Rev. Jesse Jackson [2010 file photo].

Jackson Family Statement on the Passing of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.

It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family. His unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity. A tireless change agent, he elevated the voices of the voiceless—from his Presidential campaigns in the 1980s to mobilizing millions to register to vote—leaving an indelible mark on history.

Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline; their children — Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef, Jacqueline; daughter Ashley Jackson, and grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his mother, Helen Burns Jackson; father, Noah Louis Robinson; and stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson.

“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” said the Jackson family. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”

[….]

“…When our budgets reflect the nation’s commitment to jobs and justice, and peace we’ll keep our eyes on that prize…”

“…I’d rather have a guy calling me a name with no power, than a guy smiling at me that has state’s rights power as the government…”

Reverend Jesse Jackson.

There was a question and answer session with the media at the end of yesterday’s press conference:

….Question: …Dave Helling, Kansas City Star.  Uh, Reverend Jackson, you suggested the tea party resolution was a diversion. What did you mean by that? And maybe some of the other members, uh, could, uh, address today’s pushback, Sarah Palin and others that issued statements calling it divisive, inappropriate, that type of thing, sad. Could you talk just a little bit about the tea party resolution?…

(left to right) Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, NAACP National Board Member Clayola Brow, NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP Vice President for Communications Leila McDowell.

…Reverend Jesse Jackson: My point is the agenda we must address is put America back to work, whether you’re in rural Alabama, whether you’re in Appalachia. Put America back to work.  The economy collapsed because banks were not overseen and to their own greed drove us into a hole. They bailed the banks out without linking it to lending and to saving our homes. That’s the focus. People in West Virginia were killed in a coal mine because workplace laws were not enforced, workplace safety. We have this crisis in the Gulf of Mexico because the environmental protection laws are not honored and mining minerals company got colluded with BP and created this crisis. So while they media has a certain sensational taste for arguing, uh, about other groups our focus is put America back to work. And there’s a sense in which our, we are bailing out, with a plan, Afghanistan, bailing out with a plan, Iraq, bailing out the banks, comprehensive immigration reform. Urban America, unemployment among blacks around twenty-seven to thirty-five percent, um, three times beyond the national average. That’s a state of emergency. We want that emergency addressed. And, uh, we used to sing a song in the South. And there were different groups arguing against our case – Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on – we’ll focus on that prize in, in that, in that room in that big tent, all Americans.

Question: Uh, Reverend Sharpton, could you talk a little bit about the push back and whether you think it’s a diversion to talk about the tea party?

Reverend Al Sharpton: I was in, uh, Alabama night before last and one of the ministers hosting me showed me the court house of George Wallace. The issue in the fifties and sixties was not that George Wallace may or may not have been a racist, the issue was he that he was the governor and could stand in the school house door as governor and stop people from going to jail. The media wants to concentrate on our saying there are elements in the tea party this is racist rather than saying the philosophy of the tea party is anti civil rights, ’cause they’re promoting pro state’s rights on immigration, pro state’s rights across the board which will turn back the clock of civil rights. So, you got part of the sermon without the text. The context is the tea party as a political philosophy is to reverse what civil rights did and that is say the federal government must protect people, whether it’s in Arizona on immigration, or South Carolina on civil rights. And I don’t think Miss Palin or anyone else can deny that they are supporting states to supersede the federal government in these areas. That is the context that, uh, President Jealous and others said, yes, there are elements in there that’s racist, but if you pull down the race signs, and you still want to return to statehood type of governmental operation you will have reversed what King and Wilkins and them did. So, I think the emphasis, the media likes to get into who called the name. I’d rather have a guy calling me a name with no power, than a guy smiling at me that has state’s rights power as the government. That’s what this is about. And that’s why we’ve called for these gatherings.

Question: But how [crosstalk] do we get to fo…

Leila McDowell, Vice President for Communications for the NAACP: We can, what’s, excuse me, we can take one more question. Go ahead.

Question: Eric Wesson, The Call newspaper. How do you get the focus back now away from the tea party resolution back on jobs [crosstalk] and the things that people are [inaudible].

