Jesse Jackson
NICHOLS, JOHN
The progressive interview Jesse Jackson 'What progressives must do is keep focusing on the moral center, not the political center.' BY JOHN NICHOLS When the overwhelming nature of the Republican...
...There are many schools in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles where there are sometimes sixty-five and seventy different nationalities in one school...
...They've franchised the name, but their positions do not reflect the character of the faith...
...Two of your adversaries, George Wallace and Lester Maddox, were part of a tradition that could be traced back through Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats to the opponents of the New Deal and to earlier even more nefarious figures...
...Rush Limbaugh, in particular, takes frequent shots at you...
...The issue is four balls and you're on...
...And those who use it now will not be successful in turning the clock back...
...King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was written to the Christian coalition...
...Bill Clinton did some things that I thought were significant, and I didn't run away from the Democrats...
...Fundamentally, if you look at their positions—whether it's on South Africa or Haiti or civil rights or racial justice—there is a spirit there that does not reflect the compassion or the character of the faith...
...All of those are live options...
...Bill Clinton didn't run a campaign on NAFTA—Bush ran on "the fast track" and got beat...
...But, fundamentally, those forces that now seek to unravel all of our gains all the way back to the New Deal were not very apparent...
...What labor got out of the deal essentially was NAFTA and the promise of GATT—that did not inspire them...
...Really, the Great Society and the War on Poverty were successful, except we diverted attention from the War on Poverty to the war in Vietnam, and then Nixon came and began to dismantle the Great Society...
...He covered the 1984,1988, and 1992 Presidential campaigns...
...If the Republicans are against entitlements, then you would think they would start with the biggest entitlements, which would be the military entitlements...
...Q: Obviously, you know that there are many people who think another run for President on your part might advance the causes about which you care so deeply...
...But if you really want to be fiscally responsible, then you would lead the way on campaign-finance reform...
...that's not fiscally conservative...
...But there has never been a meeting between the Rainbow—say five or six of our members—and the DLC and the Democratic National Committee, where we sit around a common table and look at where we agree and where we disagree...
...On the other side of history were the Kennedy legacy, Lyndon Johnson, and Dr...
...They've got their own organization, their own rules, they've got just a smattering of blacks that they kind of hand-picked, and nobody from labor...
...People felt that same distancing strategy across the board...
...At its best it should be used for justice and change...
...Q: Do you remain confident that, given a true progressive option, the American people would support it...
...Jackson: All I know is that the Republicans will deal with President Clinton because he has executive power...
...King was killed...
...Do you understand their sentiments...
...There were tremendous expectations coming out of 1992...
...They talk about fiscal conservatism...
...The big corporations are simply buying votes with perks...
...Gingrich talks about a Contract for a few Americans...
...Q: It's interesting that the prospect of Helms and Thurmond serving as Senate Committee Chairmen didn't come up much during the campaign...
...All of that came out of Great Society programs...
...When people could see an OUie North, they voted against him...
...Neither party took a leadership role on the march from Selma to Montgomery...
...Whether it's Jesse Helms's campaign ads, or the way they manipulated the Haiti issue or the South Africa issue, they have race-baited for so long that sometimes I think they believe their own clippings about developing some schemes to punish blacks to the extent that it will excite whites...
...The liberators were for it...
...If conservatives had had their way, we never would have had the middle class that we have today, which came into being because workers were given basic rights and made co-partners in the process of industrial development...
...It's an industry...
...Q: You must be aware that there are a great many progressives around the country who would like to have you at least consider running for President again in 1996, potentially in the Democratic primaries...
...It doesn't make sense at this stage for us—having a military budget larger than all the others in the world combined—to increase the military budget while cutting the education and housing budgets...
...Slave masters were the conservatives...
...They'll deal with him, but they won't vote for him...
...I think there are American people who voted Republican in the 1994 elections on a very narrow basis— who got caught up in the anti-crime, anti-incumbency wave...
...Q: For many conservatives, you remain a prime target...
...It's easier to keep the White House than to try to get it again, if you get my point...
...There are more people who feel locked out than who are locked in in the first place...
...They look upon the old ones with some degree of contempt...
...Q: Do you think the Republicans are playing on misconceptions that suggest Great Society programs were designed to help people of color...
...They are on a crusade to turn the clock back...
...Jesse Jackson: It's not so much a tidal wave as it was that our walls were low...
...You also had key Democratic officials who were running against the President and who were ashamed to make public the legislative accomplishments that had been made...
...Deficit down, inflation down, more markets, South Africa and Namibia free, Haiti in recovery, peace breaking out in the Middle East, rather than war...
