The Rev Jesse Jackson has been campaigning for civil rights and equality for half a century, and tomorrow he brings his message to Ireland, where the social dangers of the recession are, he believes, as real as in the US
‘PEOPLE ARE free but they aren’t equal, and that’s why it is critical for the poor to vote,” says the veteran US rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson. Strong words, spoken in his trademark southern US drawl. The slow, deliberate tempo could place the former US presidential candidate delivering a sermon in a Baptist church in South Carolina. But the civil-rights leader is talking about Ireland, and he is in no mood to pull his punches about the state of the country.
The 69-year-old has been in the spotlight for more than five decades but shows no signs of slowing down. He has agreed to do this interview ahead of a visit to Ireland, starting tomorrow, and wants to give us some advice about how to deal with greedy bankers.
“You must link the bailout to lending, reinvestment and job creation,” he says. “Rather than have banks that are too big to fail you need to have more community-based banks where you democratise capital. This is a great chance . . . to restructure the economic order from the bottom up,” says Jackson, who is coming to Ireland to kick-start a campaign promoting human rights here.
“In Dublin you were forced to take an €85 billion bailout from the EU and the IMF. Those who were not properly regulated and were greedy in their speculations were the first beneficiaries of the bailout, yet they were the ones that created the crisis. You can’t reward them for lack of regulation and greedy speculation.
“There are many similarities between the US and Ireland in how this bailout is being handled. No country has been spared from the global economic crisis, and governments are attempting to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor.”
On Monday Jackson will give a boost to the Equality and Rights Alliance (Era), which represents more than 160 organisations and activists fighting government cuts to the human-rights and equality budget.
“I want to be part of this campaign to defend equality in the midst of massive government cutbacks resulting from the economic crisis and the latest austerity budget,” he says.
Jackson first sprang to national prominence as an aide to Dr Martin Luther King jnr in the civil-rights movement during the 1960s. He was ordained as a reverend in 1968 and went on to found two social-justice organisations in the 1970s and 1980s, both aiming to empower disadvantaged communities. These merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow Push coalition.
His background in the civil-rights movement provided him with a national platform, which helped him mount two bids to be the Democratic party’s nominee for the presidency in 1984 and 1988. Both were unsuccessful, but in the 1988 contest he surprised many political pundits by capturing almost seven million votes in the Democratic primaries. Michael Dukakis won the nomination, but Jackson was widely credited with breaking new ground for the black community. His progressive campaign is estimated to have registered more than two million new voters.
Increasing voter registration across disadvantaged communities remains a core aim of Rainbow Push’s day-to-day campaigning work in the US. With an election about to take place here, Jackson says that the issue is just as relevant in Dublin as it is in his hometown of Chicago.
“It is critical for the poor to vote . . . You can use the power to vote to address leaders who can represent your interests, not just a party’s interest. There are enough poor and working people to determine the outcome of elections,” he says. “The working poor must vote with passion, not anger. Anger blinds you, while passion allows you to focus your energy.”
Jackson cites the successes of the civil-rights movement in the US as an example.
“Blacks couldn’t vote in the South, white women couldn’t sit on juries, students couldnt vote at the campuses where they attended school, 18-year-olds couldn’t vote and you couldn’t vote bilingually. But we democratised democracy . . . It’s been a long struggle since Brown-versus-board-of-education in 1954,” Jackson says, referring to a landmark ruling by the US supreme court which declared that laws establishing separate public schools for black and white pupils were unconstitutional. “President Barack Obama has just run the last lap of this 54-year race.”
Jackson’s commitment to civil rights and social justice reflects his own relatively humble beginnings in Greenville, South Carolina. He was born in 1941 to Helen Burns, a 16-year-old single mother. His natural father, a former professional boxer, did not play a prominent role in his life. Two years after giving birth his mother married Charles Henry Jackson. He adopted Jesse, who went on to take his surname.
“I was not parentless or homeless, though she was a teenage mother,” says Jackson now. He praises his mother for putting a high value on church, education and discipline in the household. “Those values mattered, and I became an athlete, which enabled me to get into college.”
Jackson, who attended a racially segregated high school, became involved in civil-rights activism in the summer of 1960, as part of a campaign to desegregate a public library in Greenville. In 1965 he became a full-time organiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was appointed by King to direct Operation Breadbasket, a campaign of boycotts to pressurise white businesses to hire blacks and buy products from black businesses.
“Martin Luther King was a brilliant man. He finished high school at 15, left college at 19, finished seminary at 22 and had a PhD at 26 years of age. He was a dynamic orator and preacher of the gospel, and he saw the world through a door, not just a keyhole. He saw the world,” says Jackson, who was present when the iconic civil-rights leader was shot.
“His assassination was a painful and traumatic experience, but it made me more determined to continue. We could not allow one bullet to kill a whole movement. Our duty was to pick up the broken pieces and continue the struggle.”
Jackson was later criticised by members of King's entourage, who felt he had exaggerated his role on the day of the assassination by claiming that he was the last man to speak to King and that he had cradled him in his arms as he lay dying. Jackson slightly amended his version of the events of that day in a New York Timesinterview in 1987.
Conservatives have also criticised Jackson for using the civil-rights movement to further his own ambitions. These claims have been dismissed by Jackson, who was awarded the highest US honour, the presidential medal of freedom, by Bill Clinton in 2000.
But the seasoned campaigner continues to attract controversy. Normally a polished media performer, he was widely criticised for remarks he made about Barack Obama when he thought he was off-mic during the presidential election campaign in 2008. Before an interview on Fox News he was chatting to a fellow panellist about Obama’s speeches on morality, delivered at black churches. “See, Barack has been talking down to black people,” Jackson whispered. “I want to cut his nuts off.” When Fox News released a tape of the comments Jackson called a news conference to apologise publicly for his “regretfully crude” language, saying he thought the conversation was private.
Jackson remains a supporter of President Obama, a man who has, he says, a “high moral compass”, and is hopeful he will win another term in the 2012 presidential election.
“He is grabbing the tiger by the tail. I think he has done a good job. But he has met stubborn resistance all the way. One congressman called him a liar. They have challenged his place of birth and challenged his religion,” says Jackson, who adds that the colour of the president’s skin has been a factor in some of the attacks. “The race part was covered up and coded, but that was part of it.”
Jackson says this resistance has forced Obama to compromise on some of his core pledges, including his plans for universal healthcare.
He dismisses the notion that Obama’s election was a watershed moment that created full equality for black people in the US. “The equality struggle will be a longer struggle, because those who have advantages protect and insulate themselves.”
Jackson says the infrastructure of disparity and apartheid remains in place, which means that unemployment among blacks is three times the national average and that 1.2 million of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in prison in the US are black. The recession could make matters worse, as disadvantaged groups become scapegoats. This danger is as real in Ireland as it is in the US, he believes.
“During economic downturns people tend to turn on one another,” he says. “I’m aware of the Travellers group in Ireland, and what they have gone through; also how the Africans and blacks that have come in have faced problems . . . A great society embraces the immigrant population and the poor.”
Jackson says his only regret in life is not spending more time with his children. He married his college sweetheart, Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, in 1963, and they had five children together. He also has a daughter, born in 1999, from an affair with a staffer.
One of Jackson’s sons, Jesse L Jackson jnr, is a member of the US House of Representatives for Illinois. So could there yet be a Jesse Jackson in the White House? “He has all the potential: he is a good legislator, he is academically capable and has strong support in his district,” says Jackson.
An evening with Jesse Jackson, including an interview by Myles Dungan and questions from the audience, takes place at Liberty Hall, Dublin, on Tuesday at 7pm; see tascnet.ie for more details
