E-mail a friendRev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
airdate October 6, 2009
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.
Rev. Jackson talks about President Obama's commitment to combating the rash of youth violence in Chicago. (1:29)
Full Interview (11:33)
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Tavis: Tomorrow in Chicago Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will meet with school officials to discuss the rash of school violence in the city over the past month.
In advance of that meeting tonight I'm pleased to be joined by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder, of course, of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Reverend Jesse Jackson is in Chicago tonight. Reverend, as always, good to have you on this program, sir.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.: Yes, sir.
Tavis: Let me start with the obvious. What is happening in Chicago with regard to youth violence? What's happening there?
Jackson: That was the tragedy of Derrion Albert being beaten to death last week, and it became a big deal because it was caught on video and it was such a savage, hateful attack on him until it captured people's attention here, the White House and around the world.
The fact is, Tavis, this is a pattern, not an incident. Last year, 40 youths were shot and 40 were killed. That is a state of emergency that requires government intervention to assure all children safe passage to, at and from school, and that has not happened.
It happened in Little Rock in 1957, and we intervened and assured all children in the face of violence safe passage. That must happen. I hope that when Secretary Arne Duncan comes back home tomorrow and Attorney General Holden, they come prepared to act to provide and make the one assurance of safe passage.
Tavis: To your point about coming prepared to act, for you, their acting would mean what, specifically?
Jackson: It could mean some kind of anti-gang intervention. It also could mean looking at the structure of things. If you know Chicago, there's a fine community called Altgeld Gardens, a very poor area where the president used to be a community organizer.
The first class state-of-the-art school called Carver High, it's now Carver Military, it's about one-fifth full. Kids from that area have to go past that school and catch buses and do three transfers to get to Fenger High, and they enrolled in another completely different area.
Those kids should be able to go to school where they live and not have to go through three bus transfers and create this unnatural tension between two communities. That's a thing that can happen right now. A second thing they need is there must be another intervention, not just on the children, but on the predicament of adults.
Ray La Hood, the secretary of transportation, issued 119 stimulus contracts. Two percent went to Blacks, so poverty is a form of violence. We have the case of a suit filed by Attorney General Lisa Madigan where they found systematic patterns of home foreclosure exploitation.
So it's not just the children, it's also their parents; it's also the economy playing some role in all of this.
Tavis: While there was a great deal of talk, of course, in the last week or so about Chicago's bid to host the Olympics - of course, we know that bid did not come through - give me some sense of the focus and attention that's being placed on this as compared to the Olympic hype over the last week or two.
Jackson: Well, there was a concern about the Olympic Games, but we're also fighting for Olympic education. This is Chicago, and I wish we had won the Olympics. I understand why we didn't win it. The U.S. has hosted it eight times and South America has not hosted it one time; that's a factor. The IOC, the Olympics, gave the World Cup to South Africa as a way of saying thank you for ending apartheid. In some sense, the civil struggle there and the poverty in Rio is a sympathy note for the IOC in that area.
Chicago said, "Here's what we have to offer you," and IOC says, "Here's what we have to offer Rio." So it could have been clash of cultures, but I think in the end that we sent our A team - we sent the president, his wife, Oprah Winfrey, the mayor and the governor, but in the international global politics, they see spreading it around and ultimately maybe that is a good thing.
I do know when Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson went to make the appeal in Tokyo since they know so many of the IOC members, it may have had some impact. But perhaps this was just Rio's time.
Tavis: What's the sense in - I don't ask you to speak for every Black person in Chicago and I know there's no one answer that covers all this, but give me your sense of what's being said in the Black community about the involvement or lack thereof of the president to date on this youth violence issue.
We know that Duncan and Holder are coming tomorrow, but what's being said about the president, since he's from Chicago, and again, to your point, used to work on the South Side as an organizer?
Jackson: Well, you're sending an attorney general, you're sending in the secretary of Education. I hope he sends in the urban czar as well. It's on his radar screen, because among other things he worked in that community and you saw it on TV in Washington, so I'm sure it's close to his heart.
But now that same area not only needs some anti-gang intervention, they need some targeted economic stimulus. You're talking about 20 percent unemployment among adults and 40 percent among children. You're talking about extreme poverty.
We've had stimulus top-down, we watered the leaves. We must now water the roots. I'm convinced that we must have some targeted stimulus impact of jobs and education. The fallout, Tavis, of eight and a half million jobs lost in the last 18 months, four and a half million homes in foreclosure, disproportionate Black and Brown according to all of the studies, 100 billion student loan debt, plus lack of access to healthcare.
The compounding of all of that is weighing very heavily upon the poorest people in our society. They need a stimulus.
