•Civil rights leader
•Founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
•Has repeatedly threatened businesses with boycotts, negative publicity, and (implicitly) outright violence if they refused to enrich him or his organizations
•Stated that Yasser Arafat's “commitment to justice is an absolute one”
•Described Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as “the most honest, courageous politician I have ever met”
•Also lauded Castro henchman Che Guevara
•Ran twice for U.S. President (1984 and 1988)
•Referred to Jews as “Hymies,” and to New York City as “Hymietown,” in what he thought was a private conversation in 1984
•According to the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, communists were deeply involved with Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign.
•Enthusiastic backer of the community organization ACORN
•Called Ward Connerly, a black California Board of Regents member who once led the fight to end affirmative action in California's public sector, a “house slave” and a “puppet of the white man”
•Condemned Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's vote to place limits on affirmative action programs, characterizing Thomas as an “enem[y] of civil rights” and likening his black judicial robes to the white sheets of Klansmen
•According to James Mtume, co-host of the Open Line Show on New York City radio, Jackson in 2008 privately denounced Barack Obama as a “no-good half-breed ni**er.”
•Supported the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011
•“Racism is a deeply ingrained congenital deformity in the U.S. It is at the root of our society, and it is the rot of our national character.”
See also: Southern Christian Leadership Conference Al Sharpton
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Campaign for America's Future
Jesse Jackson, Sr. was born in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941. In 1959 he was accepted to the University of Illinois on a football scholarship, but a year later he transferred to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. There, Jackson became active in the nascent civil-rights movement and led various protests and sit-ins at Southern restaurants and other businesses. In 1964, Jackson graduated from college with a degree in sociology. The following year he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and became the director of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Theological Seminary Dropout
In 1966 Jackson moved to Chicago to begin divinity studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), but his academic performance was abysmal and he dropped out during his first year.[1] Nevertheless, he soon began referring to himself as a Baptist minister. Kenneth Timmerman—author of the book Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson—explains:
“[There is normally] a two- to three-year process for earning that title [Reverend]. Jesse Jackson got himself ordained two months after Martin Luther King was shot. It was essentially a political ordination, a shotgun ordination.... He did not go through this two-year process. He never submitted himself to the authority of the church. He has never had a church himself, and he has been accountable to no one.”
It would not be until the year 2000 that Jackson actually received a Master of Divinity degree from CTS. By that time, his son—Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.—was on the board of the seminary. The younger Jackson had earned his M.A. in theology from that same institution a decade earlier.
Lies about Dr. King's Assassination
Jesse Jackson Sr. clashed with Martin Luther King Jr. on a number of occasions during the Sixties, and he has often overstated the closeness of his relationship to King—even claiming to have been the last person King spoke to after he had been mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet on April 4, 1968. Specifically, Jackson claimed that he was on the balcony with King immediately after the latter had been shot, and that he had cradled the dying civil-rights leader in his arms as he took his final breaths. But in fact, at the moment King was shot, Jackson was actually in a nearby parking lot talking to a group of musicians. Kenneth Timmerman describes what happened next:
“When the shots rang out, he [Jackson] fled and hid behind the swimming pool area and reappeared 20-30 minutes later when the television cameras arrived on the scene. That’s when Jesse Jackson told other Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers, ‘Don’t you talk to the press, whatever you do.’ ... Nobody had given him that job. He took that job. Call it ‘entrepreneurial instinct’ if you wish, but on the spot he realized that he had an opportunity to spin the events to create his own persona and create a possibility for him to become a leader in the black movement. He had no prospects at that point.”
The next morning, Jackson flew to Chicago to make a guest appearance on the NBC Today Show. In the few hours that had passed between the King assassination and Jackson’s flight to the Windy City, Jackson had already hired a public-relations agent to accompany him as he was transported from interview to interview in a chauffeur-driven car. Before a national television audience on the Today Show, Jackson donned a shirt that he claimed was smeared with the dying Dr. King’s blood. “He died in my arms,” Jackson lied.