...Lifting children up, not just locking them up and burning them up, is the alternative to the jail-industrial complex...
...Our commitment really is to social justice and to fairness...
...I think it's because I've tried to be consistent in this struggle across the years...
...This guy says that welfare mothers are maggots, that blacks are savages, that Magic Johnson's HIV should mature faster into AIDS so that he can lead by example...
...In other words, they'll vote for NAFTA with President Clinton because it's their fast-track they're pushing—for more advantage for businesses that want to move across the border to Mexico...
...Fundamentally, in this last campaign, those who represent the biggest threats to our progress were not on the center stage every day...
...Q: You've noted some of Bill Clinton's accomplishments, but don't you think he has to shoulder much of the blame for that disenchantment on the part of African-Americans and union members...
...But I have no doubt that, in time, the struggle to expand America—to make it more inclusive, to make it more humane—will prevail.* John Nichols is an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison,Wis-consin...
...It excites their base and traumatizes his base...
...By definition, there are no Jewish members of the Christian Coalition...
...If that does not happen, then somebody will run in the primaries, and perhaps somebody will run even as an independent...
...Jackson: In the '60s, George Wallace and Bull Connor were in the center of the stage...
...The moral center was abolition of slavery...
...I campaigned in twenty-two states and about sixty cities...
...Limbaugh, Grant, they're not entertaining, they're campaigning...
...So much of the base was weakened...
...Q: Do you see a point in your lifetime where you could say the struggle is done, or is it a struggle that is never finished...
...There are just a smattering of blacks—just enough for the Coalition to cover itself...
...The moral center is: We must put forth a plan to reclaim America's children—they are in trouble...
...A Republican leader named Lincoln once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand...
...The idea of reinvesting in the infrastructure of our cities, and the real struggle for economic stimulus...
...Newt mentioned Social Security as the only thing he wouldn't touch—because it's such a hot potato today...
...Jackson spoke of a progressive agenda to battle conservative hegemony...
...Women and children, at this point, are the punching bags...
...I went to jail July 17, 1960, for trying to use a library, and across the years I've tried to remain consistent—whether it was fighting for basic civil rights, or for peace, or social justice, or gender equality, or freedom in South Africa...
...Jackson: That's it...
...It costs $60,000 a year to keep a kid at Riker's Island...
...We do not have a military deficit in the world, we do have a housing deficit—a lack of adequate housing...
...There's never been a meeting to create one big tent among those forces within the party...
...If that does not happen, however, Jackson admits that he would consider a candidacy...
...Why do you think that was the case...
...But if you have three-foot waves and a one-foot wall, then it's a flood...
...Some of that is in the Covenant he talked about during the 1992 campaign...
...This struggle is unending...
...But his base is interested in prevention before the crime occurs, because we know that you fight welfare and crime with jobs and education...
...Then he said he wanted to go further than that...
...For the vision they put forth, Johnson was rejected by many Southerners as having betrayed the tradition and the culture, and Dr...
...I ran the first time in 1984 because I felt I was obligated to run...
...I would rather, given the number of allies that we now have who have acquired power, I would rather broaden the base and have Clinton regain the vision...
...Increasing the military budget doesn't stand to reason...
...The idea of a national health-care plan for the American people...
...Q: One of the first things that Gingrich started talking about was prayer in the schools...
...That's just as true when you look at the 1960s, when really the classic race was in 1964 where, in the heat of that great period of challenge, Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox really were on one side of history...
...Now, the members of the Rainbow Coalition have registered more Democrats than any other entity in the last twelve years...
...But in a public-education setting in a country that is multicultural and ecumenical, you can't very well impose your religion...
...I'm not anxious to run in that sense...
...The poor are mostly white, female, and young...
...Jackson: I believe in prayer...
...The Republicans are not fiscally conservative, they're bullies...
...And a job—ball four, and you're on...
...There is a battle for the soul of our country...
...And I think that so long as I shall live I shall keep giving my best...
...The political center can be built upon expediency, and without a moral foundation...
...Q: Do you think President Clinton is prepared to do that...
...Jackson: My faith is a big factor in that...
...Whether it's food stamps or welfare, all of the image manipulation that seeks to make these programs something for people who are black and "lazy" does not represent the reality of the universe of people helped by those programs...
...We must put forth not only an information superhighway but also a national transportation system...
...If he makes a move toward accommodating this madness of Gingrich and Dole and Gramm, then he'll be pushing Democrats out from under the tent...
