…the elimination of racism requires the application of equal standards to blacks as well as whites…Jesse Jackson has manifestly been allowed to engage in conduct which would disqualify any white person from any respect or credibility– Rees Lloyd
By Rees Lloyd
The philosopher Hegel once wrote that events and personalities in history “reappear in one fashion or another,” to which Karl Marx agreed, famously adding: “[T]he first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”That brings me to the second coming of Jesse Jackson to Portland to convert a tragedy into a self-promoting, race-baiting, race-inflaming farce.
Jackson, an unprincipled self-promoting race-hustler and self-ordained “Reverend,” has reappeared in Portland to make the utterly malicious, race-baiting allegations of a racial “execution” of a black African American by a white police marksman who responded, with others, to 911 calls for help from numerous persons who believed the troubled man was out of control due to the death of his brother the same day by natural causes; was threatening harm to himself and others, including the mother of his child — and to that child; and was in possession of a gun, according to all callers, including the child’s grandfather, and one witness who said the man appeared intent on “committing suicide by cop.” (Victoria Taft played those tapes on her Victoria Taft Show on Feb. 16, and they are available online on her blog.)The Grand Jury investigated and found that the officer acted in accord with police policy and exonerated him. In addition, the Grand Jury wrote a letter calling for a re-examination of Portland Police Department policies, which the city government and department have taken seriously.
Notwithstanding, Jesse Jackson has reappeared, like Dracula rising out of political obscurity, at the request of an alliance of African-American clergy, the Albina Ministerial Alliance, and black race activists, to allege that the death was a deliberate “execution” because of race; and that Portland is as racist as the “Bull Connors” South of the 1960’s, as one black editor has preposterously spouted. Thus, tragedy has been reduced to farce by Jesse Jackson, reappearing to regain past race-baiting glory, attempting to manufacture virulent anti-black white racism in, of all places, Portland, a veritable Principality of Political Correctness, which voted overwhelming for Barack Hussein Obama because he was black and not in spite of it, in a kind of “I’m-Not-Racist” catharsis. Indeed, most Portlanders, of any political affiliation, would rather commit hiri kiri than be thought of as racist, or use the “N-word” that came so trippingly off Jesse Jackson’s tongue when he described the First Black President as a “[N-word]” and a “M….F….” whose testicles (in the vernacular) the Reverend (sic) Jackson said he would like to cut off.
It is remarkable that at this late date in our history, forty-six years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and almost half-a-century of affirmative action thereunder in which there has been manifest racial discrimination not against but in favor of blacks in hiring and promotion in employment – most particularly in the public sector –and after election of the nation’s first black President, that Jesse Jackson, the black clergy of the Albina Ministerial Alliance and black race activists, would expect to have any credibility in alleging that Portland is infected with racism so virulent that police would deliberately “execute” this man because he is black, and demonstrating at City Hall and the Mayor’s Office as if they are suffering victims of vicious racism, as if nothing in America had changed in this last half-century. It is specious, and utterly malicious. And in Portland, it is preposterous.
It is even more remarkable that the Oregon media, and politicians like ultra-liberal Mayor Sam Adams, and his ultra-liberal colleagues on the Portland City Council, continue to rush to kow-tow before a self-promoting race-hustling charlatan like Jesse Jackson, whose lack of character and integrity in megalomaniac self-promotion have long been known and exposed.These morally disqualifying acts include, without limitation, such unconscionable acts as Jackson’s ordaining himself as a “Reverend” in or about 1966 although he in fact dropped out of the Chicago Theological Seminary after approximately six months and merely usurped the title “Reverend” ; and including Jackson’s despicable exploitation of Martin Luther King’s death by falsely claiming, the day after King’s assassination, that King died cradled in Jackson’s arms, and that the blood on Jackson’s sweater was that of King –all absolute lies, as thoroughly exposed without refutation in investigative reporter Kenneth R. Timmerman’s definitive book, “SHAKEDOWN: Exposing The Real Jesse Jackson.” (Anyone who challenges these allegations should read Timmerman’s book: Jackson neither sued nor attempted to deny Timmerman’s assertions.)
