Thread: Ethnic hustler teams up with America's worst enemies

http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cs ... sse24.html

From ignorance comes growth

May 24, 2005

BY JESSE JACKSON

These are mean times. Wages are not keeping up with costs. Good jobs are going abroad, replaced by jobs that don't even include health care. Family bankruptcy is at record levels, as many families can be broken by one serious illness. The pressures contribute to a divorce rate that reaches half of all marriages.

In this atmosphere, it is easy to divide people along lines of race or religion or region. Immigrants crossing our borders cause rising resentment, as people fear that jobs will be lost to low-wage, undocumented workers who can be easily exploited by employers. In their drive for maximum profit, corporate business practice is now driven by a policy of exporting jobs and capital and importing cheap labor and cheap products. In this climate, Mexican Americans must not be used as pawns and objects of vilification, and blacks must not be used as scapegoats. Race-baiting or immigrant-bashing must not be used as a diversion from the hemispheric economic challenges we face and the dynamics of the global economy.

When Mexican President Vicente Fox stated that ''Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work, are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do,'' he played to stereotypes and fostered division. The president's remarks were a diversion from the real issues of comprehensive immigration reform and a fair trade policy based on human rights. African Americans rightly considered the remark an insult based on a false stereotype. Worse, the remark seemed an appeal to companies sponsoring the race to the bottom, suggesting that Mexican immigrants could easily be exploited to do jobs paying so little that U.S. citizens would not take them.

Last week I had the chance to meet with President Fox. While the president stopped short of a formal apology, I thought he missed a great opportunity in not doing so. When one makes a mistake or unintentionally offends people, an apology, humility and a contrite heart are signs of strength, not signs of weakness. President Fox realized his remarks were damaging and could foster division and fear, and agreed that we must focus on trade and immigration reforms.

The reality is that our trade and immigration policies are defined largely by and for corporations that are shipping good jobs abroad, and importing undocumented workers who can be exploited as cheap labor at home. We need to focus on a trade policy and an immigration policy that work for workers on both sides of the border -- not for companies that fly only the flag of profit.

Vision can create unity. Last week, Antonio Villaraigosa became the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles. When he ran four years ago, he could not forge a coalition between Latinos and blacks and was defeated. This time, he put that coalition together, as well as liberal and moderate white voters, and won a stunning victory in all regions of the city, with a majority of blacks, Latinos and white voters.

This formula of coalition and coexistence over confrontation was key to the victories of Tom Bradley and Harold Washington. That's the formula for the future.

Last week, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and others announced a new African American/Latino Coordinating Council, an effort to join together in defining a joint agenda on trade, worker rights, health care and living wages and immigration. We must build a common agenda that challenges the corporate agenda that has resulted in rising profits, soaring CEO salaries while workers' wages remain flat, and a continued slashing of worker benefits. We must build a common agenda that challenges an administration that is spending $300 billion on its war in Iraq, even while breaking its promise to fund our schools, and cutting essential support for health care, infrastructure and training vital to our economy.

One thing is clear. This economy is no longer working for working and poor people. We must sow a new politics of unity and hope that challenges the current course, or we will reap an ugly reaction of division and hate that will drive us apart.

Front Pager!!! http://www.alipac.us/article-424--0-0.html

I missed this one!! Well, I have too much say on this and too little time today. If Jesse Jackson was interested in creating jobs or keeping jobs for his people, he just threw them way with this new coalition.

...or we will reap an ugly reaction of division and hate that will drive us apart.

Finally, something in the story that Jesse has expertise in.

GOOD ONE, Count!!

Jesse Jackson has nothing to say that I care to read. He is a lying, backstabbing rackist who cares nothing about anyone but himself.

Sorry folks. That's how I feel. I've said it to his face, and I'll say it to this forum!

I've said it to his face, and I'll say it to this forum!

Which face? He has a few of them.

I got all my personalities together and we went up against all his faces.

Guess who won?

I would agree, Count, but Jesse's grammar is so all over the place you'd practically need an interpretter to figure out what the hell he's trying to say. Is he speaking English?

Well, reading him is easier than listening to him.

He must carry a full bag of marbles in his mouth at all times. Maybe it's so he can claim to be misquoted whenever the need arises.