...An adequately funded public education—ball two...
...But the Reverend Jesse Jackson knew precisely what had gone wrong...
...It wouldn't be conservative economics to choose to build all these prisons...
...I think the burden is upon him...
...Many of them, in fact, feel far more connected to the Republican Party than to the historical Democratic Party—they're either Republicrats or De-mopublicans...
...Q: What through these long years has given you the strength to maintain that commitment...
...They are with the Goldwater-Maddox-Wallace side of it...
...Q: There are a number of people who see you—with your national profile—as one of the few Americans who could lead a battle to reassert that moral center...
...That invitation is to "those who yearn to breathe free...
...Jackson: For people who are interested in social justice, the issue is not three strikes and you're out...
...Hate is now a commodity...
...It just always strikes me in terms of the responsibilities...
...The way we finance our campaigns now is corrupting the voting process...
...those who threatened you were constantly there as reminders...
...Anybody who would invest $40,000 to $60,000 a year to lock somebody up, rather than $6,000 to $8,000 a year to lift them up, is not using conservative economics...
...Limbaugh is a quasi-politician entertainer who exploits gender and race-baits...
...That's what we have to do...
...But he goes back into his own language to those ideological predecessors...
...I am prepared in the sense of my commitment to justice and fairness in America, my commitment to inclusion, my commitment to coalition in our country—over and against polarization, my commitment to justice at home and peace in the world...
...The integrity of our struggle demands that we fight for the moral center...
...There's a history to this struggle between conservatives and liberals...
...When people can see the right hand coming, they know to get out of the way...
...And take this guy, Bob Grant, the New York talk-radio host...
...I've known, in terms of my career as a public servant, that being consistent and building coalitions was the right thing to do...
...And they've been involved in various distancing schemes...
...It was no pleasure cruise...
...It's a part of my daily ritual...
...We can't adopt the Contract, we have to fight for the Covenant...
...He said he wants to end the very idea of the Great Society, which was a dream of reaching down to those who were on the bottom and lifting them up, and reaching out to those who had been locked out or pushed out...
...But the Republicans continue to manipulate these issues...
...Q: Do you think the latest election results might raise the prospects for such a meeting...
...Most American people do not want to deface the Statue of Liberty's promise...
...The DLC is a privatized, suburban wing of the Democratic Party...
...I preached Whitney Young's funeral in Nigeria...
...We've not yet made that decision...
...The liberators were for it...
...He was the one who talked about the idea of dealing with big-ticket items: the idea of reclaiming our children—which is bigger than one party...
...Look at welfare...
...By failing to deliver on promises to African-Americans, to women, and to trade unionists, the Democratic White House and Congress had broken faith with the party's base, Jackson said, and as a result millions of traditionally loyal Democrats stayed home on November 8. While most top Democrats turned to pollsters and pundits in hopes of finding a road map back to power, Jackson proposed a cleaner route: Stand again for the principles that elected Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and, yes, even Bill Clinton...
...Conservatives, by and large, were in favor of right-to-work laws, they were pro-management over workers, as opposed to checks and balances...
...Numerically there are forty million people in poverty, and twenty-nine million of them are white...
...You didn't see Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm and Orrin Hatch, as you saw, say, OUie North...
...The conservatives were against women's suffrage...
...Now, as they watch Gingrich interpret the Contract, they will see things differently...
...That was a Christian coalition: It excluded people who weren't Christian, it became a part of the ideological underpinning and rationalization for the seamy and ugly conclusion in Germany—the determining of who was worthy and who was unworthy to live...
...As far as I'm concerned, as long as you have exams on Friday, you'll always have prayer in school...
...The distancing schemes relative to me—as a dominant persona because of the campaigns I've run—extended down to every level...
...The points where we've made real progress have always been led by the people outside of the political trading match...
...Renew the Party's commitment to social justice and civil rights, and reinvigorate the base...
...Now that a new group of Southerners is rising, I wonder whether you see Wallace and Maddox merely as regional predecessors to the Gingrich Republicans or as something more...
...There are those who figure I should do it as an Independent...
...I was there when Dr...
...It's just my public-service obligation...
...Neither party, for example, took an initiative in 1964 for us to be seated at a national convention...
...That's who we really are...
...they got none of that...
...We must put forth a plan to reinvest in our infrastructure and revive our cities and put people back to work on real jobs...
...The moral center is not left or right—it's forward rather than backward...
...They begin with a plan to attack the women and the children...
...The American people did not vote based on interpretation of the Contract...
...Here's a group of Democratic officials— of which Clinton was president at one point...