Another remarkable irony presented: Most Americans, whatever their own religious beliefs, or lack thereof, give respect to clergy because of the educational efforts clergy must accomplish to be ordained: because of their vocation to serve as spiritual guides and pastors to their congregations; and because of their fidelity to the religious and ethical commandments of their various creeds. Jesse Jackson utterly fails on all grounds: He effectively ordained himself as “The Reverend” (see below); he has never pastored a church; and his infidelity to religious commandments and ethical standards are notorious, including for but one example “The Reverend’s” impregnating a Operation Push staffer, who birthed his “love child,” and then using funds donated for Operation PUSH to hush her up.
It is manifest that the unethical, despicable, self-promoting acts carried out by Jesse Jackson under cover of the title of “Reverend” would have ended the career – and credibility – of any white religious leader, civil rights leader, or spokesman for any cause. Jesse Jackson should be held to the same standard. If racism is to be at issue, then I suggest that it is racist to hold Jesse Jackson to a lesser standard than a white clergyman operating as a “Reverend” would be held.
Perhaps Jackson’s sordid history is unknown to modern media, politicians, and public, including in the black community; or forgotten, willfully or otherwise; or deliberately covered-up to hide the truth. Therefore, in honor of Black History Month, please consider a few of the following irrefutable acts of Jesse Jackson who is brought to Portland as a purported religious leader, a “Reverend,” entitled to respect and credibility when he defames a police officer as an “executioner” and a city as racist, and is kowtowed to by media and politicians rather than confronted with his own true history of self-promoting, race-baiting lies:
JACKSON’S DESPICABLE EXPLOITATION OF REV. KING’S DEATH
Perhaps the most despicable self-promoting act of Jesse Jackson, even more egregiously unethical than his self-ordination as a “Reverend” (see below), is Jackson’s exploitation of the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, which was long known in the Civil Rights Movement and definitively detailed without refutation by Kenneth Timmerman’s “SHAKEDOWN: Exposing The Real Jesse Jackson.“
Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He was shot by a sniper as he stood at the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. As author Kenneth Timmerman reports in “Shakedown,” the first person to reach the fallen King was Andrew Young, then executive director of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and later Mayor of Atlanta and Ambassador to the U.N., followed by King’s closest friend and colleague, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who was later elected to succeed King as head of the SCLC. Abernathy and Young rode in the ambulance with King as he was taken to the hospital. It was Rev. Abernathy who was at Rev. King’s side when he died.
Those are the true acts, but they are not the facts the world was told, as Jesse Jackson shamelessly spewed out self-promoting lies to the media capitalizing on Rev. King’s death to promote himself as a “Reverend” who cradled the dying Rev. King in his arms and was the last man to whom Rev. King spoke; lies which the media repeated for years without investigation; causing many Americans, black and non-black, to continue to believe Jackson’s self-serving lies to this day because of the pusillanimous refusal of politically correct media, politicians, educators of the young, and others who would rather cover-up the truth of Jackson than be branded a racist by him and other race-hustlers, just as the media and politicians are doing today in Portland, at the expense of truth.
The truth is that on the morning of April 5, 1968, within twelve hours of King’s death, as Timmerman details, Jesse Jackson appeared on the nationally televised “Today” show. Jackson emotionally claimed that King had died in his arms; that Jackson had cradled King’s head as he lay on the balcony; that Jackson was the last person on earth to whom King spoke. As proof, he said the blood on the sweater he wore on camera was the blood of Martin Luther King as he lay dying in Jackson’s arms.
It was all a complete, utter, despicable lie. But Jackson’s purpose was achieved—by lying about his role in King’s death he became nationally and internationally famous. He was featured in the print, radio, television news media; was celebrated in “Playboy;” made the cover of “Time” magazine on the first anniversary of King’s death; was recognized, by exploitation of Rev. King’s death, as a national “Civil Rights Leader” in the mold of Rev. King. Jackson was not a “Civil Rights Leader,” he was a Media Leader, a pied piper of self-serving pap leading the media like lemmings in thrall of his every lie, not daring to challenge his veracity for fear of being accused of being racist.
