What Jesse Jackson Taught Me — and the Country

A cell phone notification woke me early Tuesday to an alert of the news: The Rev. Jesse Jackson had died at the age of 84. Then a series of calls, emails and texts, from South Africa, from Chicago, New York, then in waves as the West Coast awakened to the news. People checking on one another, all trying to process a reality we had known was imminent but was difficult to prepare for.

I worked for both the 1984 and 1988 Jackson presidential campaigns as a press aide, and then as his press secretary from 1988 to 1990, an experience that forever shaped my life and my understanding of politics. I am just one small part of a whole network of individuals across the nation and whose paths were shaped by their work with him.

One call in particular sticks out as a reminder of Jackson’s legacy. It was from a friend, Ron Gillyard, whom I met while working with Jackson at an administration building protest at Howard University in 1989. Months after I met him, Gillyard was arrested and falsely accused on robbery charges in a case of mistaken identity. In jail and without resources or options, he made the one phone call he thought to make for help: He dialed my number at the Rainbow Coalition headquarters. With Jackson’s assistance, he was released within days. In the time since, he went on to become one of the nation’s most successful music and entertainment executives. A small act of mercy and justice, a life changed.

That is just a single story, but it is the real, unheralded legacy of Jesse Jackson and the core of what he did. Yes, Jackson dramatically changed Democratic politics. By winning the fight against winner-take-all primaries, he opened the door to candidates to gain a proportional share of delegates even when they lost a state primary overall, giving voters and constituencies more leverage and laying the foundation for the victories of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But he used those major moments as a platform to do the everyday work. Beyond the headlines, beyond the cameras there are thousands of small untold stories where Jackson used his power and extensive network to change the direction of lives — one person at a time. The kind of change we can all make when we don’t give in to those who try to divide us.

In my opinion, that was Jackson’s greatest gift: connecting the dots between policies and the real people whose lives are impacted on a granular level by the decisions and the actions of the powerful. He was, if anything, a master storyteller who used his platform and his exhausting travel schedule, before the advent of social media, to reveal and expose an America that many refused to see, in towns in Mississippi that still lacked proper sanitation, on farms in Ames, Iowa, and on picket lines with food workers and hospital workers seeking fair pay.

Jesse Jackson has not just left us with a legacy; he left a lesson, for us and for the Democratic Party, about showing and not just telling that we are not unique in our struggles nor alone in our battles.

This work is essential not only to protecting the civil rights of marginalized communities that have deteriorated since Jackson’s heyday, but also to rebuilding the political power of a modern-day Rainbow Coalition.

After Jackson’s death, it has been striking to see the amazing diversity of the people sending messages and sharing stories of their experiences with Jackson — Jewish, Arab, Asian, gay, labor leaders and rank-and-file. There is celebration in those conversations, but they also have a mournful “remember when” quality. The feeling that building a national community of people joined by their common interests, and willing to work together for common goals rather than simply united by common enemies, would be nearly impossible in today’s political climate.

In the years since Jackson’s groundbreaking campaigns, much has changed. Demographic and economic shifts have changed the dynamic of communities in the coalition who once shared interests; now, many of those groups have found themselves at odds. The cynical forces in today’s politics, particularly the Donald Trump administration, have exploited those divisions, pitting voting bloc against voting bloc.

The administration has also abandoned and attempted to destroy the infrastructure of policies, practices and laws that secure the system of rights hard won by Jackson and his generation, from diversity and inclusion initiatives to voting rights, attacking not only those achievements but also the tradition of righteous resistance that changed policies and helped prove the power of democracy.

It was Jackson’s singular ability to connect, through the strength of his moral authority, that allowed him to ultimately bring so many communities together — and which can serve as a model for Democrats looking to rebuild what has been lost.

Perhaps in some way the torch has been passed to the millions of people in cities across the nation protesting ICE, protecting and caring for their neighbors and forcing us to face our humanity. Maybe they are the leaders we follow now. If so, they have a roadmap. Jackson’s life is the blueprint for turning faith into action. The proof that while hope is powerful, it is only the foundation of change. The real change stems from the work.