...A marketable skill or access to college— ball three...
...Jackson: Because they feel threatened by the vision I project...
...Out of that struggle came a commitment to wipe out malnutrition—even people like Senator Ernest Hollings began to focus on malnutrition and human need...
...They just didn't give up...
...Q: The Republicans showed surprising strength at the polls, while Democrats were overwhelmed even in traditional areas of strength...
...Q: That would put the burden on Bill Clinton...
...The Republicans will give President Clinton a crime bill, which excites their base...
...He said everything except Social Security in the New Deal he wanted to wipe out as well...
...Abolitionists were the liberators...
...Some [conservative Democrats], to me, appear to be punch-drunk because they're not clear on the fact that DLC members lost—McCurdy in Oklahoma lost, Sasser in The Progressive / 29 Tennessee lost...
...As a minister and an individual, how do you react to that proposal...
...On the other hand, I have walked beside some good people who gave their lives the full measure of their devotion...
...They call themselves the "new Democrats" in contrast to the old ones...
...So the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was to the Christian coalition, and yet here they are now—still having never raised their voices for racial justice or for general equality or for the rights of workers, or for the poor and the disenfranchised and the dispossessed...
...Q: The Republicans put forward a relatively united front—offering very simple, basic themes...
...Jackson: Oh yes...
...I campaigned furiously because I felt I had to make a decision based upon where I see direction, priorities, service, character, and alternatives...
...I saw the alternatives to the Democrats being Newt Gingrich and Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, and so forth...
...Jackson: A campaign for the Presidency is such a responsibility and such a dangerous mission and carries with it the weight of so many people's needs...
...The Christian Coalition, you know, reminds me of something with roots in Germany in the 1930s...
...Jackson: That's what must happen...
...Blacks were promised more justice...
...King was killed...
...King...
...We must keep fighting for a center that has moral foundation...
...For example: five million new jobs, earned-income tax credits, the Family Leave Act, Motor Voter, more diverse appointment of judges— black, Hispanic, and female...
...Is it a genuine belief in the conservative cause, or is it something more dangerous...
...There's no need to have Newt Gingrich as a national chaplain...
...But I can tell you that those who used zealotry and bigotry and meanness in the past were not successful in stopping the clock from going forward...
...The conservatives were against the right of workers to organize labor unions...
...Jackson: The thing the Democrats must come to grips with is that it's hard to win unless you operate your coalition under one big tent...
...By and large, the horse races have not made good leaders for social change...
...Clinton wrote down a Covenant for all Americans...
...Jackson: I don't know...
...Four balls and you're on is our tradition: prenatal care and Head Start—ball one...
...As my first choice I would hope that ?he Covenant would be honored, that a "putting people first" agenda would be put back on the front burner again...
...The progressive interview Jesse Jackson 'What progressives must do is keep focusing on the moral center, not the political center.' BY JOHN NICHOLS When the overwhelming nature of the Republican victory in the November midterm elections became clear, the nation's most prominent Democratic elected officials seemed to be punch-drunk...
...You do recall that the conservatives—the ideological conservatives—resisted the New Deal because it stood for things like collective bargaining rights for workers, child labor laws, vacations, checks and balances between management and labor...
...Take, for example, this Christian Coalition...
...The greatness of our country is that the invitation is extended to all those who yearn to breathe free...
...But both accepted the assumptions of slave mastery...
...Jackson: I understand that...
...Jackson: No, the struggle is unending...
...The Democratic Leadership Council is a fundamental split in the Democratic Party...
...The party is just a vehicle...
...That's the way bullies operate...
...But many people simply gave up...
...He still hopes President Clinton will embrace a more progressive agenda and eliminate the need to discuss a challenge...
...It is in some sense a burden I have for the tradition of our struggle...
...So it should not be postured that those who oppose prayer in school have any less commitment to religion and character, yet it's spun that way...
...But out of that struggle came the public accommodations bill, open housing, self determination, human rights as a measuring stick for relations between people and between countries...
...Jackson: Some of it is not changing things as much as being in charge of things...
...And he explained how religious faith and a sense of responsibility have kept him committed to a struggle that he acknowledges is "unending...
...The first option is to return to the coalition and the dream that won for us...
...All the Democratic advertisements were based around how firm their commitment was to lock people up and burn them up, and in some instances they became indistinguishable from the Republicans...
...All options in our struggle for change must be kept alive...
...I am on the King-Kennedy-Johnson side of the equation...
...He also deconstructed the new Republican Congressional majority, while boldly tackling the Christian Coalition, Rush Limbaugh, and the conservative, business-oriented Democratic Leadership Council...
