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


  • STOP COP CITY
    Efia Nwangaza
    Smash Kop City Atlanta: A Hub In The National White Supremacist Bulwark for White Minority Rule
    01 Nov 2023
    Atlanta's proposed Cop City project is just the latest iteration of militarized policing which enables state repression.
  • Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly next to her book, Black Scare/Red Scare
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor , Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
    BAR Book Forum: Charisse Burden-Stelly’s Book, “Black Scare / Red Scare”
    01 Nov 2023
    This week’s featured author is Charisse Burden-Stelly. Burden-Stelly is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. Her book is Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing…
  • Children flying over a destroyed Gaza
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    Statement from the Afro-American Committee Against Genocide, 1982
    01 Nov 2023
    In the 1980s, African Americans understood the war on Palestine as one of genocide.
  • Mondoweiss political cartoon
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    Western Media Bias Against Palestine Reaches Unprecedented Heights
    01 Nov 2023
    Corporate and government-controlled outlets are serving as enablers in the campaign to demonize and erase the people who are being bombed and starved on a daily basis.
  • Colonial Contradiction of Haiti
    Erica Caines , Austin Cole
    The Unspoken Colonial Contradiction of Haiti
    01 Nov 2023
    The impending invasion of Haiti is the latest in a long line of colonial aggressions perpetrated against that nation.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us