Reverend Al Sharpton: Easy. You all need to ask them to deny or admit whether they’re for state’s rights and breaking down where labor laws, work to right laws in states, immigration, civil rights, all of that. Since you all got it out there. It’s like getting center stage. You all got it the show set, now tell ’em, sing. Sing on whether or not they agree on state’s rights. You all have limited the debate on whether they called us a name, rather than trying to change the Kingian form of government. So I don’t want you to get off the tea party, I want you to make them answer the right question. I don’t care if they like me.  What I care is they try to change the power equation that’s going to protect us. And that’s what Ben Jealous and all of us said.

Question: Ben, Ben could you talk to us about that a little bit? [crosstalk]

Leila McDowell: Um, okay, I’m sorry [crosstalk] we have other reporters and we have to, after Reverend Jackson we have to end it. I’m so sorry.

Reverend Jesse Jackson: What I want to focus on, there are fifty million Americans that can’t get three meals a day. Forty million Americans are in poverty. Twenty million have no job. We cannot re-fund unemployment compensation, but we’re gonna fund a war with no end in sight. And all across America we’re closing schools and building jails. We focus on racing to the top but we need prenatal care, Head Start, and daycare, bottom up, so not to have jail kind of welfare on the back end. So on August twenty-eighth we, around, will be marching in Washington and Detroit and unemployment offices focusing on jobs and justice and peace. Jobs and justice and peace. When our budgets reflect the nation’s commitment to jobs and justice, and peace we’ll keep our eyes on that prize. And come October second we’ll be there in even greater numbers together. Jobs and justice and peace. We will not be diverted nor otherwise distracted by any other messages except put America back to work. We want jobs and justice and peace. Thank you so much.

Leila McDowell: And we’ll have President Jealous. We’re gonna have President Jealous give the last words.

Benjamin Todd Jealous: The, um, we, we considered seventy, approximately seventy-five resolutions at this convention. There’s only one that the media’s focused on. Sixteen of those resolutions were on criminal justice, more than a dozen were on the issue of, of education.  I gave a forty-two page speech, half of one page addressed the tea party. That’s all anybody’s talk
ed about. We need the media to pay attention to the issues that are most important to this country. It’s fine if you want to pay, focus on one half of one page of a forty-two page speech. But we’d appreciate you focus on at least half the other pages, too. Or, or half of another page. We talked about education, we talked about jobs, we talked about criminal justice. We talked about this march where we have people from hundreds of communities across the country who have been here for days planning for a very big and robust march on Washington to put the focus back on jobs, to make sure that the issue of education is dealt with, to make sure that what Frederick Douglass said about com, uh, about the issue of, of immigration, actually goes into action which is that we base it on human rights principles and not mere expediency. That’s what all of us have been saying.

Thank you and God bless, we’ll see you inside the panel….

Previously:

The 101st NAACP National Convention in Kansas City

NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: report on the impact of the BP oil spill in the Gulf region

NAACP in Kansas City: Sunday – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Michelle Obama – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the tea party and human rights

NAACP in Kansas City: Senator Claire McCaskill (D) – “Now is no time to quit.”

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Emanuel Cleaver – “Don’t you forget it!”

NAACP in Kansas City: Wednesday afternoon press conference – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Al Sharpton – “There clearly is some racial leaves in their tea bag…”

NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Jesse Jackson – “We want jobs, justice, and education for all.”

NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous – “…we all need a testament of hope…”

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous was the third of three speakers at yesterday afternoon’s press conference at the NAACP National Convention in Kansas City.

(left to right) Benjamin Todd Jealous, Reverend Al Sharpton, Clayola Brown, Reverend Jesse Jackson.

….Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP President and CEO: Thank you, good afternoon. [voices: “Good afternoon.”] There’s no one in this country who works harder on behalf of working people than the three people standing right behind me. It’s an honor to be on the stage with all of them.

