Jesse Jackson Button

Never know what will turn up cleaning up after Apartment turmoil.

Since this historic run in the 1984 Democratic primary, Jesse Jackson has made many flubs and misfires and mistakes. He can be kind of a goof ball. It is fun to make fun of him by mimicking his accent, talking like you have marbles in your mouth and have the last word in every sentence rhyme. But I still admire him and I’m proud to have voted for him in my first presidential primary vote.

Shirley Chisum (well before I was of legal age) and Al Sharpton, two other leaders I admire, probably ran more enlightening primary campaigns. Several elections passed before I bothered to cast another primary vote. I remember a rhetorical contradiction Jackson made that turned me off when he attempted another bid in 1988. But in 1984, only my second presidential election which I was eligible to vote (I voted for John Anderson in 1980 instead of Jimmy Carter, a foolish decision), I wanted to vote for Jackson.

They changed the laws recently so New Jersey gets an earlier primary, I forget the details. But back then and for the longest time, our Super Tuesday is not super at all, the winner has already been determined. It’s often just a formality. The 1984 primary was that rare competitive race for the Garden State.

I was young and broke and struggling with a career. I loved literature of course, and studied philosophy and economics and took some political science and such. I knew Reagan was no friend of middle class outcasts (or incasts) like myself. His early years in office – the same time I entered the work force – were the highest records of inflation and unemployment (Bush II ended by beating the unemployment figures and causing a bigger financial debacle than the 87 crash), but people liked him. America wanted to exorcize Nixon from the collective memory. People were ready to detest the 60s and eagerly supported a robust backlash against the social gains made during the era.

My parents almost always voted Republican as did two of the siblings, the other three were apathetic and didn’t vote. They liked Ronnie. Reaganism coincided with the percentage of the voting eligible actually voting shrinking, a trend halted by the 2008 Obama election (yes we can!), although childish apathy on the part of younger voters was revived with the 2010 mid-term debacle.

I don’t hate politics, but no matter how compelling the discussion soon grows tedious.

Voting for Jackson and wearing this button – I got in it in exchange for a five dollar political contribution I made to a young black woman behind a folding table in the Bergen Mall – felt good. I didn’t wear it a lot, never to work – politics and religion should never be part of the workplace – but I wore it around some and still keep it by the writing desk Growing up in the white enclave of Paramus New Jersey, I just knew the resentment loudly vocalized by many of the adults – many of whom had fled Jersey City! – against blacks was stupid. I was a Dylan fan early on, and songs like Only A Pawn In Their Game – they keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight, about the shape that he’s in – had a profound impact on forming my political philosophy.

My parents weren’t marching with King, but I never heard them use a racial term. My father loathed All in the Family and the Archie Bunker character, whom he thought was too likeable. I forget if it was my brother or somebody in the scout troop, but I distinctly remember his angrily telling them to shut up when making some racist joke they heard from Archie, I’m just sick of hearing that crap! he said. My parents may never protested when one of their peers or neighborhood parents had a racist opinion – and they weren’t exactly interested in listening to my Bob Dylan (much less Phil Ochs ) records – but they never spouted anything racist that I can recall.

There were no black people in my entire town, except for a few who worked in mostly custodial positions at the Malls. When I first met some one of color whom I befriended it was at my first job at the Stop & Shop, when I was a teenager. The first time I met a black person of any kind I was seven going on eight, becoming a cub scout, and my father drove me to Hackensack (which most of the neighbors called Blackensack) to the clothing store that sold the uniforms. He was the scout master, so the guy was glad to see him. He sold a lot of uniforms because of dad. They were friends. He was a huge man, big guy, really dark complexion too. I just remember him being loud and jolly and warm and friendly. Clarence Clemmons! He put his hands under my armpits and lifted me up above his head. I was nearly eight, I had not been lifted like this for a couple of years. I had outgrown it until now when I met someone his size. He seemed like a dark, happy giant. This memory remains vivid for me.

