Columnist Jesse Jackson
The public reaction to Bloody Sunday in Selma – where civil rights marchers faced clubs, fire hoses and dogs in a police riot – led directly to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Some 42 years later, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday enjoyed national attention when the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama converged for the ceremonies.
Obama and Clinton gave virtually simultaneous speeches, carried back to back on the news channels. Both spoke eloquently. Both acknowledged that their candidacies were an offspring of that movement. Both reminded America that while we’ve come a long way, we’ve got a long way yet to go. Both called on a new generation – the Joshua generation, in Sen. Obama’s words – to pick up the torch.
Where should that journey go?
The Civil Rights Movement inspired everyday heroes, ordinary people, young and old, college educated and school dropouts, rich and poor, to make themselves actors in history. They changed themselves, gained discipline and learned courage, and put aside self-doubts to act boldly. They practiced nonviolence because they sought to appeal to the good in everyone.
But they had not only a mission, but an agenda. They worked to change public policy. They wanted civil rights laws passed. They marched; they preached; they sacrificed. But they did so to change public policy.
So what is the public policy agenda of the Joshua generation? Here the two senators were less clear and less bold than one might want.
Both were better at challenges than offering solutions. “Poverty and inequality matters. Health care matters. The people of the Gulf Coast matter. Our soldiers matter,” said Clinton. Obama was more to the point – defending affirmative action, calling for an end to the unjust discrimination that pervades our criminal justice system, championing for equal funding for schools, for training for those who lose their jobs. Yet he, too, focused on challenges.
Clinton pointed to the trampling of voters’ rights in recent years. She called for passage of her Count Every Vote Act that would provide federal standards to clean up these abuses. She didn’t mention the worst violation – the state rules that strip voting rights for life from those with a criminal record, even after they have served their time or paid their fine. In a criminal justice notoriously discriminatory in who gets arrested, who gets charged and what sentences get imposed, this state defined practice strips literally millions of African-American and Hispanic voters of their basic right to vote for life.
Selma taught us that citizens of conscience could set the agenda of the nation. Now with the candidates seeking support, citizens of conscience once more need to stand up, raise the bar and set the terms for gaining that support.