Jackson’s lies were promoted by him and repeated by the media without investigation for a decade. After all, would a “Reverend,” a clergyman like Jackson, deliberately lie to advance himself? Timmerman reports that it wasn’t until a black reporter from Chicago, Barbara Reynolds, sought out King’s closest associates – eyewitnesses Abernathy, Young, and Hosea Williams — and reported their repudiation of Jesse Jackson’s self-promoting lies in exploitation of Rev. King’s death, that the truth was published.
When Rev. Ralph Abernathy was finally asked about the facts, he said, it was he who in fact was with Rev. King on the balcony, in the ambulance with him, and at his side when he was pronounced dead at the hospital. “I am sure that he [Jackson] would not say to me that he even came near Dr. King after Doc was shot,” Abernathy said, according to Timmerman.
Andrew Young, SCLC’s executive director who was the first to reach Rev. King on the balcony, and would later become Mayor of Atlanta and Ambassador to the U.N., said Jackson’s claims were “all mysteries to me,” as he did not witness any of the acts Jackson claimed, Timmerman reports.
Hosea Williams, was perhaps the most outspoken. A well-known, well-respected leader of SCLC and very close to Rev. King, Williams was an eye-witness to the shooting, and flatly denied Jackson’s claims, denying that Jackson was even on the balcony, saying it was Rev. Abernathy who cradled the dying King in his arms, not Jackson, and adding: “It’s a helluva thing to capitalize on a man’s death, especially one you professed to love.”
Further, Williams attested that Jackson’s “capitaliz[ing]” on Rev. King’s death did not begin with the despicable appearance on the Today Show on April 5, 1968: It began on the very night of Rev. King’s death on April 4.
Hosea Williams recounted what happened, as reported by Timmerman: “ ‘I was in my room. I looked out and saw Jesse talking to these TV people. I came out to hear what was being said. I heard Jesse say, “Yes, I was the last man in the world King spoke to”.’ Williams said he was so furious that he climbed over a railing and rushed toward Jackson, until he was restrained by a police officer. ‘I called Jesse a dirty, stinking, lying so-and-so, or something like that,” Williams said. “I had no hang-ups about Jesse talking to the press. That was okay, but why lie’?”
When the NBC reporter went on air, Timmerman writes, he introduced Jackson as follows: “The Reverend Jesse Jackson of Chicago, one of King’s closest aides, was beside him when he was shot….” All were lies: Jackson was not a “Reverend,” was not one of “King’s closest aides,” and wasn’t at King’s side.
Over forty years later, Jesse Jackson is still capitalizing on those original lies in exploitation of the death of Martin Luther King. And now that same shameless lying Jesse Jackson has reappeared in Portland to capitalize on the death of another black man.
JACKSON’S SELF-ORDINATION DEMEANS ALL CLERGY
Jesse Jackson’s brazen self-ordination as a “Reverend” almost equals the despicability his exploitation of Martin Luther King’s death to advance his political career as a “Civil Rights Leader” of national stature.
Jackson began demanding that he be identified as “The Reverend Jackson” in or about 1966, in order to gain credibility in the black community, in which black clergy were respected and the traditional power brokers.
The truth is, as set forth in more detail in Timmerman’s “SHAKEDOWN, Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson”: Jesse Jackson enrolled in the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in or about 1965. He dropped out after approximately six (6) months. During those six months, he failed to fulfill mandatory attendance and assignments required of all other students. When confronted about this by a faculty member, Jackson asserted: “I’m special.”
Jackson went to Alabama in 1965 when Martin Luther King was to lead the now famed Selma March. Jackson didn’t participate. He fell ill and returned to Chicago. However, he didn’t return to CTS. Nevertheless, with no more than six months at CTS, without degree, without ordination, Jackson proclaimed himself to be a “Reverend,” and has demanded for more than four decades that the media, and the public, regard him and refer to him as “The Reverend Jesse Jackson.”
