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Jesse Jackson
Civil Rights Leader; President, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Answers to Questions from the Audience
Q: Within the historical context that you've just described and considering how this nation seems to be so polarized, how do you see the prospects of healing this nation?A: The vision of the leader helps set the pace for the followers. In the last three-and-a-half years, while Mr. Bush ran as a one big tent Republican, referring to himself as a "compassionate conservative," he has not had one meeting with organized labor, sees labor as the enemy. He has not had one meeting with the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Sierra Club, the Congressional Black Caucus. He has run a polarizing administration. We have not met one time with Mr. Bush nor Mr. Ashcroft. As we face the prospects of a flawed election based upon schemes of disenfranchisement, we can't turn to the Department of Justice, because Mr. Ashcroft became famous for suppressing votes in Missouri and William Rehnquist became famous for suppressing votes in Arizona. There is the basis of the darkness that we now face. We need a leader who makes room for all of us under one big tent. In my judgment, Kerry is that alternative. But I'm also convinced that the alternative is made bold and bigger by the actions of the common people. Roosevelt did not inspire labor; labor inspired Roosevelt. Truman did not inspire the soldiers to desegregate; they inspired Truman. The Supreme Court didn't inspire Thurgood Marshall; he inspired the Supreme Court. George Wallace and Bull Conner and Jim Clark did not inspire Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks; they inspired them. The weight is upon us to seize this moment and vote our hopes and not our fears.
Q: There is a reasonable reality that George Bush will be re-elected. What practical reactions should Americans take who find their points of view similar to yours?
A: If he wins another flawed election based upon disenfranchisement schemes, the American public may react differently this time. Mr. Bush's brother Jeb pushed 49,000 names from the rolls; all but seven were African American, and a judge overruled him. They then sought to make it illegal to have a recount in the case of a close election. You still have 50 state separate and unequal elections. What's not commonly known, that came out in Florida: We do not have the constitutional right to vote for the president; we have the state's right.
There are 50 state separate and unequal elections, and within those states the richer counties got the better machinery as in second-chance machines. The poor counties have poor machines and chads and punchcards. At the end of the day, secretaries of state have the power and the Electoral College. They said two things in Florida in that Bush v. Gore fight. One was, the Supreme Court after stopping the count, when Gore was down 145 with 45,000 to go said this will be the only time this will ever happen. The Supreme Court stepped out of precedent setting, said this is a one-time deal. They said that we don't have the authority, because, based on the 10th Amendment, the right to vote for president is not in the affirmative. So it's, Mrs. Harris, it's 10:00 Monday morning, you determine it. She said, By 12:00, I must stop the count. But before that, the Legislature did something: They said, Even if Gore gets the most votes, we'll give our Electoral College to Bush, which means that the Electoral College has the authority to defy the popular will.
There are several states where that can happen with impunity in 2004. So there are two levels of attack. One is the on-the-ground lack of fair access. But the Electoral College itself, driven by right-wing ideologues who would see this as their moment to resurge the momentum of the Civil War. This is the states' rights rising again. This is an election that must be under the United Nations and global supervision. Our basic democracy and the hope we have in it is in real jeopardy. So I say vote with a passion and get your receipt. Accept nothing less than the winner must win and the loser must lose, whoever the winner is.
Did you all get that last point? We do not have the constitutional right to vote for president. We have the state's right to vote: In North Dakota, you don't have to register to vote; Vermont and Maine, you vote from prison; Florida, if you've been to prison, you can't vote; Illinois, you've been to prison, re-register; Minnesota and Vermont, on-site, same day registration. Fifty state separate and unequal elections. Even with the Help America Vote Act the Republican secretaries of state are interpreting it in ways to not make provisional ballots available with easy access. So we are headed towards a catastrophe November 2. If it's reasonably close, we are headed toward a battle unlike we have ever seen before. But this time around we must not be passive in the face of it.
Q: Considering your support for John Kerry, what issues do you believe he should be emphasizing to a greater degree than he is doing presently?
A: He is becoming clearer on the misguided course of our war in Iraq. I could accept empowering the president with the authority to protect us, but not to lie to us. When we were hit with 9/11 the president should be given the authority to protect us. So we went to Afghanistan. (I might add they just had the election of who is going to be the leader of Kabul, a glorified mayor, because the countryside is controlled by the warlords and drug lords, which is where bin Laden is, somewhere in those hills.) So we have this false face of a democracy there.
