by
Radio Left
on Fri 23 Jul 2004 03:34 PM CDT
by JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
The Nation [Reprinted by permission from the August 2, 2004 issue]
Last December, when the smart money was on Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination, when long-shot bettors were talking about Al Sharpton pulling a surprise in the South Carolina primary, when nobody but the Democratic leadership believed John Kerry was "electable," Jesse Jackson was working the South as if a campaign depended on it. At South Carolina State, children with American flags and grown-ups in their Sunday clothes were waiting on him, while the pep band played and a clutch of aides talked into their cellphones. Jackson was late, traveling from a rally in Goose Creek, where police had raided a high school, forcing 107 kids to their knees, guns to their head, in a search for drugs that turned up nothing. Blacks make up less than a quarter of the student body, Jackson explained after finally bounding onstage, but accounted for two-thirds of those terrorized in the raid. Blacks make up 30 percent of South Carolina's population, but account for 70 percent of its prisoners, who build auto transmissions while real-paying jobs drain away. Twenty years after his first run for the Democratic nomination, Jackson was in his natal state speaking truths on the rigged rules of race and class that the candidates couldn't or wouldn't, while stressing the imperative of an engaged citizenry. "Keep hope alive!" he urged yet again, and amid an exuberance of cheers there was something in the sullen silence of a row of teenagers that told the difference between the then and now. Jackson mightn't have noticed. In a flash he was off--to a school, to a preachers' lunch, cellphones a'ringing in the borrowed limo, on to Raleigh and thence to Birmingham, "mobilizing the masses," as he put it.
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