Racist jokes were common. People were pissed off about the state of the country, the riots, the drugs, the rebellious youth, the bloody defeat in Vietnam or the fact their racism prompted them to leave the city for the suburbs for an American dream that didn’t pan out as hoped for and only increased their disappointment about the hand-basket our country was heading to hell in. They seem to blame most of it, if not all of it, on the coloreds, later the blacks, who didn’t appreciate how good they had it here.

I remember parents – never my father – but other parents saying vile crap driving us when you would see the rare black person through the car windows, except that the racism wasn’t seen then as vile crap but common sense. A lot of National Geographic Magazine Jokes. Jungle Bunny was a popular term of endearment. The N-word, always used with intended derision, was acceptable.

Maybe I was scared of this adult at first. Abruptly lifting me up immediately broke down my defenses, I was shocked. He commanded my respect, but it was also a sincere welcome. I had never seen a black person this close before and he probably had some awareness of this obvious fact. He raised me without warning and when he put down I was laughing. It was suddenly fun! Remembering going to Hackensack with my Dad to get my blue cub scout uniform and being lifted into the air by this big, funny, black man still makes me happy.

I sincerely wanted to make a statement with this vote in 1984. There was no way Jackson would win the nomination and there was no way the Democrat could beat Reagan.

Ronnie was preternaturally likable, he could hold you in his thrall like no politician before or since. I liked him even though I hated him, everything he stood for and all the worker suppressing policies he enacted. I wanted to cast a vote for a mainstream black candidate, it just was important to me.

Not the only factor in this decision. I loved the rhetoric. I studied many King speeches, Ralph Abernathy and Benjamin Hooks spoke at my college. The long breath cadences captivated me. While surely some of that Black style of preaching with those run-on sentences filled with rhymes and alliterations, can be attributed to being remnants of the African oral tradition that survived the subjugation and cultural obliteration of slavery and Jim Crow, the idiosyncratic construction also comes out of the protestant preaching styles of the 18th and 19th centuries that were so influenced by both the Saint James Bible and Shakespeare. Look at transcriptions of the King speeches, they resemble Melville sentence structure!

Yes, use of language is a factor when it comes to my vote!

Also, I supported the civil rights movement – well I would have if I was not a child playing with Tonka Trucks and Captain Action– and in the 70s, that movement was a wreck and heavily factionalized. The black power movement had been gangsterized, and the Panthers who survived the shoot outs with the FBI had gone underground and hooked up with the SLA. Jackson deserves the credit for keeping the post King Assassination civil rights movement a viable force within National politics, and he did so not just by his activism, leading marches for causes big and small, he set up inner city educational and breakfast programs, anti-drug programs, block to block organizing. The effectiveness may be a matter of degree, but his pragmatic, hands-on approach to at least weakening the deleterious impact federal policies were having on our inner cities and minority populations served to augment the more overt political activities Jackson participated in for the news cameras.

Reagansim might have won the battles of the 80s, but I shudder to think how worse the defeat would have been without Jackson. How anybody could not recognize the good he was doing in the aftermath of the 60s, well that was just racist and ignorant in my opinion. Then and now!

Finally what I also admired about Jackson is that he linked the civil rights movement with the worker rights and union movement. By the 70s, both movements had fallen on hard times and while they should have been natural allies, but they were at odds with each other. Prejudicial apprehension and unwillingness to compromise or to support stands on issues not on their personal agendas kept both sides apart. Inabilities to transcend ego continue to hinder progressives. The failure of unions and civil right movement supporters to form a significant coalition in the 70s served to make the rich and the corporations more powerful. Instead of sharing objectives, their resentment of each other undermined those objectives.

Jackson was there at every strike and supported unions, and continued to be on these front lines to the present day. First thing Reagan did was bust the air traffic controllers union. Part of the reason he was able to do this so effectively was the workers movement lacked leadership—mechanics and pilots crossed the picket lines enabling the airline industry to function with scabs in the towers. Result? Flights are less safe, salaries in that industry continue to plummet. Reagan moved on to closing factories, unraveling our manufacturing infrastructure, shipping jobs overseas and suppressing organized labor. Overall wages nationwide have dropped and remain stagnant because of the policies that Reagan set in motion, Bush II revived and strengthened, that are still with us, turning our Nation into a two tier society.