Leaving SCLC and Launching Operation PUSH
SCLC appointed King's close associate, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, to succeed the slain leader as head of the organization. This move angered Jackson, who had hoped to be the heir to King's civil-rights mantle. Soon thereafter, a black Chicago Tribune reporter named Angela Parker discovered that, Jackson, in the aftermath of King’s assassination, had embezzled money from Operation Breadbasket. Parker went to Atlanta and presented the evidence to Abernathy, who publicly confronted Jackson with the charges. Abernathy suspended Jackson for sixty days beginning on December 6, 1971, and SCLC board chairman Joseph Lowery charged Jackson with “administrative improprieties and repeated acts of violation of organizational policies.”
At that point, Jackson decided to break away from SCLC and establish his own organization called Operation PUSH (acronym for “People United to Serve Humanity”), which he launched On December 21, 1971. Jackson quickly radicalized PUSH's political agenda, moving to unseat the Chicago delegates of Mayor Richard Daley at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami.
Operation PUSH would eventually become known as the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (RPC). According to former Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, who had broken with the Panthers and become an active anti-communist, the roots of RPC could be traced clearly to the Black Panther movement. By Cleaver's telling, Jackson's group was simply using “warmed over” 1960s-era rhetoric that had first been employed by the Panthers. Cleaver pointed out, for instance, that old Panther newspapers had commonly referred to a “rainbow coalition” of blacks, whites and Puerto Ricans.
Corporate Shakedowns
In the early days of Operation PUSH, the organization's tactics were essentially the same as those of Operation Breadbasket: targeting corporations that failed to hire blacks or in other ways treated blacks unfairly, and giving assistance to black-owned businesses.
But numerous allegations of extortion and corruption dogged PUSH’s activities over the years, as well as the activities of subsequent Jackson-led groups like the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the Citizenship Education Fund (CEF). CEF, for instance, has received literally millions of dollars via negotiated settlements with companies that Jackson has frivolously accused of racist employment practices. These activities have been documented in numerous sources, most notably in Ken Timmerman’s Shakedown. Indeed, Jackson has repeatedly threatened businesses with boycotts, negative publicity, and (implicitly) outright violence if they refused to enrich him or his organizations. Some examples:
•In 1981 Coca-Cola was induced to award a lucrative syrup distributorship to Jackson’s half-brother, Noah Robinson, in order to prevent Jackson from publicly shaming the company for conducting operations in apartheid-era South Africa.
•Soon thereafter, Coca Cola also granted a distributorship to Cecil Troy, a major financial backer of Operation PUSH.
•In March 1982 Jackson worked out a similar deal with Heublein Corporation, a wine and spirits company that owned Kentucky Fried Chicken. Under that agreement, Heublein promised to spend $360 million over five years with black-owned banks, advertising agencies, and newspapers, and to significantly increase its number of nonwhite franchise owners. As WorldNetDaily reports, “Once again, Noah Robinson cashed in, using the covenant to lock in a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise that would become the launching pad for a fast food empire.” Robinson would later recount: “I told Jesse, ‘If you just do the talking for us—and I handle the financial operations—we can rival the Rockefellers in riches.’”
•Also in 1982, Heublein Corporation donated $5,000 to to help underwrite the annual PUSH convention, and came forth with another $10,000 in November 1983.
•Similar cash contributions to Jackson and his groups came from 7-Up and Coca-Cola.
•In November 1996 Jackson called for a national boycott of Texaco, Inc., saying that economic sanctions were needed to "break the cycle" of racial hostility at the company. He called on Texaco stockholders to sell their shares in protest, and warned that Texaco service stations would be picketed if a quick settlement was not reached. In the largest-ever settlement of its kind, Texaco agreed to pay $115 million to 1,500 current and former black employees; to give all black employees an immediate 10% raise; to provide $26.1 million in pay raises to blacks over a five-year period; and to spend $35 million for racial monitoring and sensitivity-training programs for employees. But Jackson said this was insufficient.
