E-mail a friendRev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
airdate January 24, 2008
A longtime civil rights and political activist, Jesse Jackson Sr. was an assistant to Martin Luther King, Jr. during the '60s movement. He's the founder of the nonprofit Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, has written two books and launched the Wall Street Project, to open access to capital for women and minorities. He's also a former presidential candidate, who maintains his involvement in the process, leading voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns, and has often been an unofficial U.S. envoy on diplomatic missions.
Former presidential candidate discusses what has changed since his campaign 20 years ago. (2:08)
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Tavis: Twenty years ago in 1988, during his second bid for the White House, Jesse Jackson won seven Democratic primaries and four caucuses, finishing second to the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis. Twenty years later an African American is once again vying for the Democratic nomination and this weekend, in his home state of South Carolina, African American voters will have a major say in the outcome. Reverend Jackson joins us tonight, though, from his adopted home of Chicago. Reverend, as always, nice to talk to you, sir.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.: Very well, sir.
Tavis: Let me go back and then I will go forward. Go back first to Monday night. What did you make of what happened in South Carolina, your home state, on that stage Monday night?
Jackson: Well, two things. One, I thought that if Tom Brady, the quarterback from New England, is doing well as a passer, the opposition wants to get him on the ground as a runner. Barack has been doing quite well on this building a message of hope and reconciliation and really focusing on ending the war and the like.
To get to diverted arguing with her surrogate, Bill Clinton, it takes him off message. Bill runs some risk by aggravating loyal support base among African Americans, but Barack runs an even greater risk being off of his message, which is a message of a reconciliation and hope.
Tavis: You've already endorsed Barack Obama, we all know that, but you are a long-time friend of Bill Clinton. Let me just ask you a really tricky and thorny question that I would love to get your take on and that is if you're Bill Clinton and you have this longstanding base of support in the African American community but obviously you want to see your wife win because you think she's the better candidate, how do you run against a guy who happens to be an African American?
Jackson: Well let's take principal positions that are honest positions. My concern is not Bill, Hillary, Barack to that extent. It's that in that state, 62 percent of all people who work have no health insurance. It's the number one state in toxic waste dumps. Students there last year borrowed $1 billion in student loans with $400 million in student loan debt. You hear where I'm coming from? Message?
Tavis: Yeah.
Jackson: In that state, it's 35 percent Black, prisons are 75 percent Black. They've arrested 110,000 Blacks a year the last six years, that's 110,000 calls to lawyers and bailiffs and court appearances. Thirty-four state prisons, one state college. The largest single industry in the state is the jail industrial complex for profits. I'm interested in the issue of racial disparity and racial justice as prerequisites for racial healing and social justice.
Tavis: The guy that you support has been criticized, and not just criticized but much of the mainstream press has been very clear about saying that up until this point - that is to say South Carolina - he has been running a race-neutral campaign. So the question is were you happy with his addressing those issues the other night, or do you think as he goes down South he will address those kinds of race issues head on?
Jackson: Well, he has addressed more of them and I think when you're running - when I was running, for example, in Iowa, my issue was about farm policy. It was about fair prices for farmers and fair wages for workers because I was in Iowa. It was much the same as I went to New Hampshire. But once I got to South Carolina and went South, I had to deal with the issues of structural inequality, the issues of racial disparity, because that's key to justice.
What folks are facing right now is this issue of racial disparity. There's a disparity even though we are free but we're not equal. We live under one nation, but justice is divisible by race and by class. And so Dr. King would make this case. Now that we are free of the issues involving decency, the right to use hotels, motels, and parks and the like, it's going to cost to close the gap - infant mortality gap, the life expectancy gap, health, education, housing, jobs, access to health care.
So I'm interested in a greater focus, frankly, on an investment in closing those gaps. Barack has been addressing those, I think, in some measure, but they are not the sexy issues the media at this point is interested in, really.
Tavis: What do you see is the primary difference, if there is one, between your running as an American who happens to be Black 20 years ago and his running as an American who happens to be Black today?
Jackson: Well, there's a greater readiness now by the American public to hear what an African American or a woman has to say. I thought one great moment in time was the night that they were (unintelligible) in New Hampshire and you had Bill Richardson, an Hispanic, a progressive White from South Carolina, Edwards, an African American, and a woman running in New Hampshire to determine who would be the next head of state.
That would not have been acceptable 20 years ago. We've just had the right to vote since 1965, so there's a greater readiness to hear the message. What Barack has, I think, going for him is several things. One, he has this magnetic personality. It seems to disarm a lot of people. He also has a message of hope and the money and the machinery and timing.
I think this is a propitious moment for him to make a break a breakthrough if in fact progressives hold true to a progressive agenda and do not, in fact, negate him based upon can he win. Yes, he can win. Whoever gets the most votes can win.
Tavis: (Laughs) That's funny. What do you make of what you could have done - and this may be a little funny to you - but what do you make of what you could have done if you had Barack's money 20 years ago?
