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The telephone call came from an aging activist whose voice lacks the resonance it once had, but whose words still pack a punch.
"Out with guns, in with jobs," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said to me in his trademark gravelly voice. "We're going to march in 20 cities" hard hit by the gun violence that has made the streets of America a bigger killing field for young black men in the United States than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been for U.S. troops.
For Jackson, who turned 70 in October, ending the black-on-black carnage in this country could be his last big campaign.
"Each year ... about 7,000 African Americans are murdered, more than nine times out of 10 by other African Americans," Jackson said in a painful acknowledgment of a crisis that for too long has received "drive-by" attention from most black leaders. But beginning with the marches his Rainbow PUSH Coalition will hold in cities from Baltimore to Tulsa on Father's Day, Jackson said ending this slaughter will be a major goal for him.
Edward, sorry but you are REALLY wrong on this one.
Jesse is blaming GUNS, per your very quote. He isn't going to touch on anything that Mr. Cosby touched on....that's unpopular.
THis is just Jesse posturing ineffectively like he has for years.
I really hope I'm wrong.
P.S. Maybe he will march in Chicago, hard hard hit by gun violence so far in 2012 and tell them they need to ban guns....oh wait....they did. Hows that war on drugs....errr I mean guns....going?
This is a noble cause, no doubt about it. I commend Jesse for taking a stand.
However, I believe his decision to do this may be in response to a recent shellacking he took for claiming that the poor education black kids receive is the result of the wealth cards stacked against them through property taxes.....ie. white people holding the black man down through home ownership....and thus better schools. The resulting uproar was that education starts at home, with parents who are engaged in their childrens' lives......with black men who hang around to raise their kids in two parent homes......with parents who graduate high school......with parents who learn a trade/go to college/actually work for a living......with parents who don't engage in crime....etc. In other words, black culture is a huge component of the failure of black children in schools. People were quick to point that out to Jesse, since he failed to acknowledge such.
Jesse Jackson probably didn't expect that he'd be blindsided with such logic.......and here he is backtracking in response to that logic.
While I love to see that he's finally paying attention to a real problem in the black community it pains me to read BS like this.
Quote:
"Out with guns, in with jobs," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said to me in his trademark gravelly voice. "We're going to march in 20 cities" hard hit by the gun violence that has made the streets of America a bigger killing field for young black men in the United States than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been for U.S. troops.
Jesse, people who have jobs, families and homes generally don't shoot each other for no reason. The guns in the black community aren't the reason black people shoot each other, black people are. There are millions of black Americans who are also legal gun owners who respect guns as a tool used to protect their families and their homes. Not every black man with a gun is looking for some random guy to shoot, the overwhelming majority of black gun owners own them for the right reasons.
From the OP link...Jackson has to go further than just "guns".
"But for the thinking people among us, it would be a mistake not to rally to his cause -- just as it would be an error for Jackson not to also attack one of the root causes of black-on-black homicides that black leaders usually duck: the broader problem of black criminal behavior that makes so many black neighborhoods unsafe."
Edward, sorry but you are REALLY wrong on this one.
Jesse is blaming GUNS, per your very quote. He isn't going to touch on anything that Mr. Cosby touched on....that's unpopular.
THis is just Jesse posturing ineffectively like he has for years.
I really hope I'm wrong.
P.S. Maybe he will march in Chicago, hard hard hit by gun violence so far in 2012 and tell them they need to ban guns....oh wait....they did. Hows that war on drugs....errr I mean guns....going?
I hear you his words still have the aura of blaming everything under the sun (foreign wars, inattention, guns etc.) but atleast he realizes there is a problem. That's a big first step. There are folks on this very board who don't see any real problem with black on black violence. See no problem with the black criminality culture as cited by the author of the article.
This sort of thing has been going on for decades, so it's not a surprise to see Jackson and other people in the communities continuing to do it. It is sort of funny to watch people marvel over it as if it were something new, though.
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