•Laying the groundwork for yet another big payoff, Jackson denounced Anheuser-Busch not only for having too few minority-owned distributorships, but also for allegedly targeting highly potent malt-liquor advertising at minority communities where alcoholism was prevalent. To prevent Jackson from waging a protracted negative-publicity campaign against the company, Anheuser-Busch in 1998 awarded (at a bargain price) a beer distributorship to Jackson’s sons, Yusef and Jonathan, neither of whom had any background in the beer business.
•In February 1997, Jackson filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission to block Viacom's bid to sell 10 radio stations, maintaining that the company had not fulfilled its pledge to sell some of those stations to minorities. In response, Viacom agreed to create a $2 million fund to promote minority ownership of broadcast properties. Jackson then ended his opposition, and the sale was approved.
•In 1998 Jackson tried to block a merger between CBS and Viacom, saying it was "antithetical to basic democratic values." He made it clear, however, that his opposition would cease if Viacom were to sell its UPN network to either of his longtime friends, Chester Davenport or Percy Sutton. In early 1999, CBS and Viacom pledged to give $1 million to Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund (CEF), at which point Jackson's opposition to the merger dissipated.
•In December 1998, Jackson threatened to block the GTE-Bell Atlantic merger unless the two parties made guarantees regarding their commitment to minority hiring and contracting. Over the ensuing four months, GTE and Bell pledged $1.5 million to CEF and gave Chester Davenport a 7% stake of their new cellular business. In May 1999, Jackson approved the merger, which resulted in the formation of Verizon.
•In December 1998, Jackson opposed a merger between AT&T and TCI, citing the latter's "questionable record and ... poor level of public service." But in January 1999, AT&T pledged $425,000 to Jackson's CEF and sent its chairman to one of Jackson's conferences, where he (the chairman) promised to hire a minority-owned firm to handle its bond offering. The firm that was eventually selected for this contract, Blaylock & Partners, had close ties to Jackson.
•According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Jackson also blocked the [1999] SBC-Ameritech merger until Ameritech agreed to sell part of its cellular phone business to a minority owner, who turned out to be [Jackson's friend Chester] Davenport." (Davenport had no previous telecommunications experience.) "The price you pay for our support," said Jackson, "is to include us." Davenport later hired Jackson's son Jonathan (who also served as president of CEF) as a consultant.
•In 2001 Jackson called for a consumer boycott of the Toyota Motor Company, in retribution for what he characterized as the company's “offensive” marketing materials. The object of Jackson's disdain was a promotional postcard, distributed by the automaker mostly in nightclubs and coffee houses, that showed a smiling black man with the likeness of a gold Toyota sport-utility vehicle adorning one of his teeth. According to Jackson, this “example of extreme stereotypes” had caused “widespread outrage and indignation among African Americans.” “The only thing missing,” said Jackson at a Chicago news conference, “is the watermelon.” The dispute was resolved when Toyota promised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to train and hire more nonwhite minorities, to purchase more goods and services from minority companies, and to earmark more of its advertising dollars for minority-owned advertisers.
•In the summer of 2008, Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition demanded that the oil giant British Petroleum (BP) increase the involvement of nonwhite minorities in its business practices. Jackson did this in spite of the fact that BP had already paid $10,000 to be a “Bronze Sponsor” of the Rainbow/PUSH's 35th annual conference in Chicago. Peter Flaherty, founder and president of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), stated: “It is pretty obvious what is going on here. BP sponsors Jesse Jackson's conference at the $10,000 level, but the company is certainly capable of a lot more. No doubt, Jackson seeks to upgrade them to the $150,000 'Platinum Sponsor' level for next year.” Added Flaherty: “Nobody likes being called a racist for obvious reasons, but instead of these corporations defending themselves and standing up for themselves, they basically just want to buy off the enemy.”
Commenting on arrangements like these, one corporate executive (speaking on condition of anonymity) said: “It seemed like a shakedown to me. They [Jackson and his organizations] had lists of people they wanted us to do business with, lists of things they wanted us to do, donations and things like that.”
MORE
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=687