In 1984, Jackson was one of the few politicians and celebrities fighting the good fight.

Don’t listen to their lies, poor folks have got no chance unless they organize. Will you be a scab or will you be a man? Which side are you on?

That button answered that question and quite frankly, still does!

We know how history turned out. We know about the cost of Republican’s Southern Strategy. Reagan started his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia. Mississippi, a city where the 1960s murder of civil rights activists remain unsolved, and declared his support for “states rights,” and used Racist language – Welfare Queens! – in both the 80 & 84 elections. He let AIDS ravage inner city populations. Police brutality against blacks became the acceptable norm. Race Riots, not seen since the King assassination, erupted with the Rodney King incident during the final years of his successor, Bush I. That is the legacy of that shit bucket evil mother f-er Ronald Reagan!!!

Voted for Jesse Jackson? Damn straight!

After the Jackson run, overt racism grew less acceptable. In the 80s, parents might still have been racist, but they no longer used the n-word with ease and frequency in open company. Racist jokes were no longer cracked out in the open. Two black families even moved into Paramus, one was in our neighborhood (this is no lie). Incremental achievements were made and while they might be smaller links in the chain, links they still are and Jackson deserves some credit for them. Obviously, with Obama in office, the nation has come a long way since 1984 and this button now only proves I’m as old as I look. I am kind of proud of it though and at the time, in the circles I was in, I was quite alone with this stance. To vote in a primary in NJ you have to register as either a Democrat or Republican, which you can do on the day of the primary election, and most of the time voting in a primary in NJ is useless, the race is already decided. I don’t follow local politics closely enough to be bothered with those primaries.

It would be 20 years before I voted in another primary, which would be for John Kerry in 2004. I had followed his career and was impressed with the guy. He served then opposed the war, and as an elected official fought for the rights of Vietnam Veterans. I liked him more than his Democratic opponents (I never trusted John Edwards!).

Kerry ran an awful campaign and let’s face it, the more you saw of him the more annoying he seemed.

Now. I could have voted Al Sharpton in 04 He did a primary run and even said a very prescient statement – we need a constitutional amendment that makes healthcare a right!

I like Sharpton, an opinion that has gotten me some grief. Did I lose my idealism? Well, maybe Sharpton in 04 was not as inspiring as Jackson was in 1984. But here is the real difference. Reagan won a landslide and in 2004; after Bush II stole the Election enabled by the Supreme Court and childish, anti-intellectual progressives who supported Ralph Nader (an utter douche), throwing away your vote, even in the name of righteous idealism, has ramifications. That’s my opinion.

We live in polarized times, and elections are too close to fool around with. A unified left – at least when push comes to shove like elections and such – is crucial. I just liked Kerry more than Sharpton, and I liked him enough to vote in a primary for the first time in 20 years.

In 2008? I voted again in the Primary, for Hilary. I loved the Clintons, 8 years of peace and prosperity. The OJ Simpson debacle might have caused confusion and hurt feelings, but riots did not erupt. I will never understand how people did not want to continue that administration with Al Gore, one of the greatest Americans of my lifetime. I thought that was more important to me than voting Obama. But, she has been a great secretary of state and I like President Obama. He works hard and gives great speeches and is on the side of workers. He is also working against an unfriendly media, a well-funded right wing getting more and more extreme, no longer even willing to give us Compassionate Conservative, lip service.

Some (not all) of the criticism of Obama by the left seems to come from the same racist motivation as most (not all) of the criticism of Obama by the right.

He deserves a second term and quite frankly there is nobody on the progressive side who has the same leadership charisma. He needs our support. He needs more support, not this sniveling back biting from people and politicians who should know better.

I’m not optimistic at this moment. Who could be? New Jersey voted in Christie for goodness sakes!

I was reading this blog post over with NPR on in the background and a lead newstory is Barak announcing his reelection bid. Ironic. If there is a primary, I’ll vote him. Maybe I’ll wear this button when I do, or maybe sell it on e-bay and just re-read this blog.