Jesse Jackson endorses Clinton despite controversial civil rights record
Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Chicago Saturday, even though her platform and record conflicts with issues which he has been fighting for since the 1960s.
On the heels of endorsements from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama this week, the influential leader put his “trust” in the presumptive nominee who once called young black men “super-predators”.
On matters of human & voting rights,racial&gender equality& affordable healthcare you can trust her. @HillaryClintonpic.twitter.com/s0N7x7TRuf
— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) June 11, 2016
“We trust her to work on healthcare, to fight for the poor...for the willingness to fight for civil rights,” he said. “We trust her to fight in the defence of children.”
While Jackson played up Clinton’s decades-old position at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), the organization’s founder Marian Wright Edelman previously slammed her for supporting the 1996 welfare reform as first lady, which drove millions of children into poverty.
The so-called Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was a Republican bill that got rid of aid for families with dependent children, replacing it with temporary assistance.
“Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but (the Clintons) are not friends in politics,” Edelman told Democracy Now in 2007.
She explained that the CDF “profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so.”
Clinton continues to tout the bill as a success, along with the Crime Act which led to the incarceration of millions of black Americans and paved the way for the for-profit prison system which donated her campaign before she was forced to stop taking their money last November.
Jackson endorsed Obama over Clinton in 2008, and both Clintons failed to endorse the civil rights leader during his own presidential bids in 1984 and 1988.
He did get an endorsement from the mayor of Burlington, Vermont at the time, Bernie Sanders, who backed him for “bringing together working people, minority groups, environmentalists, peace activists, farmers, and all people who are looking for fundamental changes in our current political and economic system and new national priorities.”
Earlier this year, Jackson described Sanders’ grassroots run for the White House as being like “the Jackson campaign with much more money and today’s technology and much more coverage in so many ways.”
Some social media users speculated why Jackson may be falling in line to support the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee.
@RevJJackson@HillaryClinton Do you even believe what you're saying?!
— Zo Sandernista (@bernblade) June 11, 2016
@Gators4Hillary@ohiomail@HillaryClinton@WomenG4Hillary@AdamParkhomenko@FloridaforHRC@HillaryforFL @StillWithHe pic.twitter.com/J85YdOR8ca
— Peter Prunski (@PeterPrunski) June 11, 2016
@NBCNews@nbcchicago This hurts. Very disappointed in Jesse. 😢
— Raoul OC (@CCRooy) June 12, 2016
@RevJJackson@HillaryClinton
— Bern Press (@BernPress) June 11, 2016
This is as hypocritical as @SenWarren's.
Both endorsed the devil they spent their lives fighting against.
Jackson called for a reconciliation between Clinton and Sanders during his speech at the Kids off the Block memorial for the hundreds of children killed by gun violence in Chicago, CBS Local reports.
@RevJJackson@HillaryClinton Nope I can't trust her on healthcare after her whole fam said Bernie didn't care about it.It where they lost me
— Chris Hamilton (@dteg32) June 11, 2016
While Obama has been accused of failing the Black community during his tenure given the surge in gang violence and police brutality, Clinton was targeted by #BlackLivesMatter activists during the primary campaign.
Her infamous “super-predator” comments made while defending the controversial Crime Bill in 1994 came back to haunt her, although not so much that she couldn’t secure the nomination with the help of Black voters and leaders.
Clinton’s “enabling” of South Sudan’s use of child soldiers and push for the militarization of the African continent while Secretary of State are also at odds with those who believe #BlackLivesMatter.
Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King et Ralph Abernathy sur le balcon du Motel Lorraine Memphis, 1968 pic.twitter.com/tIsbeKah4w
— Photos Histoires (@PhotosHistos) November 7, 2015