Eight twenty-eight will be a springboard to ten-two-ten. It’ll be a wake up call to, to the country. We will be asking faith leaders across the country the month of September to preach and teach at their houses of worship about the values of human rights and human dignity, true meaning of Dr. King’s words and the words of all the others who spoke that day in nineteen sixty-three and all of those of us who believe in human rights and human dignity.

Ten-two-ten is being put together by over a hundred and fifty organizations, including many of the largest civil rights organizations, religious denominations and labor organizations in this country. It is intended to show that we are at a place in this country where the majority of people just want to focus on what’s important – be able to put food on the kitchen table, be able to be treated fairly, insure that this economy works for all of us – [inaudible] working class people of all colors, struggling families of all colors. And this march on ten-two-ten really will be a reminder, will be a reflection of the country. You will see Teamsters there, you will NAACPers there, National Action Network and Rainbow and PUSH and National Council of La Raza and LULAC and Jews and Christians and Baptists, Episcopalians and Muslims and Buddhists – all together.

We are one nation and we all need a testament of hope. And that testament of hope for so many families is simply a job and a fair shake.  So I want to thank Reverend Sharpton, I want to thank Reverend Jackson, I want to thank Miss Brown, President Brown of the Randolph Institute {AFL-CIO], for their support of ten-two-ten and for coming together with us to say put America back to work, pull America back together. Thank you very much….

Benjamin Todd Jealous was also on Keith Olbermann last night, in reference to the NAACP national convention resolution on racist elements in the tea party:

….Benjamin Todd Jealous: You know, we got death threats at our office in, uh, Los Angeles today. And, you know, if there aren’t violent racists in the tea party then why are people calling threatening to kill us for speaking out about violent racists in the tea party?

Keith Olbermann: I don’t mean to laugh, but it does sort of prove your point, uh, rather self evidently….

Evidently.

Previously:

The 101st NAACP National Convention in Kansas City

NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: report on the impact of the BP oil spill in the Gulf region

NAACP in Kansas City: Sunday – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Michelle Obama – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the tea party and human rights

NAACP in Kansas City: Senator Claire McCaskill (D) – “Now is no time to quit.”

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Emanuel Cleaver – “Don’t you forget it!”

NAACP in Kansas City: Wednesday afternoon press conference – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Al Sharpton – “There clearly is some racial leaves in their tea bag…”

NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Jesse Jackson – “We want jobs, justice, and education for all.”

Reverend Jesse Jackson was the second of three speakers at this afternoon’s press conference at the NAACP National Convention in Kansas City. Reverend Jackson spoke quietly – the ambient noise in the room appeared to drop when he first approached the microphone.

….Reverend Jesse Jackson: Thank you very much, Clayola, to Reverend Sharpton, to, uh, President Jealous.

This week, fifty years ago, July sixteenth, nineteen sixty, along with eight classmates, uh, I was jailed for trying to use a public library. A season of great uprising. January first, nineteen sixty NAACP led a march in Greenville, in the airport, because people could not sit in, uh, open spaces. February first, nineteen sixty, sit-ins took place in Greensboro, North Carolina [inaudible] took a dynamic the like of which we’d never seen before. [inaudible] in April of nineteen sixty. Greenville exploded in July of nineteen sixty. Between sixty and sixty-three there were twenty thousand arrests. In nineteen sixty-three alone there was fifteen thousand arrested. A thousand demonstrations by SCLC and CORE, NAACP marched to pull down the walls of racial segregation.

The March on Washington was a culmination of that phase, collecting those activities around the nation. On that day Jim Foreman could not make it, Floyd McKissock spoke in his place, he was in jail in Louisiana. Fannie Lou Hamer could not make it, she was in jail and beaten by prisoners in Sunflower County, Mississippi. I  just left jail [inaudible] of inciting a riot. The season of our global uprising for justice.

Here we come again, forty-seven years later, demanding a national job uprising. Here’ll be a march in Washington , [inaudible] Along with UAW will be marching in Detroit, urging people around, wherever you are, around the nation, have prayer vigils that date, around the nation at unemployment compensation offices. A national jobs and justice day uprising to fulfill the promise of the dream.