This despicable usurpation and exploitation of the title “Reverend” by Jackson since 1966 was made even more ethically egregious in the year 2,000 by Jackson, and CTS, which dishonored itself by awarding Jackson a much belated CTS degree. That is, Jackson’s CTS class graduated in 1967. He did not, as he had dropped out in the first year after only six-months, and never returned, never took another theological class or fulfilled any of the requirements imposed on all others. Notwithstanding, in the year 2000, almost thirty-five years after Jackson dropped out but declared himself to be a “Reverend,” and almost thirty-three years after he should have graduated, CTS awarded Jackson a degree in an academically disgraceful manner.
The CTS delayed degree-grant to Jackson was utterly farcical, to its dishonor as well as Jackson’s. All that CTS required of Jackson to receive a CTS belated degree, Timmerman details in “Shakedown,” was to pass an oral examination on “ethics” (I am not making this up). This purported examination consisted of a discussion of two issues, abortion and the death penalty, conducted by an attractive female faculty member who later said she was “intimidated” by having to interrogate Jesse Jackson, according to Timmerman.
Why would CTS award a degree in the year 2000, when Jackson had dropped out three decades earlier and never attended another class? Investigative reporter Timmerman discovered an odd coincidence: In the year 2000, CTS had gained a new member of its board of directors – Jesse Jackson, Jr., U.S. Congressman from Chicago. How odd the coincidence; how very much the “Chicago way – it ain’t what you know, its who you know!”; how very corrupt; how ridiculous that anyone would take seriously a CTS’ degree to Jackson in that same year of 2000 based upon his allegedly passing the purported oral exam on “ethics,” of all subjects.
It is not known whether Jackson, in this unprecedented, discriminatory degree-qualifying “ethics” oral examination, discussed, in the portion on “abortion,” the ethical nuances involved in The Reverend Jackson’s impregnation of a staffer of his Operation Push to whom Jackson provided tens of thousands of dollars which had been donated to PUSH for alleged works for blacks, but were used instead as apparent hush-money to keep silent the affair.
Nor is it known whether Jackson discussed the ethical issues raised in his performance as one of the members of the clergy called upon to assist and counsel former Democrat President Bill Clinton with his penis problems pertaining to sexual and marital infidelity after Clinton’s claims that “I never had sex with that woman—Monica Lewinsky!” were exposed as naught but lies as false as Jesse Jackson’s claim to be a “Reverend,” and his claim to be the man who cradled Martin Luther King in his arms as he lay dying.
These are but two of the many immoral, unethical, and despicable acts of Jesse Jackson which are worthy of remembrance in Black History Month as Jackson comes to Portland as “The Reverend” to race-bait. If the above acts are not sufficient to cure any doubt that Jackson lacks the moral authority to be respected or credible as a “Reverend” on matters moral, ethical, or racial, consider but a few of these other disreputable acts carried out by a “Reverend”:
— Having ordained himself as a Reverend, and having exploited Rev. King’s death with outrageous lies in order to gain national fame, Jackson believed that he above all others should be recognized as the successor to Martin Luther King as the primary civil rights leader in America, including replacing Rev. King as head of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). However, Jackson’s takeover bid was resoundingly rejected. SCLC voted that Ralph Abernathy, a real “Reverend” who had pastored a church and been the right-hand colleague of King for years, was elected. Stung by this rejection, and unwilling to be subordinate to Abernathy, or anyone else, Jackson left SCLU to start his own “Operation Push” in Chicago.— As head of Operation Push, Jackson launched and carried on for years a campaign, commonly characterized as a “shakedown” campaign, threatening corporations with boycotts and attacks on them and their products as racist unless they forked over money to PUSH. Most of those attacked capitulated and handed over great sums of money to Jackson to buy protection from his morally if not legally wrongful extortion-like race-based “shakedowns,” a kind of protection racket which was and is a disgrace to the civil rights movement. Jackson’s infamous abuses, always as “The Reverend,” are detailed in Kenneth Timmerman’s “SHAKEDOWN: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson,” the allegations of which have not been refuted.
