Here, I can help.
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In 1965, Jesse Jackson participated in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movement in Selma, Alabama. When Jackson returned from Selma, he threw himself into King’s effort to establish a beachhead of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Chicago. In 1966, King selected Jackson to be head of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, and promoted him to be the national director in 1967. Following the example of Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, a key goal of the new group was to foster “selective buying” (boycotts) as a means to pressure white businesses to hire blacks and purchase goods and services from black contractors. One of Sullivan's precursors was Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a wealthy South Side doctor and entrepreneur and key financial contributor to Operation Breadbasket. Before he moved to Chicago from Mississippi in 1956, Howard, as the head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had successfully organized a boycott against service stations that refused to provide restrooms for blacks.
Jackson was present with King in Memphis when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the day after making his famous "I’ve been to the mountaintop" speech given to the Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ.
In 1984, Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition, which later merged, in 1996, with Operation PUSH. The newly formed Rainbow PUSH organization brought the reverend's role as an important and effective organizer to the mainstream.
In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman who was being held by the Syrian government. Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions in that country. After a dramatic personal appeal that Jackson made to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Goodman was released. Initially, the Reagan administration was skeptical about Jackson's trip to Syria. However, after Jackson secured Goodman's release, United States President Ronald Reagan welcomed both Jackson and Goodman at the White House on January 4, 1984<6>. This helped to boost Jackson's popularity as an American patriot and served as a springboard for his 1984 presidential run.
In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of twenty-two Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Cuban president Fidel Castro.<7>
In 1997, Jackson traveled to Kenya to meet with Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi as United States President Bill Clinton's special envoy for democracy to promote free and fair elections.
In April 1999, during the Kosovo War, Jackson traveled to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three U.S. POWs captured on the Macedonia border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. He met with the then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, who later agreed to release the three men.<8>
On February 15, 2003, Jackson spoke in front of over one million people (estimate) in Hyde Park, London at the culmination of the Anti-War Demonstration against the imminent invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
In November 2004, Jackson visited senior politicians and community activists in Northern Ireland in an effort to encourage better cross-community relations and rebuild the peace process and restore the governmental institutions of the Belfast Agreement
In August 2005, Jackson traveled to Venezuela to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, following controversial remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson in which he implied that Chávez should be assassinated. Jackson condemned Robertson's remarks as immoral. After meeting with Chávez and addressing the Venezuelan Parliament, Jackson said that there was no evidence that Venezuela posed a threat to the U.S. Jackson also met representatives from the Afro Venezuela and indigenous communities.<9>
Campaign platform
In both races, Jackson ran on what many considered to be a very liberal platform. Declaring that he wanted to create a "Rainbow Coalition" of various minority groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, family farmers, the poor and working class, and homosexuals, as well as white progressives who fit into none of those categories, Jackson ran on a platform that included:
creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand,"
reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs,
cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration,
declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation,
instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union,
giving reparations to descendants of black slaves,
supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal–era farm programs,
creating a single-payer system of universal health care,
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment,
increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all,
applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, and
supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.
Jesse Jackson’s most recent project related to presidential politics was gathering information and support to investigate the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, particularly the voting results in Ohio and its recount. Jackson called for a congressional debate on the matter, asking for a fair count and national voting standards. He said that the elections in the United States are each run with different standards by different states with partisan tricks, racial bias, and widespread incompetence and are an open scandal.
Jackson said that he held some hope that the election could be overturned, although he admitted that that was very doubtful. Jackson compared the voting irregularities of Ohio to that of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, saying that if Ohio were Ukraine, the U.S. presidential election would not have been certified by the international community. Jackson has called Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell inappropriately partisan and said that Blackwell may have been pressured by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney to deliver Ohio to the Republican Party.
Based on information obtained in hearings held by Rep. John Conyers (Detroit, Michigan) and discovered during a flawed recount of the Ohio presidential vote called for by Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik, Jackson suggested that the Ohio voting machines were "rigged" and that some African-Americans were forced to stand in line for six hours in the rain before voting. When asked for evidence, Jackson did not give facts, but replied, "Based on distrusting the system, lack of paper trails, the anomaly of the exit polls."
On January 6, 2005, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrat staff released a 100 page report on the Ohio election. This challenge to the Ohio election was rejected by a vote of 74-1 by the United States Senate and 267-31 in the House. Many high-ranking Democrats chose to distance themselves from this debate, including John Kerry, despite Jesse Jackson personally asking Kerry for help. The call for election reform legislation and voting rights protection nonetheless continued from various citizen groups.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_jacksonIt's a shame you can't recognize a genuine hero who is still alive in your lifetime. A lot of our best heroes I only know from books and film. I got to meet Jackson during those Ohio hearings. He is an astonishing American.
And he was the one who convinced Boxer to stand up and challenge the Ohio certification. Him, in a room, talking.
So.
(1000+ posts)
