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


  • Garment Workers Win $22 Billion in Historic Victory Against Wage Theft
    Loretta Graceffo
    Garment Workers Win $22 Billion in Historic Victory Against Wage Theft
    31 Mar 2021
    When the Covid-19 pandemic cut into corporate profits, the fashion industry simply stole billions from some of the world’s most exploited workers.
  • WHO Chief Blasts 'Grotesque' Vaccine Inequality as Rich Nations Block Speedy End of Global Pandemic
    Andrea Germanos
    WHO Chief Blasts 'Grotesque' Vaccine Inequality as Rich Nations Block Speedy End of Global Pandemic
    31 Mar 2021
    "As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed."
  • New Data on Jail Populations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer
    New Data on Jail Populations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    31 Mar 2021
    The pandemic forced many police departments, courts and jails to take steps that reformers had been demanding for decades.
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 29, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 29, 2021
    29 Mar 2021
    Expect “Lip Service” from Biden on Immigration Reform
  • Audre Lorde’s Revolutionary Contribution to Black Political Thought
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Audre Lorde’s Revolutionary Contribution to Black Political Thought
    29 Mar 2021
    Black poet and feminist Audre Lorde showed her socialist and revolutionary colors in the wake of the US invasion of Grenada, her parent’s birthplace, in 1983, said Jack Turner, pro
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us