My very first recollection of life on earth was waking up in bed with my mother, and she was showing me a picture of my father, Charles Jackson, with a group of soldiers.
You know, people’d always ask ‘Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?’ They never seen the house I’m running from.
There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait.
Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.
So many bright stars, bright in life, burn out quickly.
So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.
The relationship between the prophet and the President, the priest and the President, is a sacred one.
The laws are stacked for the wealthy.
The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.
People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people’s home lives, domestic stuff.
For me, Barack Obama’s election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.
Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.
It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as ‘I Have a Dream’ speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment.
I think reconciliation is Obama’s goal – but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.
The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.
I mean, the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal, which is not true, but then it’s put out in the media as true.
Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They’re free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.
I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.
We live on the dash between our birth date and our death date.
Surrender had played out for good with me.