R. Nesbitt | Red Phoenix correspondent | Maryland–

Reverend Jesse Jackson, a staunch and prolific civil rights activist, protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., and fierce fighter for oppressed people, has passed away at the age of 84. 

Rev. Jackson was galvanized into the Civil Rights movement in the aftermath of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts in Alabama over the necessity to integrate public transportation, participating in a sit-in at a segregated library in his hometown of Greensville, South Carolina, and in the march to Selma from Montgomery.

Reverend King recognized a young Jackson’s efforts, even with concerns about his ambition, and delegated him to represent the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) opening of a new chapter in Chicago. Jackson was instrumental in Operation Breadbasket, an economically-oriented initiative of civil rights activists to raise funds for disadvantaged and impoverished Black workers, businesses, and communities. Jackson would particularly focus on class dynamics as well racial exploitation in repression, although critics maintained throughout his life that he was too closely tied to the Black middle classes for effective results in marrying social liberation to racial liberation. This manifested in several expos and conferences held to platform and to support Black businesses. 

Jackson would go on to form a new iteration of the Rainbow Coalition, initially proposed and formed by Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and local leader of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, in Chicago. However, the Rainbow Coalition — or Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) as it was known under his influence — pursued non-revolutionary, non-violent, and legalistic avenues of struggle for social justice, civil rights and political activism. Jackson would also be the first Black man since the Reconstruction Era to address the Alabama State Legislature.

PUSH organized the fundraising of a presidential campaign for Jesse Jackson in 1984 as the first Black candidate for the office since Shirley Chisholm in 1972. Jackson lost the Democratic primaries to Walter Mondale and then again to Michael Dukakis in 1988. He made a profound name for himself by being the first Democratic party candidate to call for nuclear disarmament and detente with the USSR, as well as noted reforms like single-payer healthcare.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party, in its historic cowardice, was just as ready for a Black candidate at that time as they were to assert even the half-measures of peace, disarmament, or the same basic social reforms that smaller, poorer countries throughout the world have held for decades. But Jesse Jackson would, all the same, remain a member of the Democratic Party throughout the rest of his life.

Jackson, although an initial critic of Bill Clinton, would later praise him and support several of his administration’s efforts in Kenya and Yugoslavia. Jackson departed from the typical Democratic collaboration for vicious imperialist war in Iraq, and further stood against the Bush and Obama administrations’ encirclement and provocations against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with advocacy for peace and consistent participation in the ebbing and flowing popular peace movements in the United States.

It is also important to note that Jackson was always a staunch advocate for the advancement of voting rights for all Americans, and for stirring working Americans to exercise their right to vote, which contributed to the victory of Barack Obama over the Republicans in 2008. Although he would ultimately toe the line, this did not stop with Obama, an agent of the American bourgeoisie, as Jackson lent his support to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. 

It may be lamented that an intelligent, eloquent, and determined man like Jesse Jackson, who was flawed as all humans are, stood so determined with the false promises, cowardice, deceptions, and crimes of the Democratic Party. But at the same time this must not detract from a long and storied life full of personal courage, initiative, and determination to raise even the most basic reforms, to fight for peace, to force the bourgeoisie to fulfill their fanciful promises of human rights, equality, and freedom that have never and will never be realized under the system of capitalism.

It is a tragedy that such a life as Jesse Jackson’s was trapped in these reformist avenues, parties, and spaces. Working people of all nations within and without the United States mourn a great advocate and champion, and we carry his struggle forward to the decisive finish: for a socioeconomic system that advocates for class struggle over class collaboration, that can achieve a true and just peace, that can achieve the full potential of human freedom, equality, and dignity. This victory will only be possible because of the efforts — both advances and mistakes — of flawed but great representatives of the laboring masses as Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Categories: History, U.S. News, United States History