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ARE DEMOCRATS ACTUALLY LISTENING TO JESSE JACKSON?  
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Josh Kurtz
August 26, 2024
Maryland Matters
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_ Party leaders pay tribute to civil rights icon, but they don’t
always practice what he preached. Jackson ran insurgent campaigns in
1984 and 1988, and the only thing that has come close since are the
presidential runs of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. _

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) pays tribute to the Rev. Jesse
Jackson at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters in Chicago on Aug.
18, 2024, photo by Josh Kurtz.

 

 On the night before the start of the Democratic National Convention,
while dozens of delegates from Maryland were gathering at an Irish pub
along the Chicago River for their welcome party, I was on the South
Side of Chicago, in the ornate but crumbling headquarters of the
Rainbow PUSH Coalition, for a tribute to the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson was also hailed the next night on the convention stage, but
this Sunday evening event, while far bigger and impossibly long,
seemed more intimate, more heartfelt, and as much a call to action as
a celebration of the elderly and ailing icon of the civil rights
movement and pioneering presidential candidate.

It was also incredibly stirring, and moving, but also depressing in a
way. The dilapidated Rainbow PUSH headquarters, once a synagogue, felt
a little like a metaphor. I heard rhetoric that night — and
political movements discussed and recalled in a certain way — that
I hadn’t heard in 40 or 50 years. I even saw a gray-haired woman
wearing a T-shirt for “The War at Home,” a documentary about the
1960s anti-war movement in Madison, Wisconsin, that faded into
obscurity after its release 45 years ago.

Jackson was one of the great orators in American history, whose best
phrases, like “Keep hope alive!” are still very much a part of the
American political lexicon. Now 82 and fighting Parkinson’s, he uses
a wheelchair and is unable to speak beyond a mumble. But he sat in the
front row of the Rainbow PUSH auditorium during the tribute, and
dozens of people stopped by to say hello.

The night got me thinking about the through-line between Jackson and
Black political leaders today, including Gov. Wes Moore (D), Prince
George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) and other
Marylanders.

I also wondered why there was no one that I recognized there from
Maryland, other than Larry Cohen, the retired leader of the
Communications Workers of America, who is white, and has long been
associated with the far left of the Democratic Party (U.S. Rep. Jamie
Raskin, a former general counsel for the National Rainbow Coalition, a
predecessor to Rainbow PUSH, was supposed to speak, but had a
last-minute scheduling conflict).

It was said often, on both nights in Chicago, that there wouldn’t be
a Kamala Harris, there wouldn’t be a Barack Obama, without Jesse
Jackson, and in some respects, that’s true. Jackson made it
plausible for voters to imagine a legitimate Black presidential
candidate, even though his was much more of a protest candidacy than
Obama’s or Harris’.

Just as significant, Jackson challenged party rules and inveighed
against the growing influence of corporate interests in the Democratic
Party. (I cannot think of him referring to the old Democratic
Leadership Council, which sought to move the party closer to the
political center in the 1980s and ’90s, as “Democrats for the
Leisure Class,” without laughing.)

The former literally made it easier for Obama to defeat Hillary
Clinton for the White House nomination in 2008, because it loosened
the grip of party leaders on the presidential nominating process. Who
can forget the image of Jackson shedding tears on the night Obama was
elected president, overwhelmed by the fruits of his labors being
realized to a degree, at the campaign’s giant celebration in
Chicago’s Grant Park?

But Jackson’s push to move the party away from corporate interests?
That seems to have run aground.

Jackson ran insurgent campaigns in 1984 and 1988, and the only thing
that has come close since are the presidential runs of Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020.

Sanders, one of dozens of speakers at Rainbow PUSH that night, said as
much, noting that Jackson was the first prominent political leader to
publicly call health care a human right.

“That’s where Jesse Jackson was 30 years before I was,” Sanders
said. “Thirty years ago, he was talking about profoundly changing
our health care system.”

 

A stained sign at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters in Chicago.
Photo by Josh Kurtz.

Sanders added: “I happen to believe that Jesse Jackson is one of the
most significant political leaders in this country in the last 100
years.”

Obama was initially the underdog against Clinton in 2008 and perceived
as slightly more progressive. But he was, and Harris is, a
conventional politician treading a conventional political path.

You can look at what Jackson was espousing during his presidential
campaigns and throughout his career and say, yes, the Democratic Party
has moved slightly to the left over the years and is now embracing
calls for expanding health care access, eradicating poverty, and more
equity and inclusiveness in every aspect of society. But that embrace
has been slow, and progress incremental.

At the same time, many of the rights Jackson fought for over the
decades are being eroded by Republicans and federal courts. The long,
moral arc of history may bend toward justice, as Martin Luther King
Jr. once said, but it sure runs into a lot of roadblocks.

At the Democratic convention in Chicago, Maryland had the most diverse
delegation in the country, and that’s worth celebrating. Marylanders
can point with pride to the success of Moore and Alsobrooks and dozens
of rising political leaders in the General Assembly and in local
governments and think, part of Jackson’s dream is being fulfilled.

Jackson during his campaigns was a little like the poor kid pressing
his nose against the window watching the swells at a debutante ball.
Now Black political leaders often sit at the head of the table. And
that’s progress by any measure.

But these too are largely conventional politicians treading
conventional paths, preaching action but exercising caution, a little
too comfortable cozying up to the big-moneyed interests that still
dominate our politics, especially in Annapolis.

That convention welcome party at the Irish pub was sponsored by a
Baltimore/Annapolis lobbying firm, a utility contractor, and a Prince
George’s County development company. A lobbying firm and a health
care giant sponsored two of the Maryland delegation’s breakfasts.
Spend any time in Annapolis during a General Assembly session and you
know how depressingly easy it is for special interests to sway a
debate.

At the Rainbow PUSH headquarters, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones
(D), who faced expulsion from the legislature because he protested for
gun control on the House floor, was given a hero’s welcome.

In Annapolis, the few legislators who most vocally embrace Jackson’s
most radical positions and tactics — on economic equality, on
making the rich and corporations pay their fair share, on Palestinian
statehood, on tenants’ rights, on workers’ rights, on
Medicare-for-all, on aggressive climate action — are often
marginalized, if not outright ostracized.

As U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a forceful progressive despite
representing Silicon Valley, said in Chicago, “We can’t celebrate
Rev. Jackson without listening to what Rev. Jackson is calling on us
to do.”

_Founding Editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland
politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for
The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local
politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill
newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E
Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol
Hill. _

_Maryland Matters is a trusted nonprofit and nonpartisan news site. We
are not the arm of a profit-seeking corporation. Nor do we have a
paywall — we want to keep our work open to as many people as
possible. So we rely on the generosity of individuals and foundations
to fund our work._

_Years ago, healthy competition for news out of Annapolis and across
the state produced robust coverage. But the media landscape has
changed. Newspapers have closed. Suburban bureaus have shut down.
Reporting staffs have shrunk. Coverage of state and local news has all
but disappeared.  Maryland Matters seeks to fill the void with
original reporting and commentary._

* Jesse Jackson
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* Rainbow Coalition
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* Democratic Party
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* Bernie Sanders
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* Maryland
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