But Iraq is the defining issue of our time. A thousand-plus American lives lost: not one from the top 1 percent, not one a child of a congressperson. Seven thousand-plus injured, more numbers every day. Bush sees the color rosy; I see the color blood, billions of dollars spent, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and now our friends mock us as we sink in that sand. Even those who are not with us, it is in the world's interest to end the crisis in Iraq. There is no loser or winner; we must end it. But we need the world together. We went in by ourselves; but we cannot come out by ourselves. I'm convinced a leader who is not invested in Iraq will then have the authority to convene our other allies around the world. He must remain heavy on: We were wrong to go in Iraq. We must figure out an international plan to come out.
Secondly, he must focus even more on the economy, because while the wealthy have gotten wealthier with government subsidy, the middle class got a tax cut, a job cut and the benefit cut and a health care hike and a tuition hike so they really got short-term pleasure and long-term pain. There must be incentives made clear: If I'm president, my incentives will be to reinvest in America, not divest. Presently, if you go offshore to avoid paying taxes and get a no-bid contract, then that is an incentive to divest. It should be the reverse. We must not give up on the idea that we are all Americans who live under one big tent, and we should have an even playing field for access to education and health care and criminal justice. These themes matter.
Q: There are some that say the Bush administration should receive important credit for advancing affirmative action because of the appointment of African-American Cabinet members. What is your response?
A: Those appointments are people who follow his line of thinking; it does not advance the cause of social justice. They create an imagery without the substance to back it up. What's more compelling to me is Mr. Bush put a picture of Dr. King up in the White House, has black Cabinet members at the ceremony and had the King family there and that afternoon sent a lawyer to the Supreme Court to destroy affirmative action. Wolves in sheep clothing. The next year he laid the wreath at Dr. King's gravesite. Bowed his head and prayed. The next day, put Charles Pickering, Trent Lott's choice on the federal bench, up for a lifetime job. Appointing key blacks to positions who ultimately agree with him becomes, in some sense, a diversion.
His father had blacks around him when he bombed Grenada; didn't make it right when he bombed Panama. Put it another way: When the Giants play the Dodgers, there is the black and orange and the blue and grey. When only Jackie Robinson was playing you could choose a team based upon skin color and some hope of a breakthrough. Today you have to choose a team based upon regional preference. Because they have blacks whites and browns on all teams, so you cannot choose them. We must now choose a team based upon its direction, not its complexion. When Bush says Clarence Thomas is his favorite Supreme Court justice, I get no pride out of that, nor security. Clarence Thomas is his father's monument to racial cynicism. A society of manipulating the presence of blacks, just like these right-wing evangelists in the South have all white, states' rights, Jefferson Davis-ideology, anti-Mandela, anti-Martin Luther King and have three black choir members right behind them on Sunday morning singing deception.
Q: Why has the black caucus in Congress been so intimidated by this president and his administration? Why has it been marginalized to such a degree compared to its past activities over the last couple of decades?
A: Based upon the kind of anti-civil rights, anti-labor, anti-gender equality ideology, it's not just the black caucus the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, organized labor. This kind of rigid ideological breakdown has marginalized more than half of America. That's why the locked-out must form a coalition based upon shared interest. It must be multi-racial, multicultural. If you want to risk privatizing social security in the stock market, then you have a choice: Bush. If you want to raise the bar on Section 8 housing so working poor will become homeless, you have a choice. If you want to follow the rich young ruler who gives subsidy to the wealthy and speaks pejoratively of the poor, then you have a choice. If you are against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC), you have a choice. Bush has given us very clear lines of ideology and demarcation. I think we ought to seize this moment to build a coalition to affirm the America of our dreams.
Q: You've done a great deal in your career to help young people in this country. Lately, Bill Cosby has received a great deal of press because of comments he has been making. To what degree do you agree and disagree with his comments about African-American families and their children?
A: I agree with Bill Cosby in absolute terms. But I must put it in context. If Clarence Thomas had said the same thing, there would be a very different reaction. Bill speaks as a father attempting to lift up, not to put down. Bill takes the premise that if you are behind, through no fault of your own, you've got to run faster to catch up, because being behind, unless you run faster, you are forever condemned to be behind. His premise is: If you're in a hole you have to reach for a rope, not for a shovel. His premise is: You may not be responsible for being down, but you must be responsible for getting up. It was a challenge like a coach to a team, like a father to a family. Now the right wing, for its own purpose, has said, Aha, that's why they are there. Bill said, I know why we are there.
