Jesse Jackson keeps fighting for voter rights: "We now live under the rulebook of Jeff Sessions"
SATURDAY, AUG 19, 2017 11:00 AM EDT
Jesse Jackson keeps fighting for voter rights: “We now live under the rulebook of Jeff Sessions”
Salon sits down with Jackson to discuss his strategy to resist the Trump administration's war on voting rights
DAVID MASCIOTRA
Jesse Jackson led a delegation to Selma, Alabama, as a graduate student at Chicago Theological Seminary. He marched, moving America to the rhythm of his footsteps and the thousands who organized and participated in Bloody Sunday, to win the franchise for himself, his mother and his people, but also to give credibility and legitimacy to American democracy. No country can claim the qualifier of free as long as it enslaves, stratifies, or subjugates one group of citizens for such a trivial distinction as skin pigmentation.
In the 1980s, Jackson’s historic runs for the presidency democratized the Democratic Party, allowing for proportional allocation of state delegates. The impetus to Jackson’s people-powered campaigns was the success of a “Southern Crusade” for voter registration throughout the Southern United States. From Georgia to California, Jackson spoke everywhere from old chapels losing their paint at the end of gravel roads to elegant banquet halls. With unique rhetorical brilliance and thunderous delivery, his charismatic leadership inspired 2 million Americans, mostly black and poor, to register to vote. At the time, it was the most effective voter registration drive in the history of the country.
Donald Trump, a man who became president precisely to prevent the full multicultural integration of American politics, recently announced the establishment of a commission to study and fight “voter fraud” — an imaginary problem that the right wing uses to smuggle voter suppression tactics in through the customs of law and public opinion.
Jackson, armed with the dexterity of his massive intellect and 50 years of leadership on voting rights, will convene a commission to combat President Trump’s exercise in deception against democratic progress. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Jackson’s international human rights organization, will assemble historians, activists, journalists and average voters to scrutinize voter suppression, and issue a report to inform the resistance against it.
Among Jackson’s many impressive qualities is his energy. At 76, he continues to work seven days a week, travel extensively, and weaponize the stature of his name to aid and animate causes ranging from fights against racial employment discrimination in Chicago neighborhoods to advocating for the governor of South Carolina — the place of his birth — to accept funds for the expansion of Medicaid.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/08/19/jesse-jackson-keeps-fighting-for-voter-rights-we-now-live-under-the-rulebook-of-jeff-sessions/
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