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Reverend Jackson’s Politics: The Politics of Jesus The love of God that fueled his love for his neighbors, the love that fueled his activism, that fueled his sense of
responsibility for the uplift of humanity -- this is the legacy Reverend Jesse Jackson has left us. But more than a
legacy, it is an abiding challenge for each of us to commit ourselves not only to striving to love our neighbors as
or decades, Reverend Jackson was among the most consequential figures in the Democratic Party. The ourselves, but also to demonstrate our love by building a world of justice in which everyone is somebody, in which
Fstands he took and the policies he championed influenced generations of progressive politics. The breadth everyone has power over their own lives, in which everyone has the comfort of a home and adequate nourishment
of his influence is seen in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign platform, for instance, which was a virtual carbon for their bodies and minds, a world in which all of humanity has an equal opportunity to eat of the fruit of the tree
copy of Reverend Jackson’s 1984 platform. Yet, despite Reverend Jackson’s stature in the Democratic Party, the of life. This is the legacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson. May it be so.
promotion of partisan political concerns was neither his goal nor his motivation. Party politics were simply the
vehicle by which he strived to obey the weighty commandments at the core of his Gospel calling: “You shall love
your Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and… love your neighbor as yourself.” These “greatest
commandments” of Jesus were the foundation of Reverend’s lifelong ministry of political activism and social
concern. He understood that the command to love God by loving his neighbors as himself was about more than
sentimentality. Loving his neighbors as himself meant more than simply wanting them to have access to the same
opportunities, freedoms, economic security and political power that he wanted for himself and his loved ones,
for Jesus said his anointing was to bring good news of liberation to all the poor and oppressed, not simply to want
it for them. Thus, to Reverend Jackson the command to love his neighbors also meant actively struggling for his
neighbors -- all his neighbors, no matter their race, creed or nationality -- to have the same access to the good
things of life that he sought for his own family. Loving his neighbors meant fighting for the common good, for the
good of all people, but especially for the poor and the oppressed. Indeed, his most often repeated phrase, “I am
somebody!” echoed Jesus’ pronouncement to the impoverished and beaten down of his day: “Blessed are you poor
ones.” In fact, Reverend Jackson declared that very conviction to the world in his address to the 1984 Democratic
convention. “My constituency,” he said, “is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the
despised.” In other words, the politics of Reverend Jesse Jackson were the Politics of Jesus.

It was the love for his neighbors that lives at the heart of the Politics of Jesus that moved Reverend Jackson in his
youth to face serious harm and incarceration, even death, in the struggle for human and civil rights.

It was the love for his neighbors at the heart of the Politics of Jesus that moved Reverend Jackson to answer Dr.
King’s call to labor long and hard to provide daily bread for the masses as the head of Operation Breadbasket.

It was the love for his neighbors at the heart of the Politics of Jesus that moved Reverend Jackson to travel to Syria
in 1983 to secure the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman from captivity and in 1984 to convince Fidel Castro to
release twenty-two Americans held in Cuba.

It was the love for his neighbors at the heart of the Politics of Jesus that moved Reverend Jackson to take on the
monumental task of establishing and shepherding Operation PUSH – People United to Serve Humanity – the
activist organization that was dedicated to tirelessly waging the ongoing fight for a just, humane world.

It was the Gospel’s command to love his neighbors as himself that inspired Reverend Jackson to build a cross-racial
“Rainbow Coalition” to “change the race problem into a class struggle between the haves and the have-nots” to
more effectively fight for the rights of workers of every race and color.
It was the love at for his neighbors the heart of the Politics of Jesus that moved presidential candidate Jesse Jackson
to uncompromisingly advocate for complete access to healthcare for all Americans, for education and adequate
housing to be treated as human rights, for a more equitable, progressive taxation system to better fund the social
safety net, and for a democracy that respects – and includes – everyone on these shores.

So deep was Reverend Jackson’s commitment to the love ethic of the Politics of Jesus, after awakening from a
virtual week-long coma, that even before eating or drinking he was expressing concern for hungry of the land to be
fed.