He was at the '54 Supreme Court decision celebration. He looked up and saw on that wall people who were martyrs and those who had already passed on: Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, Dorothy Height. He looked at those who made brick without straw. So you mean to tell me that being locked out of law school at Maryland, this guy beat the Supreme Court, because strong minds break strong chains. You mean that we came from schools where it was illegal to learn to read and write. You mean we came from a situation where our black soldiers had fewer rights on the bases than Nazi POWs. Here we are now with access to these universities and these opportunities on the backs of the martyrs and you are doing less than your best, you don't have a right to do less than your best. That was his point. Nobody has earned the right to do less than their best. That does not excuse those who oppress people, who deny people. All that we really know is: Each of us has our own story, but at the end of the day you must, where there is hurt and hate, hope must abound.
I went to a high school in L.A. two days after Bill gave his speech. They had just won another championship. I said, "Can anybody at this school play basketball?" and they cheered. I said, "Are there any basketball players here? Who are the team members?" They stood, and they cheered their champions. I said, "Who is the captain?" The captain stood. I said, "You got a good basketball team?" "Yes, sir." "How many hours do you guys practice a day?" he said, "Five." "Five?" "Yup. We practice from 5:30-7:30; we practice in the afternoon from 3 to 6 five hours a day." A lot of practice. I said, "How many days a week?" He said, "We practice five days a week." So I said, "What about the weekend?" He said, "On our own." I said, "You practice five hours a day. Can you ever have radios in practice?" "No, sir, reverend, we can't." I said, "Can your girlfriend come to practice?" "No, no. There can be no radio, no TV." I said, "When you get tired, can you sit down?" "No." I said, "What do you do when you get tired?" They said, "We suck it up." I said, "But if you are tired, and you come from the projects ?" He said, "We can't use that. We got to suck it up." That means five hours a day, no radio, no TV, no girlfriend. I said, "When you go home at night, do you study three hours a night?" "No, reverend." "Study two hours a night?" "Sometimes." "One hour?" "Sometimes." I said, "Can your girlfriend call you?" "Yup." "What you do when you get tired?" "I go to sleep." I said, "Look, young man: On this application, your legs are going to run you in doors; your mind can keep you in." Bill is saying the same hard-nosedness that coaches apply to make the best ballplayers can make the best scholars. It's not genetic; it's a matter of application.
So appreciate the context of Bill's statement. It was a lift up: I challenge this. Undeniably, it was not a put-down.
My name is Jesse Jackson. I'm invited here today to receive this prestigious award, but you know me as Jesse Jackson who ran for president. You saw me speak at the San Francisco convention in 1984. But Jesse Jackson, that's my third name. I'm adopted. I was born to a 15-year-old mother. I went to schools where it was illegal for black teachers to make the same amount of money as white teachers. I had to go to double-shift schools; we couldn't go to school all day because it was overcrowded. I was Jesse Burns until I was 12. I was adopted and became Jesse Jackson. In some sense, Bill is saying, That's a given. But where there is life there is hope; where there is hope there is infinite possibility. Our story must be the story of overcoming, not adjusting. That was his point, and I agree with it.
Q: Earlier you made comments about how many young men, particularly young African-American men, were in prison today. One of the causes for that has been the reaction to and the involvement of drugs in our society and mandatory sentencing. Would you please address the success or failure of the war on drugs and what you believe can be done about the problem?
A: It's really been a war on the poor. What drove three strikes and you're out, interestingly enough, is that Len Bias was the No.1 pick for the Boston Celtics. They saw dreams of Len Bias and Larry Bird playing and they would dominate the NBA, and then Bias died from an overdose. Tip O'Neill said, We are offended by this drug. It was really driven by a liberal, Tip O'Neill. He came to Washington and said, We must crack down on crack, it took away our championship basketball team. It came out of the emotions of the Len Bias death and overdose of drugs. It is highly irrational for you, then, to deny judges the right to make judgment and have mandatory sentencing. And so: 5 grams of crack, mandatory sentencing; 500 grams of powder, you get probation. Of those arrested, 85 percent of rural arrests are white, 75 percent of urban arrests are white, 55 percent of those in jail are black. So if you are black or brown or poor without legal representation, you go to jail. Noelle Bush, Governor Jeb Bush's daughter, got hit three times with crack, she is getting probation and rehabilitation. She should get that. She shouldn't be in jail. Her grandfather was president, her uncle is president, her dad is governor, if she could help it, she would turn crack loose, but she is sick, so she needs rehabilitation and probation. But if she were black, she would be in jail. Rush Limbaugh got sick and got trapped on drugs and maybe even laundering money to get them; he was able to go and get his own prescribed resuscitation. His own prescribed, I'm going to take off for 30 days and go and get well and I'll see you all when I get back. Those are privileges different than what's driving this massive jail-industrial complex.
