TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
• Rev. Jackson in the Chicago Sun Times
• Rev. Jackson's bio

E-mail a friend

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome the Reverend Jesse Jackson back to this program. The tireless civil rights leader is leading a march this weekend in Atlanta to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Reverend Jackson is calling on congressional leaders to act sooner rather than later to renew key provisions of the act which are set to expire in 2007. He joins us tonight from Washington. Reverend Jackson, welcome back to the program, sir.

Jesse Jackson: Thank you for allowing me to share with you and your audience.

Tavis: Glad to have you on. Let me, if I can, ask you to indulge me with two quick questions I want to raise about news of last week before I move on to the march later this week. First of all, the AFL-CIO. You've been long a labor leader and a labor activist in this country. We all know that two key--key two unions--two key unions, that is, part of the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and the SEIU--the Service Employees International--two key groups walked out of the AFL-CIO. What does this split mean? What's happening to labor in the future? What do you make of it?

Jackson: Well, they're different on priorities. I really hate that they divided, but all is not lost if in fact both of them have shared commitments to workers' rights to organize and to increase voter registration. There seems to be a big internal debate about whether more money's being spent on political organizing or worker organizing, and the feeling was on one group that as you keep losing workers, you keep losing clout. Actually those two goals are reconcilable, and while they differed in Chicago and they broke away last week, in Atlanta, at the voting rights workers' right to organize march in Atlanta, both John Sweeney will be there and Andrew stern, so at least on this issue of voting rights reauthorization, of voter enforcement and workers' rights to organize, at least on those two critical areas, they still share common ground.

Tavis: Let me ask you one more question on that before I move on to the other issue of last week. It's one thing for you to suggest to me that they still share common ground, but the fact of the matter is they did split. How will the right, not a friend of labor in this country necessarily, use this as a wedge?

Jackson: Well, some will attempt to use it, but, of course, I think that when you look at the issue of workers' rights, workers on this soil, as we export jobs and capital, import cheap product and import cheap labor or guest workers, if you're a hotel worker in New York or Chicago, say a maid, you make 17 to $20 an hour and full health insurance and a retirement package. If you're that same hotel worker in Atlanta, Georgia, she makes $8.00 an hour without health insurance and without a retirement package, and there are those who believe the south is ripe for organization. You have the most working poor people. Now, if they're going to put some real money, if SEIU and Teamsters are going to put some real money and real progress in the south, they'll have a tremendous impact. And if labor's organized numbers increase, in many ways, Tavis, even though there is a difference, maybe the lack of unity at this point could mean a competition for workers. It could mean who's going to organize the most workers? Who's going to register the most voters? And where will blacks and browns fit in that mix? Maybe that new competition, frankly, is not all bad.

Tavis: All right. That's the question I wanted to ask about labor. Let me ask you another question with regard to news breaking last week. While we are waiting, of course, for the confirmation hearings for Judge John Roberts to begin in the judiciary committee and the U.S. Senate, we're starting to get a picture now of where he stands particularly and specifically on the issue of civil rights. And you saw the story break last week in the 'New York Times' that referenced his writing in a particular memo where he basically said that affirmative action was a failed policy, a failed program because it required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates. What'd you make of that?

Jackson: Well, he has the velvet glove image, but a hard right-wing fist. Upon his nomination, we have one less woman, only 1/9 of the court is female--will be female, and the nation's 55% female. We'll have less one advocate for women's rights and workers' rights and voter rights and no Hispanic at all. It looks very un-American and therefore we should fight this nomination.

Tavis: Do you expect that this picture might get worse or are you prepared to hear what he has to say about his decisions and rulings of the past?

Jackson: Well, we have to hear what he has to say, but we must judge him in part on what his record is. I remember there are those who said Clarence Thomas had some bad voting records, but once he'll get there, he'll have a lifetime job. It very much is a lifetime job and an ideology that's basically anti the interests of civil rights and social justice and workers' rights, and so clearly the right wing rejoiced when Mr. Roberts was nominated because his positions are against affirmative action, women's right to self-determination and workers' rights. He clearly has on a velvet glove of all the right images, but his agenda is clearly against the interests of a more inclusive expansive America. And now the court simply--the decision that we've won on affirmative action, we could lose those now. Women's rights to self-determination--the rich women will maintain their right of self-determination, the right of abortion, if they choose to do that. Poor people will have less of an option. We have more and more the opposite. You look at Roberts and look at Clarence Thomas, you see the very opposite of a Thurgood Marshall. We miss him so much now.

Tavis: I would not pass the opportunity to ask those questions with you on a program like this, but now let me move to why I really wanted to have you on, which is to talk about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and what's happening with this march in Atlanta this weekend. Before we move forward, let me go back one more time. For those who have been reading a lot about this thing called the Voting Rights Act of '65 and the fortieth anniversary and congress being asked to renew key provisions, take me back and tell me what happened in '65 and why this act was so important.

