 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It took about 2.8 seconds for Jesse to make the scene, inviting survivors and the families of victims to show up at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters to grieve. And now he's conspiring with Johnnie Cochran to sue the city and the nightclub's owner, Dwain J. Kyles, in connection with the disaster. A real defender of the people, that Jesse. Well. You find once you spend much time perusing the details of Revvum Jackson's affairs that the cynical approach is simply realism. The cynic was not surprised, then, to discover that Jesse's outreach to the families of the dead was nothing more than an exercise in C.Y.A. We now know that in the recent past, Jackson and other black ministers and politicians lobbied the mayor and police officials on behalf of the club, on the grounds that its owner was the victim of a racist "witch hunt." According to newspaper accounts, club owner Kyles, who had piled up numerous building code violations, and was at the time of the stampede defying a court order barring entry to the club's second floor, is a close friend of Jackson's. Jackson has known the Kyles family for decades. Dwain Kyles's father, the Rev. Samuel B. Kyles, was a cofounder of Operation PUSH, Jackson's Chicago-based organization. Last April, Jackson wrote to city officials praising the Kyleses for their involvement in civil rights, and called the club "an example of the best that our business community has to offer." The New York Times reported Wednesday that several black Chicago ministers said they were told by Jackson's people to rally behind the club, to hold functions there and take business there as a way to support the establishment in the face of racist harassment by city inspectors. "There was a move to close ranks around this business," one pastor told the Times. "There were people who felt, including myself, that maybe the city was on a witch hunt to close black businesses." Now that Jesse's Very Good Friend, on whose behalf he played the race card, is certain to face criminal charges and civil lawsuits in connection with the deaths of 21 black Chicagoans, Jesse is desperately trying to change the subject. This lawsuit he's trying to gin up with Cochran is an act of chutzpah reminiscent of the legendary man who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court, claiming he's an orphan. Longtime Jesse observers know that this isn't the first time Reverend's private lobbying for friends and financial backers has been at odds with his image as the best friend of the black community. Let us consider a small but representative sampling of the ways:
Some things never change. It's hard to see how Jackson can make money off the stampede tragedy, but he is still using African Americans to get the heat off himself. If what has been reported so far stands up to scrutiny, Jackson used his influence to rally Chicago black community leaders, urging them to mau-mau city inspectors into taking it easy on his friend Dwain Kyles, who had been found to be running a dangerous business. Now this same Dwain Kyles's negligence, and flouting of city orders, appears responsible for the deaths of 21 black men and women. If Jesse Jackson, who is a powerful political figure in Chicago, hadn't pushed for the city to give Kyles a break, it is possible that those people would be alive today. In an attempt to distract people from that rather inconvenient fact, Jackson is now positioning himself as an advocate for the interests of those crushed or stomped to death in Kyles's nightclub. What will it take for ordinary African Americans to see what became clear to Harold Doley years ago: that Jesse Jackson is no friend of theirs? |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
ean-spirited cynics (like, well, me) heard the news that 21 people died
in the stampede at a black nightclub in Chicago, and thought, "Jesse
Jackson is going to take advantage of this somehow."
Jackson, whose attempt to boycott Anheuser-Busch failed in 1982, was invoked
by black employees of a company beer distributorship in Chicago, who believed
they were being discriminated against. In what many observers saw as a
blatant (and successful) attempt to buy racial peace from Jackson, Anheuser-Busch
awarded the lucrative distributorship (with revenues of between $30 million
and $40 million a year) to Jackson's sons.