— One of the few corporations to stand up to Operation Push and refuse to pay protection money was Phil Night’s NIKE. PUSH targeted NIKE, first fulminating that NIKE had to appoint a black to its board of directors. No problem, replied NIKE, since every board meeting already included as a consultant a black former basketball coach who was promptly appointed to the board as director rather than consultant. PUSH, unsatisfied since its real aim appeared to be lucre, fumed and demanded money for NIKE to avoid boycott and attacks. PUSH flew forty of its leading race-hustlers to Portland to intimidate Knight and NIKE into appeasement, i.e., the payment of protection money. Knight and NIKE refused. Jackson’s PUSH race-hustlers returned to Chicago without the usual bags of protection money. — Jackson didn’t just fleece corporations by his threats in PUSH, he fleeced many public, tax-supported entities by demanding contracts, often in the millions, allegedly for blacks, and then created jobs for his political cronies who performed woefully, pocketing salaries, and accomplishing very little compared with the sums flowing to PUSH, as Timmerman details in “Shakedown.”
— One example that I witnessed is Jackson’s attack on the Los Angeles Unified School District. With the same kind of tactic as now being used in Portland to cow politicians and media, Jackson whipped up animus among blacks, herded them into school board meetings, demanding a contract to put on a PUSH program that would allegedly help black students. Intimidated, the School Board gave Jackson a one-year contract reportedly for $4-million. Jackson handed staff jobs to cronies, and flew back to Chicago. During the contract, he flew back to L.A. to give an inspirational speech to students in his famed rhyming style, e.g., “Don’t Be A Fool – Stay In School.” Then he flew back to Chicago. At the end of the year, Jackson’s appointees could not account for funds, could not account for what had been achieved. The School Board announced it would not renew the contract. Jackson flew back to L.A., herded angry blacks into the School Board’s meeting, harangued them, called the decision “racist,” threatened unrest, and left L.A. with another one-year $4-million contract. At the end of the second year, during which Jackson had flown back to give another “Don’t Be A Fool, Stay In School” speech — the result was the same—Jackson and his cronies couldn’t account for what was done with the funds, and could not show that any improvement had been achieved after the expenditure of some $8-million in tax payer funds. The School Board finally had the backbone to refuse to renew Jackson’s multi-million contract for a third year.
— Jackson attacks whites as racists if those whites admit, as did Barack Hussein Obama said his grandmother did, that they are apprehensive when approached by groups of young black males. But he has a different standard for himself: Jackson was exposed as saying that if he hears footsteps behind him when he is walking in his own exclusive Chicago neighborhood at night, he is “relieved” if, when he looks back, the footsteps are those of white not black persons. Was Obama’s Grandma guilty of a streak racial prejudice, as Obama discussed, but not the Reverend Jackson?
— Jackson attacks whites as racists if they innocently or inadvertently use any term which Jackson can torture into evidence of racist intent. For example, there is the case of the white Washington, D.C., school executive who was fired and defamed in national news as a racist for using the word “niggardly” in its dictionary-correct usage. Then there is the case of the department store Santa Claus, who with an avuncular warm smile, innocently complimented the little boy on his knee as “a cute little monkey” — leading to outraged howls that he be fired for racism (he was), and leading to poor Santa being disgraced as a racist on national television. But The Reverend Jackson, himself, not realizing a microphone was still live in a media interview, called Barack Hussein Obama a “N-word” and a “MF” whose testicles he would like to cut off. Jackson said he was sorry-about-that when caught, and admonished that we Americans should get back to the “real issues.” And, always the hypocrite, Jackson would later pose for media pictures of him weeping when Obama was elected.— Jackson attacks whites as prejudicially accusing blacks of crimes, but defames a Portland police officer who has been exonerated by the Grand Jury an “executioner,” and supported his co-race hustler Al Sharpton (also a “Reverend,” claiming to have been ordained at the age of “10” as a boy-wonder preacher) in the infamous Tawana Brawley Hoax. There, Sharpton raised and led a racial storm, charging that Brawly had been raped multiple times by white men, including police, and even including an Assistant District Attorney. The entire sordid matter was ultimately exposed as a hoax. The Assistant D.A. successfully sued Sharpton for defamation for some $300,000 dollars. Neither Sharpton, nor Jackson who joined the chorus crying racism, has ever apologized for the false accusations made in that infamous Tawana Brawley race-based hoax.