Jackson: Well, for the first time in 346 years, African Americans had the right to vote, a right promised in 1870. And that's why Lyndon Johnson said we got the emancipation--the proclamation without the emancipation. The promise had to be honored. The promise had to be honored. So we finally got the states' right to vote in 1965, but those who we defeated in 1965 never stopped trying to undermine it. That is, the enforcement provisions of section 2, the language provisions in section 5, the pre-clearance provisions. They used gerrymandering, annexation, at-large, roll purging, gerrymandering, and now using gentrification or just don't enforce the act.

That's what's happening now. And so it has to be reauthorized every 25 years. Nixon reauthorized it to tighten it up. Reagan reauthorized it to tighten it up. But when the Congressional Black Caucus met with President Bush about 2 months ago, Congressman Jackson said, "Mr. Bush, will you extend Voting Rights Act with enforcement provisions?" he said, "I don't know what you're talking about." Well, having been a governor of Texas, he had to have known.

The right wing does not want it reauthorized. Here's what I mean by that. In Georgia, for example, there were 18 ways that you could register with an I.D. You could use your utility bills, gas bill, light bill. They've reduced it now to only state-issued I.D., so if you go to Georgia Tech, for example, or the University of Georgia, you can use your I.D. to register, but if you go to Emory or Clark or Morehouse or Spelman, you can't use your I.D. That's kind of smelly. There are 100 counties in the state that have no voter issuance I.D. place. So if you are old, infirm, don't have transportation, you can't get there. It becomes very difficult. If you've got a car, the price of gas amounts to a poll tax. They say it's all about fraud, but guess what. If you vote absentee, you don't need any I.D. at all. So it's nothing but a scheme to restrict voting and, of course, oppress workers.

And so the attorney general, we've asked him to reject this scheme. The 'New York Times' asked him to reject this scheme, but so far, Mr. Gonzalez says he'll check with what Mr. Bush has to say. Mr. Bush says he has nothing to say. So there is a move to in fact undercut the Voting Rights Act of '65.

So we're doing a march August 6, the fortieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act signed by Lyndon Johnson, witnessed by Dr. King. We're going to march on Atlanta, Georgia, from the federal building to Morris Brown College, to that field, to Herndon Field, and so forth. The good news is the entire Congressional Black Caucus and the Latino caucus, the AFL-CIO and the new organized group led by SEIU and the Teamsters, Stevie Wonder, Harry Belafonte, Roberta Flack, Maxine Waters, Mayor Villaraigosa, Mayor Shirley Franklin--the momentum's building, in fact, for voters' rights reauthorization, extension, enforcement and workers' rights to organize and to end this unnecessary war which has gone awry.

Tavis: Let me ask you right quick why it is if we really do believe that the right to vote is one of the most sacred rights we have, for those who don't get this, why do we have to reauthorize this thing every 25 years? What's that about?

Jackson: It is race-based, and given the present makeup of the court, for example, if it were permanent and didn't go through hearings for justification, the Supreme Court would knock it down saying it does not narrowly tailor. If in fact, we did not have these hearings, we could not justify in this court reauthorization. So we must pass the test of strict scrutiny and narrowly tailored. If it's permanent and if it's national, permanent and national means the death knell of it. It must be reauthorized. Until we get what Congressman Jackson calls the constitutional right to vote for all Americans and enforcement provisions, we in fact need reauthorization for section 2 and section 5 intact, and the right wing is fiercely trying to undermine the language provision as well as the pre-clearance provisions of it.

Tavis: Let me ask you right quick before I let you go. Beyond renewing the Voting Rights Acts of '65, what about the larger issue of voter reform? And there are a lot of folk who are asking questions more and more these days, on the left and on the right, about whether or not, as a country, as a government, we really do want all of Americans to vote and to participate in the process, because if we did, there are many things we could do to make voting easier in America. Yes?

Jackson: Oh, of course. You should have on-site same-day registration. There are 50 state separate and unequal elections. If you live in Wisconsin or Vermont, Wisconsin or Vermont, you vote on the same day that--you register and you vote the same day. North Dakota, no registration at all. In Vermont and Maine, you can vote from jail. So you have 50 states and separate and unequal elections. That's why you have one deal in Florida in 2000, another deal in Ohio in 2004 where secretaries of state call the final shot. We really do need the constitutional right to vote for all Americans. It's strange enough we fight for it in Iraq. It's pure in the sense that we wrote that constitution, but women are protected in that constitution, women are protected they have their E.R.A. in Iraq. In Iraq, Baghdad, the capital is enfranchised, unlike D.C. in our own country. In Iraq, the Sunnis and the Kurds, the minority, are protected in the constitution, so you can have a Kurd, a minority, at the head of state.

Tavis: Right.

Jackson: So they have full protection there, and we do not have it here, so we got to keep marching, keep fighting, and don't give up. And I say August 6, make Dr. King rejoice. Make Lyndon Johnson rejoice. Make those who were martyrs in '65 say that their blood was not shed in vain, so let's march in big numbers and make a statement. We're going forward by hope and not backwards by fear and not backwards by any kind of adjustment to any retrogression of our struggle.

Tavis: Reverend Jackson, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for your time, sir.

Jackson: Thank you.

Tavis: All the best to you. Up next on this program, Grammy-winning gospel duo Mary Mary out with a new CD this summer. Stay with us.