When the Blue Dragon Invaded Resurrection City, 6/23-24/1968

© Carlos Raúl Dufflar

On this sovereign space stood Resurrection City, the Poor People’s Campaign/ Campaña de la Gente Pobre asking permission from our Indigenous brothers and sisters to allow the first members to have arrived at the West Potomac Park, National Mall, to remain in the City.

Six weeks of sun, rain, and mud. We would set up a model for the rest of the nation to implement a community where everyone would live together in peace and respect for all. We would have people of all races, ethnicities, backgrounds, and religions and beliefs. Since everyone will be poor, there would be no greed or envy. Our business would be to go from government agency to government agency. We would represent the poor for our interests over several concrete issues to the government of the richest country in the world.

We were a nonviolent movement of poor people guided with love and peace. We were young, old, and babies, fighting for our rights as human beings. Speaking truth to power and power were monstrous to us. We gave love to power and power was heartless. We stood with our humanity, but power was cruel to us. We struggled to break the wall of hunger, the lack of housing fit for a human being, a job, training, education, bilingual education, and justice from police brutality. Peace not war. Fishing rights, indigenous education and training, food, and self-determination for Indigenous Peoples. Food stamps. A living wage, full employment, and a guaranteed income. End to institutional racism. 

We were beautiful, proud poor people. We didn’t have any money to live. The ruling elite made it this way. We had come here to stay until they changed the negative narrative of our condition as citizens of this country. Brother FD Kirkpatrick sang the song they “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live,” No part employment, full time employment with pay.

The fearmongers had their Cold War mentality, disinformation, and round-the-clock surveillance of our City. And the infiltrators since the beginning of our Campaign, with their violent behavior, w were the agents of fear against us.

We were brothers and sisters guided with love and peace. It was our home and we were here to stay to the vet end in our Village of Hope. So when the deadline was coming soon , we stood In unity together. When dawn rose on Saturday, June 22, our Indigenous family – Chief Big Snake, George Crow Flirs High, Rose Crow Flies High, Al Bridges, Hank Adams, Mad Bear Anderson, and others proclaimed a Temporary Deed of Cession, because this was Indigenous land. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy accepted the deed and had a prayer service for us. Shortly after midnight of June 23, 1968, people were sleeping- men, women and children, seniors and young of our City – were driven from our Ciyy by tear gas by the police. But returned back to stay at their home. 

But on June 24, 1968, with a force of a thousand, the Blue Dragon invaded Resurrection City again- Metropolitan Police, Park Police, and the 116th Military Intelligence Unit. Some 20,000 US Army troops were waiting for orders to strike if we rebelled. The massive tear gas and weapons pointed at the people, bulldozers destroying our homes, burning them, brutally dragging women, seniors, disabled with a mass arrest of over 370 people. They were sent to the DC Department of Corrections to serve until July 13, 1968, and forced the remaining of us to go to Travelers Aid and issue use one-way tickets out of Washington, DC, and back where we came from. 

It was our song when they removed us:

Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn me ‘round,

Turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round,

Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn me ‘round,

I just keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’,

Marching on to freedom land.

But the Poor People’s Campaign lived on until 1969. It is our history of Resurrection City in 1968  and not the revisionist lies. 

I dedicate this to the unknown heroes with their supreme sacrifice with love, with unity, and with commitment over the feat of the Pharaoh with sickness and injustice and hatred.