...Jackson: They're not just regional predecessors, they're ideological predecessors...
...Jackson does not relish the prospect of launching a third Presidential bid...
...Q: Clinton's post-election press conference and a number of his other statements seemed to signal a willingness to compromise with the Republicans...
...President Clinton and his White House minions struggled with little success to come up with a satisfactory explanation, as did most of their Congressional cohorts...
...One of the things to remember about Newt and his followers—in their zealotry and bigotry and meanness—is that they have used race baiting for a long time as a factor, as well as fears about gender equality, and fears about workers misusing power, if they ever had it relative to management...
...The Democrats seemed to lack that sort of coordination, didn't they...
...And so I thought that was worth fighting...
...The people who attacked Clinton the most during the campaign were DLC members...
...In so many instances, the base of cities and labor and workers and blacks was low, demoralized...
...It was not a new message for Jackson, who came on the national scene in the 1960s as an aide to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., developed into the nation's most identifiable civil-rights leader in the 1970s, and in the 1980s built unprecedented coalitions of farmers and inner-city residents, of academics and factory workers in support of two progressive campaigns for the Democratic Presidential nomination...
...As progressives look to the 1996 Presidential election, many speak openly about their hopes that Jackson will again seek the Presidency—either as a Democratic primary challenger to Clinton or as a third-party candidate...
...Jackson: He raised the expectations...
...You can't have the new Boston Celtics and the old Boston Celtics playing on the same team in Boston Garden...
...Those are the things that were not advertised in their commercials...
...Q: What do you think is the prime motivation for Gingrich and the others...
...Clinton didn't run a campaign on "three strikes and you're out" and the most massive jail plan in the history of the country...
...If you have a five-foot wall and there are threefoot waves, it doesn't bother you that much...
...Jackson: Every program that Gingrich proposes to slash and burn numerically affects more whites than blacks...
...at other jails it's around $40,000...
...Jackson: There are those who figure I should do it in the Democratic primaries...
...The conservatives were against the 1954 Supreme Court decision...
...In that race, the Kennedy-Johnson-King side of history prevailed...
...The idea of such a meeting would be agree to agree, agree to disagree, but try to work out a common agenda...
...As Newt says, they will cooperate with him, but they won't compromise with him...
...So that was the political center, but it was not the moral center...
...Q: On an issue like crime, for instance, you would say that progressives need to offer alternatives...
...Q: What do you see as the ultimate goal for those who make up this new Republican majority...
...In other words, I think that what progressives must do is keep focusing on the moral center as our guide, not the political center...
...As you know, in slavery times, there was a political center where bad guys said, "Be a brutal slave master," and good guys said, "Be a benevolent one...
...Jackson and I discussed the Clinton Presidency at length several weeks after the election...
...Newt Gingrich says, for example, that they intend to wipe out the "legacy" of the Great Society programs—not just end the programs, but end the very expectations...
...And when people have the choice between the real thing and a facsimile, they'll choose the real thing...
...We must always be wary when someone attempts to bottle up the faith and use it as a tool...
...People with whom I've worked and walked—people like Fannie Lou Hamer—they never gave up...
...Q: Throughout your life you've battled right-wing Southern politicians...
...We must put forth a national health-care plan...
...The white ministers in Birmingham— who had never raised their voices for racial justice or general equality or the rights of workers to organize—publicly challenged him for coming to Birmingham and demanded to know what his motives were...
...the winners are bound by too many other vested and clandestine and private interests...
...instead we got more jails—the biggest crime bill in the history of the country...
...And so if Bill Clinton moves any further toward the political center, then he's moving too far away from the moral center...
...The latest polls show that 53 percent of the American people see both parties as out of date...
...They'll vote with him on that because they gain something out of it...
...They attack women and children as opposed to S&L thieves, as opposed to the campaign-finance corrupters...
...Jackson: I think it's something more dangerous...
...The DLC is a fundamental split...
...The liberals, the liberators were for it...
...Not only did many of the Democrats attack the President, not only were they afraid to identify with the successes, they ran from the base of working-class people and labor and blacks...
...Why do you think conservative figures such as Limbaugh spend so much time attacking you personally...
...Cities were promised economic stimulus and economic development banks...
...My faith is a part of my basic sense of what I see as my mission in life...
...What Gingrich is standing for, what Charles Murray is standing for, they would have us wipe out the Statue of Liberty invitation, which I think represents the very character of our country...
Vol. 59 • January 1995 • No. 1
