“Could you move a little to the left so we can get the White House?” a television cameraman asked a woman holding a placard berating President Clinton on welfare reform.
“Yes, just a minute,” interjected Jesse Jackson, turning around and urging the woman and several others to shift their positions behind him.
At a historic moment, an unfettered view of a symbolic backdrop was a must–and the minimum Jackson, a wounded warrior, deserved in the surprising calm after a storm.
Amid cries of “Shame, Shame” and “Justice!” a modest crowd had surfaced in front of the White House Thursday afternoon, a day after President Clinton said he’d sign a welfare bill that even he conceded is deeply flawed.
There was Jackson, and NOW President Patricia Ireland, Feminist Majority leader Eleanor Smeal, a few unionists and some welfare rights and church officials.
Later, natty in a blue, double-breasted blazer, crisply pressed white shirt and gold necktie, was the barrel-chested young man Jackson introduced as “the distinguished congressman from the 2nd District of Chicago”–his son, Jesse Jr.
Together, 75 to 100 people provided a window on a fallen philosophy, relegated to flinging pebbles into a Republican-dominated ocean, forced into predicting a social apocalypse as a result of the GOP-inspired welfare reform bill.
To the tourists ambling down Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, they were fleeting curiosities, just like the permanent cadre of a handful of anti-nuke activists (“Live By the Bomb, Die by the Bomb”).
“The truth is this is a budget-cutting bill, not a welfare reform bill,” said Ireland, standing with Jackson and Smeal, surrounded by a small circle of true believers.
“Listen, Bill!” one voice shouted.
“It’s not right,” said another.
“Shame,” came a third.
A woman from the National Welfare Rights League upped the ante with singular rhetorical ham-handedness. “You know what happened in Germany,” she roared. “We must stop this genocide now.” A trip to the nearby Holocaust Museum might be in order.
When it was Jackson’s turn, he opened by noting his “deep sense of pain. A war on poverty has become a war on the poor. . . . Our hearts are in great agony.”
Several dozen younger spectators, none of whom could possibly recall Jackson here with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for epic demonstrations three decades earlier, cheered and, again, yelled out, “Justice!” Several German tourists looked up briefly and continued down the street.
“The poor have no lawyers,” Jackson said. “They have no lobbyists.” An old line, but true now more than ever.
Huffing and puffing, the younger Jackson arrived late at the gathering. With an impossible act to follow, a child of privilege did his best, rattling off names of firms in his district that have gone down the tubes and assuring that “we will now go back to the streets.”
Later, when the assemblage dispersed, I walked with the elder Jackson as he sought to get down the avenue and to his car. He quickly admonished me when I suggested that the crowd’s size was a symbol of the state of a liberalism with which he proudly associates himself.
“Very short notice,” he snapped. “Don’t make any larger points. No one expected the president to collapse and support this bill.”
And, yet, consider.
In 1988, Jackson ran for president and had enough support to make demands of the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis.
By 1992, candidate-turned-nominee Clinton could keep his distance and pound Jackson, and win even greater support by doing so. The New Democrat exploited the Old Democrat.
On Thursday, the day after a repudiation of much of what he stood for, Jesse Jackson Sr. was surrounded by a handful of loyal of allies and never in so distinct a minority. Even if Clinton and the Congress should be proven wayward on welfare–even if doomsday predictions come true–at this moment they control even the language of the debate.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his majority caricature the “do-gooder” groups one might associate with Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. Meanwhile, Clinton, with seemingly adroit cynicism, runs away from them like a frightened burglar who has the audacity to bring back a few items, apologize and announce his endearing friendship.
And where does Jackson go? He has no alternative. He said as much later when he noted that he chose John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon, though neither supported a litmus test on civil rights, a major public accommodations act.
Jackson’s coalition is fractured. A few days earlier, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told me that he hoped Clinton had “the compassion and courage” to veto the welfare bill. Fair numbers of the rank-and-file might have disagreed.
Whether Teamsters’ drivers, bricklayers or United pilots, many surely buy into the image of the welfare recipient as a lazy black female, munching on junk food and having babies. It’s at odds with the reality of the prototypical welfare recipient, who is white and female.
It’s a myth bought into by the likes of Bill Mulford, 45, a lumber wholesaler from Indianapolis.
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As I followed Jackson, we ran into two roadblocks. One was the Secret Service, which had barricaded most of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
The other was tourist Mulford, son at his side, a camera about his neck.
As Jackson was discoursing on Asian sweatshops, Mulford interrupted to rail against Americans who won’t accept low-paying jobs. He mentioned something about everybody in Washington not speaking English.
“No immigrant bashing, please,” Jackson said.
“We can’t get people to work,” responded an aggressive Mulford.
“That’s not true,” said Jackson.
“It is,” Mulford shot back with derision.
“I went to a bilingual McDonald’s this
morning . . .”
“America is a nation of many cultures,” Jackson counterpunched, adding an eloquent bit of history lost on Mulford.
Upon further prodding, Mulford indicated he was a Republican precinct committeeman in Indianapolis.
“Oh, a plant! A professional” declared Jackson with a half-smile.
My discussion with Jackson continued and, as it did, I realized certain ironies about Jesse Jackson in 1996.
The onetime outsider has now reached a respectability at the very time so much of what he’s fought for is scorned.
That public stature was underscored by this simple byplay: Two uniformed Secret Service agents, in charge of blocking off the avenue at our end, reverently referring to him as “Rev. Jackson.”
According him VIP status, they allowed him ultimately to walk through their barricade and the long block down to his car.
But before he did, other passersby gawked, came by and even shook his hand. He’s entered a different realm, where ideology and principle play little part.
He’s a celebrity.
So, on this day, when so much of what he believed in was repudiated, he was treated on the capital’s streets as, say, Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington might be.
“They are fighting women and children who cannot fight back,” he said of the Republicans before generously shaking Mulford’s hand, then turning to leave.
“I’m better off giving my money to the church,” yelled Mulford, whose wife is a Mennonite.
“A good idea,” said Jackson, turning for good and heading alone down Pennsylvania Avenue.