We are not fighting a war on drugs unless we have a commitment. Most of those young people, 85 percent of them, are in on non-violent drug charges. They, in fact, should be on monitor, on bracelets, rehabilitation and some form of restoration. I was in a jail just a few months ago, in Chicago, Cook County: 12,000 inmates, 9,000 prisoners, average age 22. I asked, "How many of you finished high school?" Ten percent stood. "How many of you on non-violent drug charges?" Eighty-five percent stood. "How many of you had been to jail before?" All of them stood. "Two times?" They stood. "You have a child?" They stood. "Two children?" They stood again basically warehousing these young people, who are recycling their sickness. There is no plan to revive them, but they will be on our streets. Why is there such a rise in young black women with HIV/AIDS? Because young black men trapped in these overcrowded jails have same-sex sex, same-cell sex, drug sex, rape sex; they come out after six months and they spread it. So we are challenged to figure out some way to lift up and not lock up these young people. If it's a violent drug crime, that's different, but most of them are there on non-violent drug charges driven by poverty.
Q: Does the civil rights movement today really have the ability to draw effectively from a generation of young people who did not grow up with the excitement of the era of protest and action?
A: The civil rights struggle is not over. The very idea of back in the civil rights days is a faulty notion. Access to capital, industry, technology, universities, decent housing, fairness in the criminal justice, fairness in the right to vote these remain unfinished challenges in our society, driven in the main by race, and by gender and by poverty. Many young people have been sidetracked by TV mesmerizing them into a false sense of comfort. It becomes our challenge to compete with that media.
I went to a school not long ago and some young people had their shorts way down, showing the crevice of their behind; their shorts halfway up their back and had on $200 tennis shoes with the strings out. I said, "Man, you into the style." They said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Which Italian designer designed those shorts where they are hanging way low and your shorts up behind your back and you don't have strings on?" I said, "Tell me real quick, which Italian designer designed it?" He said, "Um, I'm not sure." I said, "No one designed that. In jail you don't have tailor-made pants. You can't use belts or strings because you might hang somebody. The idea of the loose-hanging pants exposing your butt in public is jail culture glamorized on TV as the hip thing to do." It's decadent, and it is not uplifting. It's a real struggle here today with media values having a debilitating effect upon the development of our youth.
I said to the kids in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating the police had been set free; 5,000 kids in front of Stevie Wonder's radio station at 5:00 in the morning; Crenshaw was burning at that time I said, "Let's turn pain into power. Let's register and vote. Stop burning your own neighborhood. Let's fight back. Let's register. Let's vote." And they cheered. One young man said, "Reverend, I ain't registering. I ain't voting, to hell with it. I'm tired. I'm going to fight back." I said, "What are you saying?" He said, "I'm tired of marching and voting." He had never marched, he had never voted, but he was tired of it. So I said, "You upset?" He said, "Damn right I'm upset." I said, "What you upset about?" "You know why we're upset. They let these police free that beat Rodney King. It's time to fight back." I said, "It is time to fight back. Are you saying to me if you were in Simi Valley, on that jury, that you would have hung that jury, you would have used your vote to hang that jury." He said, "Sure, I wouldn't have punked out. I would have hung the jury." I said, "Register." "I'm not going to register." I said, "You do know only registered voters can serve on juries." He said, "Oh." He had had zeal without knowledge.
By extension, I spoke at Sacramento State last year during the political campaign. Five thousand young people and teachers came to the rally. We registered about 700. I said, "On Tuesday morning, we are going to have a massive get-out-the-vote campaign on the campus. Where is your booth on campus?" They said, "We don't have one." So I came to San Francisco State and spoke. Three thousand young people, and we registered them. I said, "Where do you vote?" "We don't have one on campus." In the last election, Schwarzenegger/Davis race, there were only 17 campuses in the whole state that had booths on campus. Young Americans have the right to register where they attend school. They don't have to vote absentee and should have voter booths on each campus. It's not just that young people don't understand yesterday's civil rights struggle, students have the right to vote today. And what are their reasons for voting? To lower tuition, better teacher pay, a job when they graduate and not go to war and lose their lives unless there is some justifiable cause.
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