OVER THE RAINBOW

...seems as determined as ever to carry the torch...

...Baldwin—like many others— remains loyal to the Rainbow concept, and is excited by the prospect that Jackson might devote his energies in coming years to its revitalization...

...For the rightwing Republicans to try to put Martin Luther 'Jesse really ought to join the effort to form a people's movement that is independent of the Democratic Party...

...Would the organization merely become a vehicle for a future Jackson Presidential candidacy...

...It's also overtime—this bozo Clinton wants to eliminate our overtime protection...

...Still...

...But Jesse ran in 1988, and where was the movement that came out of that...

...Some believe that Jackson will attempt to transfer the loyalty of his followers to his son...

...He traveled again and again to the state, organized huge rallies in Los Angeles and other cities, and headlined a late September bus tour that took opponents of the proposal from San Francisco to San Diego...

...His name did not appear on the ballot, as did that of consumer activist Ralph Nader...

...Others think Jackson would be a serious contender in a primary contest with Vice President Al Gore and Missouri Representative Dick Gephardt...

...While there was a great deal of grassroots energy in individual communities around the country, the organization did not gel at the national level, and the vast majority of its chapters disintegrated...

...And if he gets the 'fuck you' from the White House, then Jackson can't turn around and say 'OK.' He has to respond in some kind of effective way...

...who was just reelected to Congress representing a south-side Chicago district...

...Jackson's continued support for the Democratic Party, even when it violates the very principles he passionately promotes, troubles a lot of people on the left...

...The spirit that brings a broad range of people together for political action is still desperately needed," she says...

...I've heard the argument that the way to build a movement is to run a candidate for President...

...Then everyone says, 'Oh, yeah, I knew we could do it,'" says Jackson aide Steve Cobble, who recalls that Ronald Reagan, a man many said could never be President, won on his third try...

...There is an awful lot of race-baiting laced into the welfare focus and the affirmative-action focus of our debate these days...

...Like a good many organizers, Kasen, a veteran union activist, says progressives have to stop running Presidential campaigns that suck energy away from the long-term grassroots organizing necessary to build an alternative to the politics that gave 1996 voters the bland choice of Bill Clinton or Bob Dole...

...When the Republican National Committee and the California Republican Party revealed in late October that they planned to use footage from King's "I Have a Dream" speech in a $2 million television advertising campaign attacking affirmative action, Jackson, a former King aide, cried foul...

...While the leaders of both major parties stumbled over one another to take credit for punitive welfare reforms, Jackson reminded farmers and factory workers in Iowa that "the threat to America comes not from the working poor but from corporate downsizing and outsourcing...

...There's a real tendency in politics to say something's impossible until it's done...

...But where does blowing off steam get us...

...We do not have to divide and be conquered...

...Started twenty-five years ago in Chicago, Operation PUSH has traditionally used boycotts, picket lines, and negotiations to promote economic empowerment, while the Rainbow Coalition, formed after Jackson's 1984 Presidential campaign, has been more explicitly political...

...I just don't understand how you can effectively move in the political arena until you've built the base—and you just cannot build that base from the top down...

...Jackson was everywhere...

...Jackson told a multiracial crowd in Madison...

...Jackson led the effort against Proposition 209, the California initiative to eliminate affirmative action...

...I think we've seen this year— with his support of Clinton—that he'll never leave the Democratic Party...

...You can't start with a Presidential campaign, even when you've got a candidate like Jesse, and expect to build something that lasts...

...At its best, the Rainbow Coalition created a unique brand of activism—and I'd like very much to see it re-created...

...Over the RalnDow Jesse Jackson's supporters keep hope alive BY JOHN NICHOLS Just weeks before the 1996 Presidential election, on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, more than 6,000 students turned out for one of the year's loudest and most energetic political rallies...

...We've been sold out too many times and for too long.' King and David Duke on the same side of history is an atrocity...

...As the Rainbow began to fade around the country, it was harder to get hold of anyone at the national office and to get much follow-through," recalls Wisconsin Democratic State Representative Tammy Baldwin, who was once active in the Madison chapter...

...He accused politicians from both parties of "trying to build reputations off their attacks on domestic welfare...

...He throws himself into people's struggles...

...headquartered in Chicago, to become the premier nationwide organization responding to the nation's drift to the right...

...This fall, you kept seeing that Jesse was the one drawing the crowds—2,000 here, 5,000 there," says Chris Townsend, political-action director for the United Electrical Workers union...

...At a September convention in Chicago, the two organizations formally merged and adopted an ambitious agenda that promises to build chapters in every state and city, and on high-school and college campuses around the country...

...Jackson may still cling to the hope that he has some pull with the new Clinton Administration, given the support he gave it in the election campaign...

...Whether you like Jackson or not, the man is out there—getting involved in real issues, making contact with real people, bringing together coalitions that might not exist without him," says Townsend of the Electrical Workers...

...Would Jesse ever run on a third line...

...With help from veteran aide Cobble, Jackson moved quickly in the fall to flex the network's political muscle, mobilizing support for progressive candidates...

...Bill Clinton...

...We do not have to fight with one another...

...For a while we didn't care about the lack of contact...

...Representative Jesse Jackson Jr...

...Jackson failed to keep a previous incarnation of the Rainbow thriving long after his 1988 campaign...

...Jackson the elder was clearly promoting his son's political career in the Democratic Party...

...We've seen where it gets us...

...One threshold question for Jackson is whether to stay in the Democratic Party or leave...

...The younger Jackson combines solid political skills, a progressive perspective, and a somewhat mellower style than his dad...

...We've been sold out too many times and for too long...