— Jackson attacks policies or legislation that he doesn’t like as resulting from considerations of race. However, he was given a testimonial dinner put on by the Congressional Black Caucus this year at which he declared that any black Member of Congress who does not vote for the Obamacare health care takeover cannot call himself or herself a black man or woman. Thus has the Reverend Jackson paragon of multi-culturalism, diversity, and racial equality declare a traitor to, and ex-communicated from, the black race and Member of Congress doesn’t vote for the Obamacare Bill. It brings to mind Shakespeare’s line in Julius Cesar: “On what meat has this our Cesar fed that he has grown so great.”
–More recently, Jackson led the cries of racism and demands for prosecution which caused the members of the Duke Lacrosse Team to be defamed as racists who allegedly raped a black stripper whose lies of being raped were the subject of national news for weeks and months, dragging the students, their families, through media and prosecutorial hell, as the media, and Duke University itself, cowardly quailed before the outraged cries of “racism” by Jesse Jackson, et al, and a corrupt District Attorney prosecuted young men whom he new were innocent in order to get the “black vote” and be re-elected. He was. Jackson was riding high championing the black stripper as victim of rape by white racists. Then the truth began to emerge — and the allegations were revealed as all lies. There was no rape. The racists, if any, were the blacks, like Jesse Jackson, who attacked innocent white young men not because of evidence, but prejudicially because they were white young men, and the stripper was black. In short, what Jesse Jackson did to the Duke University students, and the black community which supported him, provides ample evidence that black racism is not only real, but as unacceptable as white racism. The alleged victim was revealed as an utter liar, her charges false. The prosecution was dropped. The D.A. was disbarred for his despicable conduct. The accused are suing for the damage done to them. But Jesse Jackson? Why, nothing happened to him. He was not even denounced — least of all by the black community his acts besmirch. And as in the prior Tawana Brawley hoax, Jackson made no apology for the damage he has done to the lives of his victims. After all, they are white. And now Jackson reappears in Portland to brand a police officer an “executioner” and a city and its citizens racist.
— Jackson’s proved prejudice is not limited to whites. There are also the Jews. It should not be forgotten that Jackson, purported member of the clergy, a “Civil Rights Leader,” a “Reverend,” possessed of the moral authority to lecture others regarding racism, prejudice, discrimination, branded New York City, “Hymie Town.” Caught, he excused himself with a mumbled apology, while pronouncing as guilty to the bone any white person who he believes he has caught saying anything remotely discriminatory.
–Notwithstanding all of the above, the Congressional Black Caucus sponsored just this year, 2010, a testimonial dinner for Jesse Jackson. There, true to form, Jackson, who has often condemned white legislators for allegedly voting based on racial considerations, in his speech, thundered that any black Member of Congress who does not vote for the deal-corrupted Obamacare Bill, is not entitled to call himself or herself “black.” Thus has Jesse Jackson, who arrogated unto himself the title “Reverend,” who so despicably exploited the death of Martin Luther King, arrogated onto himself the authority to determine who is or is not qualified to be “black,” and to excommunicate from the black race anyone who doesn’t vote for Obamacare because he or she is black. Jackson’s manifestly racial remark did draw national media attention. But who among the members of the sponsoring Congressional Black Caucus, ostensibly representing all the citizens of their districts and not just the black ones repudiated and denounced Jackson’s facially outrageous, racial statement? No one. Not one. There were chuckles, and a few demurred from joining Jackson. But no black Member of Congress denounced him for it. Nor did any major black “civil rights” organization. Rather, as Congresswoman Woman and South Central L.A. power-broker race-baiter Maxine Waters said, “Well, that’s just Jesse.” Indeed.
