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

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


  • Muslim student stands against NYPD
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Eric Adams and the NYPD Repress Dissent
    08 May 2024
    New York City Mayor Eric Adams may well be the very worst of the Black misleadership class. He takes great pleasure in supporting apartheid Israel and he conducted police raids and intelligence…
  • OAU flag
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    RESOLUTION: The Question of Palestine, Organization of African Unity, 1975
    08 May 2024
    Looking back at a time when African states acknowledged their shared anti-colonial struggle with Palestine and rebuked zionism for the white supremacist genocidal ideology and practice that it is.
  • Paul Kagame
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rwanda: “Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship” Review
    08 May 2024
    Ann Garrison continues her series of reviews of books important to understanding the Rwandan Genocide and Rwanda as it is today during this 30th anniversary year of the 1994 massacres.
  • Protest sign saying "resist"
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    We can no longer …
    08 May 2024
    "We can no longer..." is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Columbia University student protesters
    Thad Baltimore
    Student Protests and the Rise of U.S. Authoritarianism
    08 May 2024
    The protests on college campuses across the country and the authoritarian crackdown on their calls for divestment reveal who the colleges and our government are truly accountable to.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us