Poor Peoples’ March

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

22 Jun 2022

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…

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

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