CONCLUSION
These are true facts, not allegations but provable facts, of the true history of Jesse Jackson, the self-ordained “Reverend,” the exploiter of the death of Martin Luther King to promote himself, which should be considered by press, politicians, and public, as he reappears in Portland to defame a policeman as an “executioner” and a city’s people as racist.
The simple question is: Could any white person who committed these despicable acts be accorded respect, and creditability, and be regarded as a person morally fit to pontificate on matters racial, moral, or ethical as a member of the clergy, or as a civil rights leader, or as leader of any cause, or as a politician or a public official. If the answer is “no,” then the same standard must be applied to The Reverend (sic) Jesse Jackson. If Jackson, because he is a black African American, is to be held to a lesser standard – that is racism, that is discriminatory, and that should not be acceptable to whites or blacks, or any Americans.
For one hundred and twenty-five years, from the Abolition Movement onward, the aim of the civil rights movement was a color-blind society – in which all people are judged and treated, not as white or black, but as Americans. That was the aim of what was called the Civil Rights Movement when I was involved in it after being honorably discharged from my military service. While I was never deployed to Vietnam during the war, I was shot at, beat up, and threatened with multiple harms multiple times participating in the civil rights movement, as it was then called.
Among other things, in 1968, after Martin Luther King was assassinated and Jesse Jackson capitalized on his death to promote himself, I was one of some 50,000 Americans who participated in “Resurrection City,” the culmination of Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” in Washington, D.C. Even then, in the civil rights movement, Jesse Jackson’s foul exploitation of Martin Luther King’s death was well known. It was also known that Jesse Jackson was no “Reverend,” but had just proclaimed himself one, and duped the media into believing it. It was a joke among activists. How Jackson got away with the hoax for so long of being a “Reverend,” and of having cradled Rev. King’s head at his death, without the media regularly informing the public of the truth, is inexplicable – except for racism, the form of racism by which the media, political figures, and others do not expose Jackson for what he is and what he has done, because he is black.
I never left the civil rights movement. After Resurrection City in the Poor People’s Campaign, I participated in civil rights efforts in the Midwest, then the Southwest, then California, where, in 1979, I became a lawyer, and have practiced exclusively in the areas of civil rights, workers rights, veterans rights, and constitutional law to this day.
In all those years, and now, my belief was and is that all racism is evil, no matter the color of the victim, no matter the color of perpetrator.
I have been in the trenches of the fight against racism, discrimination, injustice, for my whole adult life. That shapes my beliefs, not rhetoric, platitudes, or politically-correct cant. White racism is evil. Black racism is no less evil. And should be called by its name. Blacks, in private, readily admit to the reality of black racism and prejudice, including skin-color prejudice among blacks. But white media, white politicians, white commentators, white political, business, educational, religious, you-name-it leaders, go about pretending that black racism doesn’t exist, tippy-toeing on egg shells for fear they will be lashed with the epithet “racist” by race-hustling charlatans like Jesse Jackson.
But the elimination of racism requires the application of equal standards to blacks as well as whites. Jesse Jackson has manifestly been allowed to engage in conduct which would disqualify any white person from any respect or credibility. Jackson has been treated discriminatorily by having the truth of his despicable conduct covered up, gone unreported and unchallenged by media, politicians in office purporting to represent all citizens, by other political leaders, by educators, and even clergy, because of his race. And to treat Jackson differently, preferentially, to hold him to a diminished standard — that is racism, and that diminishes not only him but all of us who are silent in the face of that discrimination.
I must ask: are the black clergy of Porland’s Albina Ministerial Alliance, who are urging their congregations and the black community generally, including the black children, to follow the Reverend (sic) Jackson in attacks on Portland, are those black clergy teaching the black children the true facts of Jackson’s history of despicable, unethical, immoral, self-promoting conduct as are set forth here, including his exploitation of Martin Luther King’s death, and his self-ordination as “Reverend” which demeans the very clergy that invited him to Portland? If not, why not?
