Trump government disrespects Jesse Jackson

Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow-PUSH coalition, Reverend Jesse Jackson, died last week at the age of 84 following the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in 2015. Jackson was a protege of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. until King’s assassination in April 1968. 

Jackson was a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party ticket in 1984 and 1988, where he won significant presidential primaries in several states. His candidacies, which were transformed into mass movements, especially of Black people, challenged the racism of the majority white Democratic Party leadership.

Jackson played a prominent role in the global movement against apartheid in Southern Africa during the 1980s. He publicly opposed the criminal U.S. blockade of Cuba, even meeting face-to-face with Comandante Fidel Castro. Jackson expressed support for the Palestine Liberation Organization when the late Yasser Arafat was its leader. Jackson spoke before hundreds of thousands of people against U.S.-sponsored wars like in Iraq, against racism, for the poor and for workers’ rights.  

These gestures earned Jackson the respect and admiration of millions of people inside the U.S. and around the world. On the flip side, Jackson’s stances also earned the ire of the billionaire ruling class, even to this day.

So it is within this historical context that, when Jackson’s family made an official request for his body to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., that request was denied by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.). In the past, such requests were granted for Civil Rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the despicable Billy Graham, along with U.S. presidents. During such commemorations, the public is allowed to file by the deceased person’s casket inside the Rotunda for several days to pay their respects .

So Johnson’s response that there is a precedent set in place in terms of who and who cannot lie in state in the Rotunda is baseless. Johnson’s decision was an arbitrary one based on racist hostility, not only towards Jackson as an individual but, more importantly, towards the entire Black community.  Jackson represented, in a politically modest way, Black people’s centuries-long aspirations for social equality dating back to the days of chattel slavery.

Johnson’s decision cannot be separated from the Trump administration’s white supremacist order to remove federally sponsored monuments reflecting the existence of U.S. enslavement of African people and resistance towards its sordid legacy, including now. The Department of Justice – including its Civil Rights Division – has been discouraged from ruling in favor of any lawsuits that claim human rights violations, made on behalf of Black people, either wounded or killed by police violence.

Reverend Jackson was not an anti-capitalist, militant revolutionary. He wasn’t anti-imperialist nor did he even declare himself to be a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders. Jackson was a progressive Civil Rights activist and fought for reforms within the internal structure of the Democratic Party. Based on the standards of bourgeois decorum, Johnson’s refusal should be viewed not only as a racist slap in the face towards Jackson’s family and colleagues, but towards Black people’s ongoing struggle for full social justice and liberation.