NJFAN member letter on Jesse Jackson's death.
June Zaccone
To the Editor:
Re “Jesse Jackson, Charismatic Champion of Civil Rights, Dies at 84” (obituary, nytimes.com, Feb. 17):
In 1984, the Democratic Party ceded the playing field to the Republican far right when it shut out Jesse Jackson’s message of economic and social justice and peace with our neighbors in favor of its neoliberal agenda.
As the campaign coordinator for Mr. Jackson’s National Rainbow Coalition during his presidential primary run, I saw how his message resonated with white working-class voters when he demonstrated that their interests for a better life were no different from those of their Black and brown neighbors.
When white farmers were losing their land to agribusiness, he delivered food from their farms to poor people in the inner cities of the country, cementing a relationship between rural and urban America. When he showed that our tax dollars were going to build weapons instead of feeding and housing people, those who had never voted or been involved in politics before began volunteering their time.
The political elites feared this kind of message and thus sought to portray him at first as a charlatan, then as a spoiler, and finally as a candidate who spoke only for African Americans.
Walter Mondale, the candidate of the Democratic Party elites, lost the 1984 race to Ronald Reagan. We have been living with the consequences of this major failure of imagination ever since.
Sheila D. Collins
New Rochelle, N.Y.
The writer is the author of “The Rainbow Challenge: The Jackson Campaign and the Future of U.S. Politics.”