is Ours” 
    23 Jun 2021
    It seems inevitable our own holiday will be sold back to us by the same corporations that profit from exploiting black lives.
  • Nicaragua's Benedict Arnolds – Political Opposition as Organized Crime
    Stephen Sefton
    Nicaragua's Benedict Arnolds – Political Opposition as Organized Crime
    23 Jun 2021
    Under Nicaraguan law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country's internal affairs.
  • Why We’re Fed Up with Weak Excuses for Accepting Awards from the Empire
    Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin
    Why We’re Fed Up with Weak Excuses for Accepting Awards from the Empire
    23 Jun 2021
    How should we respond when people of color who've spent a lifetime cussing the empire start curtseying to it instead?
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us