UAW had a million five hundred thousand workers ten years ago now it’s down to four hundred thousand. Today it’s USA GM. USA GM, uh, now number one market for Buick is China. So plants are closing, jobs are leaving, drugs and guns are coming and violence is intensifying. So urban America is in a state of emergency. We march, therefore, to address the attacks diminishing  life options of people who live in urban and rural America. Our cities are under siege.

Every city we visit [inaudible] transportation. Cutting public transportation, laying off workers, and raising fares. If you’re on welfare you can not own a car, so without public transportation you cannot get to the hospital, or school, or work, or shop, or recreation. Cutting public transportation, in part because in nineteen ninety-eight Gingrich put in a bill that cities above twenty thousand get zero public transportation money, zero public for workers. Ten percent for capital for buses and trucks, but not for workers. So when we’re in Atlanta, Georgia  or Memphis, Tennessee, or New York or Chicago – one thing you’ll see in all these cities is public transportation cut, workers laid off, and fares [inaudible]. Cities under siege. Public housing cut. Private housing in record foreclosure. The banks have been bailed out and they rejoice, billions of dollars in bailout, not linked to lending nor to reinvestment. So the banks rejoice. We project four million foreclosures this year. More foreclosures than there will be modifications this year because the bailout was not linked to lending.

Public schools are closing. Teachers are being laid off by the thousands. First class jails and second class schools. Today there is a plan, a plan for comprehensive immigration reform. A plan for Afghanistan, we commit resources, a hundred billion dollars for a hundred Al  Qaeda. A plan, don’t ask, don’t tell, for gays. A plan for national reform. But no plan for the investment for urban policy to put America back to work. So, we bail out the predators, the bankers that drove us in this hole. The victims remain on the sideline desperately looking for a job.

Lastly, while there’s a lot of focus today on, so I think it’s a diversion, the issue really is not the tea party it’s the coffee pot. In the coffee pot there’s room for cream and sugar for all of us. It’s about connecting our, connecting our, Alabama and connecting that with, uh, Appalachia. It’s about a plan to put America back to work. Focus on jobs and job training, opening up trade unions,  [inaudible] to cut down on the growth and the anxiety and the crime.

I want to thank the NAACP for being that ship across these years, across this century. It’s kept us on the ultimate focus of a big tent America, where all are involved and none are locked out. A change takes place when those at the bottom rise up and have a quest for dignity. Just as we rose up in the thirties demanding workers have the right to organize and, and paid the price. And the sixties rose up and demanded public accommodations for all. Now we demand that there be a job rising. August twenty-eighth let us in the name of the dream march for jobs and justice all the way to ten-two-ten in Washington where we shall again [inaudible] the White House, the Congress, the government must see our quest. We want to work, the dignity of work. We want jobs, justice, and education for all.

Thank you very much.

Previously:

The 101st NAACP National Convention in Kansas City

NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: Sunday – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Michelle Obama – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the tea party and human rights

NAACP in Kansas City: Senator Claire McCaskill (D) – “Now is no time to quit.”

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Emanuel Cleaver – “Don’t you forget it!”

NAACP in Kansas City: Wednesday afternoon press conference – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Al Sharpton – “There clearly is some racial leaves in their tea bag…”

BGinKC Jobs, and Justice and Peace. Keep our eyes on THAT prize. –Jesse Jackson #NAACP101 #NAACP about 3 hours ago via web

Waiting for the start of the press conference.

(left to right) Reverend Jesse Jackson, NAACP President and CE0 Benjamin Todd Jealous, Reverend Al Sharpton.

Reverend Al Sharpton.

Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Benjamin Todd Jealous.

(left to right) Benjamin Todd Jealous, Reverend Al Sharpton, NAACP National Board Member Clayola Brown, Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Previously:

The 101st NAACP National Convention in Kansas City

NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at the opening press conference

NAACP in Kansas City: Sunday – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Michelle Obama – photos

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the tea party and human rights

NAACP in Kansas City: Senator Claire McCaskill (D) – “Now is no time to quit.”

NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Emanuel Cleaver – “Don’t you forget it!”