The other day, I found myself opening up the Cascadia Weekly, a free Bellingham weekly independent newspaper and noticing an opinion piece authored by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, entitled "Eyes On The Prize: Civil Rights deserves civil response."
(By the way, you can download specific issue — the Jan 15 – Jan 23 issue — and read the short article yourself by clicking HERE. The opinion piece is on page 6.)
I read it with rapt attention.
I think it is brilliant. So brilliant, that I quickly penned an email to Jesse Jackson to inquire if I might have permission to reprint the article here on this blog.
I haven’t heard back from them. Of course, it’s only been a day or two, and I’m sure they at RainbowPush.org receive hundreds of inquiries a day.
There were many great points Jesse Jackson made. I appreciate how he opened his article commenting that Martin Luther King, Jr., were he alive today, would be both please and troubled by the current state of affairs in America today.
Undoubtedly, it would bring him joy to know that among those seeking the Democratic nomination to become President of the United States include "an African America, a woman, a white male populist and a Hispanic." This reality today would be unheard of during Martin Luther King’s lifetime.
The disappointment he would feel, Jackson asserts, is the disappointment most of us lovers of freedom, human dignity, and equal civil rights likewise feel. Says Jackson "Poverty is up; hunger spreading. Millions of children go without adequate health care. Affordable housing is lacking…the recession has been going on long before the economists woke up to it."
Last month we remembered the legacy of Dr. King on the anniversary of his birth. "I have a dream!" are perhaps the four most famous words the fallen leader is known for.
Yet, Jesse Jackson noted "King had a dream, but he was not a dreamer." He realized that changing laws is not the same as changing hearts. He knew that there was much work to do in the word to raise consciousness and bring humankind together as the brother- and sisterhood they are.
All of this Jesse pointed out to address the current distraction from the all-important work of uniting America that is dangerously close to dwelling on what divides. The media and others blow little, innocent things completely out of proportion, rather than creating constructive, meaningful dialogue.
Jesse Jackson explains what he means (referencing the two front runners, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama) in the following two paragraphs I have extracted from his opinion piece:
When Obama said that Hillary was "likeable enough," it was not a gender insult; it was a gentle compliment. These two were friends; they have compaigned together. To turn it into anythin else is simply silly. When Hillary said Lyndon Johnson was necessary to get the Voting Rights Act passed, of course she’s right. It took years of demonstrations, litigation and legislation to challenge segregation. King appreciated what Johnson helped achieve, even as he continued to challenge him. Hillary’s statement is not a racial insult. When surrogates state demeaning Obama’s experience as an organizer or insinuating garbage about his past, that degrades all of us, not just him.
The problem with this stuff is that it can easily get out of hand, embittering supporters on both sides. We’re having a vital competition inside the team about who should be the first-string quarterback. And it’s great that the competition is stiff and the competitors all highly skilled. But the battle for position shouldn’t be so bitter that it divides the team . . .
Yes, we live in exciting times. The truth is, we all want essentially the same things. So rather than be at each other’s throats and taking cheap, mean-spirited shots, I think Jesse hits the nail on the head when he concludes, "Let’s appeal to people’s hopes, not their fears, and give them someone to vote *for*, not against."