The failure to hold the Reverend Jesse Jackson to the same standards to which a white Reverend would be held, is symptomatic of a more general reality of contemporary race relations and policies – a failure to regard all racism as evil, no matter the color of the perpetrator, no matter the color the victim, leading to a double-standard and a failure to honestly and forthrightly address issues of race.
Indeed, Barack Hussein Obama, America’s first black President appointed Eric Holder as America’s first Black Attorney General, and Holder in one of his first acts attacked white Americans as “cowards” for failing to honestly and forthrightly discuss race. I’m no coward.
And I certainly do not want to appear a “coward” in the eyes of someone as brave as Eric Holder, the Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton who bravely approved and advised a full pardon to the fugitive felon and major Democrat Party contributor Mark Rich; the brave Eric Holder who never deigned to put himself in harms way by serving in defense of American in military service but has so bravely granted to Islamist terrorists the constitutional rights won and preserved for Americans by veterans who did serve in the military forces while Eric Holder was privileged to bravely prance prestigious universities, law school, and later richly appointed law offices. Wherefore, I have spoken truthfully here on matters of race
If any reader should take offense or charge me with racism for writing these truths about the Reverend (sic) Jackson – an epithet so dreaded by so many white Americans of European descent—I must refer that person, first, to my record in civil rights work; second, to the words of black Attorney General Holder in whose eyes I would not want to appear the coward; and third, and perhaps most importantly, to the words of wisdom of a person so admired by President Barack Obama that he has studied him, cited him, and in fact followed him in practice:
“Another problem of today is the breakdown of communication between blacks and whites. If whites believe in full equality and the essential dignity of all races, then they cannot surrender their own dignity and be part of the masochistic cult which submits to outrageous and many cases, patently psychotic charges and attacks. A relationship of dignity and equality cuts both ways, and no one who is committed to the full equality and dignity of others can or will sacrifice his own in the process….So long as mindless white masochism and unproductive, groveling guilt prevails, so long will there not be any meaningful communication or constructive positive changes for a world of equality. Many whites have become terrified of even raising a question with blacks for fear of having it branded as a race issue. Unless whites overcome their own hang-ups so that they can both listen and speak to blacks in the same way that they would be listening and speaking to whites, and vice versa, we will continue to face the consequences of black charlatans combining with white neurotics to sow the seeds of disillusionment and bitterness, and we will provide a comforting rationale for all racial bigots, both black and white.”
These words were written by Saul Alinsky, the community organizer whose words, philosophy, and techniques President Obama has said guided him in his work as a community organizer, leading voter registration in Chicago with ACORN, which he later represented as an attorney.
Was Alinsky, author of those words, a “racist”?
It is noteworthy that Alinsky wrote those words in his book “Reveille For Radicals” in 1969 – after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and all the legislation which made illegal institutional discrimination against black African Americans which previously had been supported by law.America and racial discrimination, in 2010, are not the America and the the racial discrimination which preceded passage of all that civil rights legislation passed almost one-half century ago; civil rights legislation that so many thousands of Americans fought for together in the civil rights movement when the goal was a color-blind society.
For the self-promoting, self-proclaimed “Reverend” Jesse to reappear in Portland, for the black clergy in to invite him here, for black racists to engage in 1960’s-style demonstrations at city hall alleging they are victims of racial victimhood, almost fifty years after passage of the civil rights acts and continuing color-conscious not color-blind affirmative action, as if nothing had changed, is unworthy of any credibility or any respect.
It is in fact a disgrace for the political leaders, the media, and some citizens of Portland to pusillanimously kowtow before rather than challenge a charlatan like The Reverend (sic) Jesse Jackson and those endorsing him, as they defame a Portland cop as an “executioner” and defame Portland and its citizens as racists, and thereby to allow –in the words of Saul Alinsky, mentor to President Obama, himself –“black charlatans combining with white neurotics” to render a Portland tragedy into a race-hustling farce.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