...So there are going to be some fights almost immediately...

...They'll turn off their television sets and come out and listen to you...

...It just doesn't make sense to keep pouring everything we've got into Presidential campaigns that aren't going to win...

...Others argue that such an effort would be a waste of time, as well as a desperate confession that the left has failed to develop new leadership...

...Bob Kasen, an organizer for the Labor Party, fears that another Jackson run will be an exercise in futility...

...Where Nader dodged controversial social issues, such as gay rights, affirmative action, and immigration, Jackson took them head on...

...Jackson has to make the hard decision—stop following the people who lead us over the cliff every time," says Ronnie Dugger, founder of The Texas Observer and organizer of The Alliance, a new populist group...

...Critics of Jackson note that he failed to build a viable national force after his previous two Presidential runs, and that his personality-based politics does not provide the long-term organizational strength the left needs...

...There's a dense network of people out there who are still very big fans of Reverend Jackson, but pulling them together into an organization like this will take an incredible amount of work," says Dan Cantor, national organizer for the New Party...

...Since there's such a connection between political empowerment and coalition-building, and economic empowerment and expansion, we're pulling these two organizations together to be more efficient and more effective," says Jackson, who claims that he wants Rainbow/PUSH...

...No, it was Jesse Jackson, doing what he has done for the better part of thirty years...

...He is touching people by stating the truths that would otherwise be left unspoken...

...admitted Gore, who was a rival of Jackson's for the 19NN Democratic Presidenlial nomination and is now the trontrunncr for the party's nod in 2000...

...Much of Jackson's response will come via the Rainbow/PUSH Action Network, an amalgam of the National Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH, the two organizations Jackson has headed over the years...

...Jackson says the group will also seek to forge "serious coalitions across lines of race, gender, religion, and class...

...he savs...

...He did not mince words about the underlying pitch of these politicians...

...There are a number of groups that try to make that happen...

...Since Jackson has reasserted himself as a political player, some on the left hope that he will gear up for another Presidential run in the year 2000...

...Who was this featured speaker...

...He also waged a fight over the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr...

...Newly elected Chicago Congressman Danny Davis, who has known Jackson for three decades, agrees...

...says Kasen...

...Local candidates jockeyed for positions near the podium...

...We've got some run-ins scheduled with Clinton right away...

...Jackson has to figure out how he's going to deal with Clinton, how he's going to call in the chits that Clinton owes him...

...In the midst of an election season when political dynamism was in short supply, Jackson drew thousands to churches, stadiums, theaters, and union halls in Orlando, Little Rock, Lincoln, Des Moines, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York Jackson attracted little national media coverage this campaign season...

...Jesse Jackson still reaches people in ways that no one else can...

...People make a mistake when they underestimate him...

...Jesse really ought to join the effort to form a people's movement that is independent of the Democratic Party...

...But whether the Rainbow can again streak across the political sky remains to be seen...

...Running a Presidential campaign is a great way to blow off steam...

...The thing about this fall was that Jesse was just about the only national figure who was willing to make any noise...

...John Nichols, an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, covers electoral politics for The Progressive...

...We must never surrender...

...At the Democratic National Convention...

...Still, Jackson was the most vocal Democrat advocating progressive politics during the 1996 elections...

...One longtime supporter, who asked not to be identified, doubts Jackson will take the plunge...

...And he campaigned actively in behalf of progressive Democrats seeking House seats...

...They cannot have us talking about corporate welfare and health care for all, so they raise false issues to get us fighting...

...Jackson still goes out and gets his hands dirty...

...But eventually we started to feel like an entity standing alone, and that made it harder to continue independently...

...Everywhere he went, he was proving what we've always said: If you talk to people where they're at, if you talk about what they're talking about—jobs, fear of losing jobs, the fact that communities are falling down around them—you'll get their attention...

...That gives people a sense of hope and movement that, frankly, they weren't getting much of from anyone else this year...

...Some worry that Jackson might, in Townsend's words, "become a liberal Harold Stassen"—a reference to the former Minnesota governor whose repeated runs for the Republican Presidential nomination grew increasingly ineffectual...

...He will soon find out if he has any...

...It's not just welfare reform, which Jackson and everyone else with an ounce of sense knows is a sewer," Townsend says...

...After November, the Rainbow/PUSH Action Network must hold on to the moral center, build its ranks all across the country, and lead a tenacious fight for expansive, inclusive, humane politics in America," Jackson told the September gathering...

...Wisconsin...

...And we must keep building coalitions—because only when the workers and women and ethnic minorities identify their common interests do wc move the counIr\ forward...

...But where Nader was invisible...

...But the Rainbow really achieved it for a while there...

...Jackson declared...

...But for now Jesse Jackson Sr...

...When he wasn't defending affirmative action, Jackson led a voter-registration drive in dozens of cities across the United States...

...Jesse knows how to run for President and he knows how to get a chunk of votes," he says...

...And we know why that is: They are out to divide us again...

...This is blasphemy...

...Still, there are those who salivate at the prospect of a Jackson candidacy...

...But we've done that...

...But what would a renewed Rainbow be...

...Jackson's eloquent speech at the Democratic Convention, coming a mere two weeks after Clinton's signing of the punitive welfare bill, shored up the President's base among disenchanted Democrats...

...But to the dismay of many progressives, Jackson provided Clinton with vital cover on the welfare issue...

...The Rainbow Coalition, along with other groups, stirred up so much furor over the ads that the Republicans finally agreed to recut them—without the footage of King...

...But people came out in droves to see him...

...Hundreds of new voters filled out the registration forms that the featured speaker urged on them...

...Bob Dole...