Tavis: What, specifically, ought to be done? You raised it a couple of times now, I want to go right to it. The home foreclosures, which have entrapped and certainly hurt Black and Brown disproportionately - what specifically ought to be done about that issue?
Jackson: Many of the banks that got the stimulus money were the ones guilty of predatory exploitation. So they got - Jesse James got paid twice. He got paid robbing and he got paid with the bailout. There must be linkage to that money to reinvest in America, to restructure loans, and not repossess homes.
It's homes and churches are all being affected very much by the lack of a plan to restructure and not repossess. Right now, 20 million homes are underwater, one of every three American homeowners now is a month behind in their mortgage; it could be one of two by next year.
This is an extreme crisis being (unintelligible) the same banks that got stimulus, the same banks that have an artificially high rate on homeowners and on student loans.
So I feel that this is the time now to have a massive commitment to restructure loans and not repossess homes, and those banks that got the bailout must link it to reinvesting in America and not just more greed, buying more banks. They've said that the banks are too big to fail. Well, now Goldman Sachs is twice as big; $175 billion for AIG, and so far they suggest maybe $18, $19 trillion has gone to the biggest on Wall Street and the (unintelligible) the people. We need another formula.
The president, I think has reckoned with a great degree of haste and strength and character, but now it must be a renewed focus, I think, and bottom-up, not just top-down.
Tavis: To your point, though, when, where, and how do you see that money, pardon the phrase, trickling down to everyday people? Wall Street's got the money, to your point; now they're celebrating, but when, where, and how does that get to the weak working class?
Jackson: It's not, and that's where the emergency was that started the other collapse on Wall Street driven by lack of regulation, lack of government oversight, and greed. And so they got bailout and now they're sending money back to Washington. So from Washington to Wall Street back to Washington, it has not gotten to the bottom.
There must be a second wave of stimulus, and it must be focused on the bottom. One bank here got $2 billion; they didn't want - they sent the money back. If that money goes to save $2 billion to 10 local banks, $20 million per bank, they'd have been in a better position to deal with houses, small businesses, job training the unemployable.
But right now, unemployment is going up. Home foreclosure is going up. Student loan rates are going up. Healthcare access is increasing. So we've stopped a certain stimulus at the top; the hemorrhaging at the bottom is substantial.
Tavis: You've been a long-time Democrat and ran for the White House before Barack Obama, as we all know, in '84 and '88. If the Democrats cannot turn this economy around where everyday people are concerned and the numbers that you just mentioned a moment ago don't start to go in a different direction, what's going to happen in the midterms next year?
Jackson: Well, our fate will be about job creation. It will lie in that. There's a lot of focus on Iraq and Afghanistan (unintelligible) in putting America back to work. If you were in a wreck tonight and someone got there real fast and stopped your face and nose from bleeding, a doctor would say, "What about his aorta? Is his aorta hemorrhaging?" That will kill you.
So while we've done some patching up, up top, the hemorrhaging, bottom-up, is in fact in every category still erupting great blood that the increased number were losing more jobs, losing more houses, or more student loan rates. If banks can get 0 percent money on top, why should students pay 6 to 8 percent? Why can't students get the same deal the banks get, for example?
I'm anxious for us to be able to have a meeting with the president and his appropriate advisers to look at a real plan for bottom-up as well to match the top-down commitment which declared the emergency.
Tavis: Just got a minute or so to go here and I want to end this conversation where we began, really by tying these two things up. We've talked about two things tonight in this brief conversation. We've talked about, of course, the economy where everyday people are concerned, and we, of course, have talked about youth violence in Chicago.
There are some who do not buy the connection between crime and poverty in this country. Make the case for me, the connection between crime and poverty, number one, and finally tell me what's going to happen - what are you guys going to do in Chicago to stop this in the immediate?
Jackson: Well, poverty is a form of violence, lack of healthcare is a form of violence, unemployment is a form of violence in the face of such plenty and so we have some need now to address ending the violence against people who are facing such deprivation.
You can use the bankruptcy laws to bail out companies like GM; you cannot use them to bail out student loans. And so I think that in the reworking of our economy there must be much more focus on bottom-up, not just top-down.
In the short run, we need the government to intervene, to stop the spate of killing in rather targeted areas. We did it in Little Rock; we must do it here. The killing rate in Chicago, 40 youths shot and 40 killed, those are Baghdad numbers. Those are Kabul, Afghanistan numbers. So we cannot just kind of talk it away, there must be some kind of real intervention to stop the violence, as well as to create security, as well as for our youth who want to make a transition. They need transportation, job training, and jobs.
And I might add with 2.3 million Americans in prison, a million Black, 500,000 Latino, those are real structural injustices that must - that cry for relief.
Tavis: Reverend Jackson, always appreciate you sharing your insights. Glad to have you on the program, thank you.
Jackson: Thank you, sir.
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