Jackson: Well, I think about it, we raised $17 million and got 1,250 delegates. We went into New York in the lead in the three-person with Gore and Dukakis at that time, and Democrats went into a panic. Kind of anybody but Jesse. A panic, what are we going to do if he wins? If I win New York, it's hard to stop me. And so Gore, in effect, pulled out and went on the attack at that time, and $17 million. If I'd had $50 million, you may have had the candidate win a nomination, I think, in 1988. (Laughter) Which means that if we could come that close in '88, we can make it over the hump in 2008.
Tavis: You honestly believe that?
Jackson: Of course I believe that, because I think -
Tavis: You don't think that when you get to the bigger state - you see the Clinton campaign strategy. You've seen as well as I do they know they're not going to win South Carolina, at least they don't expect to win South Carolina. They know that Barack, they expect, would to do well in the South, but there are some major prizes out there - Florida and California. And they think if they can pull the big prizes in the end, they can still win the nomination.
Jackson: And that's why I think the trick is to take Barack off of his trajectory beyond itty-bitty politics of reconciliation and hope and end the war and justice on to arguing with her surrogate. That's almost like triangulation. So you sacrifice, you win South Carolina, but you become so bloody when you face super-duper Tuesday, you're unable to fight the big fight. And so my contest would be - my challenge would be to him is get ahead, not get even.
I know when you're angered by and feel offended by being attacked, champions play with pain. And they run even if they have to limp. I would make the case over and over again of choose to get ahead, not get even in the crunch. If there must be an attack on a surrogate, use one of your surrogates to do it. He has some mighty high profile surrogates - governors and senators.
Let them deal with her surrogate. He, in fact, I think should maintain the high road of hope, which I think has real validity in a campaign when there's so much abounding despair and cynicism in our country today.
Tavis: Let me get a little personal with you and let me ask you on a personal level how is it that you sit comfortably where you sit, again, supporting Barack Obama but being so close to the Clintons for so long. How do you come on TV and make these comments and do these interviews and keep your friendship in its proper perspective?
Jackson: Well, because I'm not negatively attacking anyone. The reason why I urge them to stop the bloodletting is because they cannot become so angry over what I call the wedge and the hedge votes until they cannot recover personally and emotionally. In 1980, Kennedy and Carter had such a dogfight in the primary by the time they got to New York they could not embrace each other.
They never recovered and that crack, in fact, empowered Reagan. So in all their getting in the primary, this is the intraleague battle. The Super Bowl is November. Not Denver, but it is November. And so you kind of have to have one real strong eye and hand on fighting to win the primary, but the bigger is who will, in fact, become the president.
Tavis: Finally, you've been spending a lot of time while they're on the campaign trail discussing who said what and who meant what by what he or she said and what the surrogate said and etc., etc. You've been out talking a lot about this housing crisis; every time I see you you're talking about it. What do you make of what's happening and what's not being talked about with regard to the issue?
Jackson: Well I would think that we should spend more time on who will be the next attorney general. This subprime crisis, or economic subversion, is driving a global recession. We're putting a lot of focus on who is on the deck of the ship. Is it Citigroup or is it Merrill Lynch. But the water came in at the hull of the ship. The reversed redlining where they would not invest in Black and Brown communities, but in fact invested with a poison economic pill.
Fifty-five percent of Blacks got subprime loans. Half of those are eligible for prime and got subprime. Attorney General Lisa Madigan has found, in subpoenaing the records of Countrywide, that there were Blacks and Browns with $120,000 salaries who got steered into subprime; Whites at $40,000 got prime. Now the impact of 55 percent Blacks getting this poison pill and 47 percent Latino and 18 percent White is that the fair housing laws were not in force.
The credit lending laws are not in force. The price we are paying for not enforcing civil rights laws is in fact an second economic Titanic. So we need several things. One, a moratorium on these foreclosures, a commitment to restructure loans and not repossess homes, and some government intervention. What that was in the thirties was a stopping of foreclosure; it was a federal restructuring process.
We did it with farmers in the 1980s (unintelligible) the 1990's. We cannot stand by and watch three million homeowners go down the drain and take the taxpayers with them. For example, in Prince George's county, the largest Black middle class community in America, 15,000 foreclosures, downgrading 300,000 homes.
When you go down, your neighbor's goes down in value - a devaluation of $3 billion. That's the cost of the budget of the entire county of Prince George's County. That's Cleveland, it's L.A., it's Chicago, it's Atlanta. And so we face the most radical shift of wealth in modern history, if not in history all together. And so I would think that now a real focus on A, a moratorium on foreclosures, penalize those lenders who lied and deceived people, and make a commitment not to stop this recession but restructuring long-term fixed rate loans an not repossess homes and auction them and evict people with no place to go.
Tavis: Not on the campaign trail for the White House but still on top of the issues that matter most to people in this country who are politically, socially, and economically disenfranchised. He is, of course, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Reverend, nice to talk to you, we'll do it again soon.
Jackson: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: Take care.
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