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


  • Minneapolis anti-ICE protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    ICE Invades Minnesota
    16 Jan 2026
    Suleiman Adan is Deputy Executive Director of the Minnesota Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. He joins us from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Donald Trump has unleashed ICE…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Renee Good, Keith Porter and the Normalization of Police Violence
    14 Jan 2026
    Law enforcement in the United States are responsible for more than 1,100 deaths in a typical year. This level of bloodshed goes unnoted even when police killings are deemed newsworthy and attract…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Breaking the Silence Revisited: Gaza, Venezuela, and the Enduring Relevance of Dr. King’s Critique of Empire
    14 Jan 2026
    The annual ritual of sanitizing Martin Luther King Jr. serves to obscure his radical anti-war politics, which are urgently needed to challenge U.S. imperialism.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Autocracy in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Eric D. Walrond, 1923
    14 Jan 2026
    “[T]he United States on March 31, 1917,...acquired the three Danish West Indian isles…subsequently rechristened “the Virgin Islands of the United States.” 
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Bolivarian Legacy, from Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro
    14 Jan 2026
    Attorney Dan Kovalik is an attorney representing Colombian President Gustavo Petro. He is also author of The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US Is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil. Skyhorse…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us