Jesse Jackson: “The Struggle Continues”

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These last seven years have been especially painful. While our sons and daughters have died in Grenada and Lebanon and Europe, this President has not met with the Congressional Black Caucus one time. Denial of access. In these last seven years, this man suggested that those in South Africa who were shot in the back had provoked the shootings. In these last seven years, our complicity with South Africa, in Angola, in Namibia and inside South Africa, continues. In these last seven years, Reagan opened up his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, sending a signal that was missed by too many people. There’s not even a railroad in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not even a small airport. The only thing it is known for is that it is where the civil rights activists Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were found murdered. On that day of Reagan’s announcement, even the Klan were there in their paraphernalia. I tell you from Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Bitburg, Germany, to Johannesburg, South Africa, it’s been an unbroken line by Reagan, unchallenged by Bush.

My friends, I’m going to keep on arguing a preferable case to you about our live options. We might think now that in 1960 John Kennedy won unanimously. But he won by 112,000 votes—less than one vote per precinct. Kennedy won against Nixon with less than one vote per precinct difference in the American mind.

In 1960, we won by the margin of our hope, because Kennedy took the risks to relate to us publicly and to reach out to Dr. King.

In 1968, the psychology shifted. Dr. King was killed on April 4. Robert Kennedy was killed on June 5. There were riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention. With all of that death, all of that despair, all of those broken hearts, all of that lost blood, Nixon beat Humphrey by 550,000 votes.

The difference between Nixon and Humphrey was tremendous. But we could not make a distinction between the Great Society and the lost society. We lost by the margin of our despair what we had won eight years before by the margin of our hope.

Now we come forth in 1988, with much more strength and much greater capability. We’ve had to knock down doors in the DNC. It’s not unusual. We give thanks that we have the ability to knock them down, and open them up. We can do that. We’ve always had the paradoxical burden of fighting to save the nation just to save ourselves.

If you’re in the back seat of a truck, and you don’t like the driver and the car’s going over the cliff, don’t take solace in the fact that he’s going over the cliff, because he isn’t going to push a button and eject you. You’ll have to save the driver just to save yourself. And so here we are today, still knocking on doors. We’re still winning every day and winning in every way.

Many things have changed this week in Atlanta—among other things, relationships. There have been serious meetings this week with Paul Kirk and the DNC leadership, and there will be serious changes in the DNC as of this morning because of you—not because those doors voluntarily opened up and certainly not because you stopped knocking. Some combination of your knocking and determination to get in has changed things.

I’m clear about it. John Kennedy supported the civil rights movement but the children in Birmingham wrote it. Lyndon Johnson didn’t get the Voting Rights Act passed. Folks in Selma got it passed. And then Johnson wrote in ink what they had written in blood.

He had the will but not the capacity because there are checks and balances in this government. He told Dr. King, “I’m for it, but we can’t get it because the Congress is too conservative. I just can’t get it passed.” But “street heat” in Selma gave him a new alternative. He then could say, “I’m for some change, now we shall overcome.”

I’ll tell you one reason I want to be close enough to serve and far enough away to challenge—because change requires a combination of new leadership and “street heat.” John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy could not go to Birmingham and say, I feel ashamed, therefore I will enact a Public Accommodations bill. It took a combination of their leadership and our “street heat.”

We’ve got to keep up the “street heat.” My friends, if we put on two to three million new voters between now and October 8, there will be enough heat to cook our meat, and enough heat for George Bush to get out of the kitchen.

You do understand that the contra vote that comes up again next week—they can’t get that vote now. You do understand that when Mayor Marion Barry and Rep. Walter Fauntroy try to get the D.C. statehood bill passed, that the wing of the party that’s been holding it back—they have to deliver now. That’s the art and science of politics. It takes different temperatures to cook different kinds of meat. That’s “street heat.”

I’m excited. There’s going to be a change. Why are Republicans already talking about “They’re running a three-man ticket—Dukakis, Bentsen and Jackson”? Well, they’re trying to create some mess. That’s a trick to drive us away, but we’re not leaving.

There isn’t a three-man ticket. Psychologically, I don’t require it. A political ticket doesn’t need it. We’re more grown than that. We got this commitment on the Dellums Bill, and Mandela can rejoice, and on the Conyers Bill, and unregistered voters can rejoice, and on two senators and a governor in D.C., which could completely change the balance in the U.S. Senate, and we can all rejoice.

Let’s look at a few more things here. I suppose the first victory for us is that we’re together. People who didn’t support us in 1984 supported us in 1988. There are those who didn’t support us in 1988 who are going to support us from now on because it’s clear what time of day it is.

We’re also in major league politics now. This isn’t softball. The next step is to go back to your states—to every state we won, every district we won—and see how your congressperson voted, see how your senator voted, and see how your DNC member voted. That’s the basis for new politics right where you live.

That’s the first thing you’ve got to do. In Mississippi they got themselves lawyers, organized over the long haul and now they are the leaders of the state Democratic Party. Our Mississippi delegation ran a ticket and won the leadership positions in the state party. We must do this in every state we won—from Maine to Delaware to Virginia to South Carolina to Georgia to Alabama to Louisiana—in every one of those states where we the people were humiliated on Wednesday night because we won the popular vote but the superdelegates imposed their will on us.

Some people say what did we get? Well, we got new rules and the party can’t run over us again in 1992.

 

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Source: Reprinted from Jesse Jackson, Frank Clemente, and Frank E. Watkins, Keep Hope Alive: Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential Campaign. South End Press, 1989. Reprinted with the permission of South End Press.