Obituary: The Politics of Jesse Jackson

BY OBERY M. HENDRICKS JR.
oberymhendricksjr.substack.comObituary

BY OBERY M. HENDRICKS JR.
oberymhendricksjr.substack.com

I was greatly honored to be asked to contribute to the program booklet at Reverend Jackson’s funeral. The booklet version was truncated. Here is the complete essay.

For decades, Reverend Jesse Jackson was among the most consequential figures in the Democratic Party. The principled stands he took and the enlightened policies he championed influenced generations of progressive politics for the good of all Americans. The extent of his influence is reflected, for instance, in Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign platform, which was a virtual carbon copy of Reverend Jackson’s 1984 platform. Yet, despite Reverend Jackson’s enormous stature in the Democratic Party, particularly during his historic campaigns for the American presidency, simply promoting partisan political concerns was never his motivation nor his goal. For him, partisan politics were simply the vehicle by which he strived to obey the weighty commandments at the core of the Gospel: “You shall love your Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and… love your neighbor as yourself.”

These “greatest commandments,” as Jesus called them, were the foundation of Reverend Jackson’s lifelong ministry of humane political activism and social concern. He understood the command to love God by loving his neighbors as himself was about more than sentimentality. For Reverend Jackson, loving his neighbors as himself meant he should want them to have access to the same opportunities, economic security, and social and political freedoms he wanted for himself and his own loved ones. But he also understood loving his neighbors meant6 much more than that. Because Jesus said the reason for his anointing (Luke 4:16) was to actively bring good news of liberation to all the poor and oppressed, Reverend Jackson understood that the command to love his neighbors meant to actively struggle for his neighbors to have the same access to the same good things he sought for his own loved ones, no matter their race, creed or nationality.

Thus, loving his neighbors meant fighting for the good of all people, but especially for the poor and the oppressed. Indeed, Reverend’s most often repeated phrase, “I am somebody!” echoed Jesus’ loving declaration, “Blessed are you poor folks.” In fact, Reverend Jackson declared that very conviction to the world in his address to the 1984 Democratic convention. “My constituency,” he declared, “is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised.” In other words, the politics of Reverend Jesse Jackson were the Politics of Jesus.

It is the love for his neighbors that lives at the heart of the politics of Jesus that stirred Reverend Jackson in his youth to face painful harm and death, in the struggle for human and civil rights.

It was his love for his neighbors that moved Reverend Jackson to answer Dr. King’s call to labor long and hard to provide daily bread for the masses as the head of Operation Breadbasket.

It was his love for his neighbors that motivated Reverend Jackson to take on the monumental task of establishing and shepherding Operation PUSH—People United to Serve Humanity—the activist organization that to this day continues to tirelessly wage the ongoing fight for a just, humane world.

It was his love for his neighbors that inspired Reverend Jackson to build a cross-racial “Rainbow Coalition” to “change the race problem into a class struggle between the haves and the have-nots” so the fight for the rights of workers of every race and color could be waged even more effectively.

It was his love for his neighbors that moved Reverend Jackson to travel to Syria in 1983 to secure the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman from captivity and in 1984 to personally persuade Fidel Castro to release 22 Americans imprisoned in Cuba.

It was his love for his neighbors that moved Reverend Jackson to proudly march as a leader of the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and to advocate for gays and lesbians in a national convention speech, the first major leader to ever do so.

It was his love for his neighbors that inspired Reverend Jackson to travel to Gambia in 2012 to convince its head of state to permanently halt the imminent executions of 40 political prisoners.

And it was the love for his neighbors, the love that Jesus so deeply enjoined, that moved presidential candidate Jesse Jackson to uncompromisingly advocate for healthcare, education and adequate housing to be treated as universal human rights; to advocate for a more equitable tax code to better fund the social safety net on which millions of lives depend; and to fight for a democracy that respects—and includes—everyone who sets foot on these shores.

So deep was Reverend Jackson’s commitment to loving his neighbors that when he emerged from a particularly difficult period in his illness in which he had struggled with lucidity and had not eaten nor drunk for days, his first concern was not food or drink for himself; his concern was for his staff to step up its efforts to feed the nation’s hungry!

The love that fueled Reverend Jackson’s love for his neighbors, that fueled his activism, that fueled his sense of responsibility for the uplift of all humanity—this is the legacy Reverend Jesse Jackson has left us. But more than a legacy, he has left an abiding challenge for each of us to commit to demonstrating love for our neighbors by striving to build a world of justice in which everyone is somebody, in which everyone has power over their own lives, in which everyone has adequate housing and adequate nourishment for their bodies and minds, a world in which all of humanity finally has an equal opportunity to eat of the fullest fruits of the tree of life. This is the legacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson. May we who believe in God’s love and justice ever strive to honor it.

But more than a legacy, he has left an abiding challenge for each of us to commit to demonstrating love for our neighbors by striving to build a world of justice in which everyone is somebody,

And it was the love for his neighbors, the love that Jesus so deeply enjoined, that moved presidential candidate Jesse Jackson to uncompromisingly advocate for healthcare, education and adequate housing to be treated as universal human rights; to advocate for a more equitable tax code to better fund the social safety net on which millions of lives depend; and to fight for a democracy that respects—and includes—everyone who sets foot on these shores.

So deep was Reverend Jackson’s commitment to loving his neighbors that when he emerged from a particularly difficult period in his illness in which he had struggled with lucidity and had not eaten nor drunk for days, his first concern was not food or drink for himself; his concern was for his staff to step up its efforts to feed the nation’s hungry!

The love that fueled Reverend Jackson’s love for his neighbors, that fueled his activism, that fueled his sense of responsibility for the uplift of all humanity—this is the legacy Reverend Jesse Jackson has left us. But more than a legacy, he has left an abiding challenge for each of us to commit to demonstrating love for our neighbors by striving to build a world of justice in which everyone is somebody, in which everyone has power over their own lives, in which everyone has adequate housing and adequate nourishment for their bodies and minds, a world in which all of humanity finally has an equal opportunity to eat of the fullest fruits of the tree of life. This is the legacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson. May we who believe