Jesse Jackson: Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (“Rainbow Coalition”)

delivered 18 July 1984, San Francisco

Thank you very much.

Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great Party, the Democratic Party, which
is the best hope for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course.

This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission: to feed the hungry. to clothe the naked. to house the homeless. to
teach the illiterate. to provide jobs for the jobless. and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.

We are gathered here this week to nominate a candidate and adopt a platform which will expand, unify, direct, and inspire our Party and the nation to fulfill this mission. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They have voted in record numbers. They have
invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care. I pledge my best not to let them down.

There is the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity. Leadership must heed the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity, for they are the key to achieving our mission. Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice. Only leadership that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation. Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land. Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.

I have had the rare opportunity to watch seven men, and then two, pour out their souls, offer their service, and heal and heed the call of duty to direct the course of our nation. There is a proper season for everything. There is a time to sow and a time to reap. There's a time to compete and a time to cooperate.

I ask for your vote on the first ballot as a vote for a new direction for this Party and this nation a vote of conviction, a vote of conscience. But I will be proud to support the nominee of this convention for the Presidency of the United States of America. Thank you.

I have watched the leadership of our party develop and grow. My respect for both Mr. Mondale and Mr. Hart is great. I have watched them struggle with the crosswinds and crossfires of being public servants, and I believe they will both continue to try to serve us faithfully.

I am elated by the knowledge that for the first time in our history a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, will be recommended to share our ticket.

Throughout this campaign, I've tried to offer leadership to the Democratic Party and the nation. If, in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some
light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope, or stirred someone from apathy and indifference, or in any way along the way helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain.

For friends who loved and cared for me, and for a God who spared me, and for a family who understood, I am eternally grateful.

If, in my low moments, in word, deed or attitude, through some error of temper, taste, or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain, or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self. If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart. My head so limited in its finitude. my heart, which is boundless in its love for the human family. I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient: God is not finished with me yet.

This campaign has taught me much. that leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep on moving.

For leaders, the pain is often intense. But you must smile through your tears and keep moving with the faith that there is a brighter side somewhere.

I went to see Hubert Humphrey three days before he died. He had just called Richard Nixon from his dying bed, and many people wondered why. And I asked him. He said, "Jesse, from this vantage point, the sun is setting in my life, all of the speeches, the political conventions, the crowds, and the great fights are behind me now. At a time like this you are forced to deal with your irreducible essence, forced to grapple with that which is really important to you. And what I've concluded about life," Hubert Humphrey said, "When all is said and done, we must forgive each other, and redeem each other, and move on."

Our party is emerging from one of its most hard fought battles for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in our history. But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter. We must use the insight, wisdom, and experience of the late Hubert Humphrey as a balm for the wounds in our Party, this nation, and the world. We must forgive each other, redeem each other, regroup, and move one. Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow red, yellow, brown, black and white and we're all precious in God's sight.

America is not like a blanket one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other. We must come together.

From Fannie Lou Hamer in Atlantic City in 1964 to the Rainbow Coalition in San Francisco today. from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have experienced pain but progress, as we ended American apartheid laws. We got public accommodations. We secured voting rights. We obtained open housing, as young people got the right to vote. We lost Malcolm, Martin, Medgar, Bobby, John, and Viola. The team that got us here must be expanded, not abandoned.

Twenty years ago, tears welled up in our eyes as the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were dredged from the depths of a river in Mississippi. Twenty years later, our communities, black and Jewish, are in anguish, anger, and pain. Feelings have been hurt on both sides. There is a crisis in communications. Confusion is in the air. But we cannot afford to lose our way. We may agree to agree. or agree to disagree on issues. we must bring back civility to these tensions.

We are copartners in a long and rich religious history the JudeoChristian traditions. Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad. We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities. We must return to higher ground.

We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed. These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem.

We are bound by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, crying out from their graves for us to reach common ground. We are bound by shared blood and shared sacrifices. We are much too intelligent, much too bound by our JudeoChristian heritage, much too victimized by racism, sexism, militarism, and antiSemitism, much too threatened as historical scapegoats to go on divided one from another. We must turn from finger pointing to clasped hands. We must share our burdens and our joys with each other once again. We must turn to each other and not on each other and choose higher ground.

Twenty years later, we cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition. Old wine skins must make room for new wine. We must heal and expand. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Arab Americans. They, too, know the pain and hurt of racial and religious rejection. They must not continue to be made pariahs. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Hispanic Americans who this very night are living under the threat of the SimpsonMazzoli bill. and farm workers from Ohio who are fighting the Campbell Soup Company with a boycott to
achieve legitimate workers' rights.

The Rainbow is making room for the Native American, the most exploited people of all, a people with the greatest moral claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of their ancient land and claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of land and water rights, as they seek to preserve their ancestral homeland and the beauty of a land that was once all theirs. They can never receive a fair share for all they have given us. They must finally have a fair chance to develop their great resources and to preserve their people and their culture.

The Rainbow Coalition includes Asian Americans, now being killed in our streets scapegoats for the failures of corporate, industrial, and economic policies.

The Rainbow is making room for the young Americans. Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote. Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers. Young America must be politically active in 1984. The choice is war or peace. We must make room for young America.

The Rainbow includes disabled veterans. The color scheme fits in the Rainbow. The disabled have their handicap revealed and their genius concealed. while the ablebodied
have their genius revealed and their disability concealed. But ultimately, we must judge people by their values and their contribution. Don't leave anybody out. I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a house.

The Rainbow is making room for small farmers. They have suffered tremendously under the Reagan regime. They will either receive 90 percent parity or 100 percent charity. We must address their concerns and make room for them. The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays. No American citizen ought be denied equal protection from the law.

We must be unusually committed and caring as we expand our family to include new members. All of us must be tolerant and understanding as the fears and anxieties of the
rejected and the party leadership express themselves in many different ways. Too often what we call hate as if it were some deeplyrooted philosophy or strategy is simply ignorance, anxiety, paranoia, fear, and insecurity. To be strong leaders, we must be longsuffering as we seek to right the wrongs of our Party and our nation. We must expand our Party, heal our Party, and unify our Party. That is our mission in 1984.

We are often reminded that we live in a great nation and we do. But it can be greater still. The Rainbow is mandating a new definition of greatness. We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but the manger up. Jesus said that we should not be judged by the bark we wear but by the fruit that we bear. Jesus said that we must measure greatness by how we treat the least of these.

President Reagan says the nation is in recovery. Those 90,000 corporations that made a profit last year but paid no federal taxes are recovering. The 37,000 military contractors who have benefited from Reagan's more than doubling of the military budget in peacetime, surely they are recovering. The big corporations and rich individuals who received the bulk of a threeyear, multibillion tax cut from Mr. Reagan are recovering. But no such recovery is under way for the least of these.

Rising tides don't lift all boats, particularly those stuck at the bottom. For the boats stuck at
the bottom there's a misery index.
This Administration has made life more miserable for the
poor. Its attitude has been contemptuous. Its policies and programs have been cruel and
unfair to working people. They must be held accountable in November for increasing infant
mortality among the poor. In Detroit one of the great
cities of the western world, babies are
dying at the same rate as Honduras,
the most underdeveloped nation
in our hemisphere. This
Administration must be held accountable for policies that have contributed to the growing
poverty in America. There are now
34
million people in poverty, 15 percent of our nation. 23
million are White. 11 million
Black, Hispanic, Asian, and others mostly
women and children.
By
the end of this year, there will be 41 million
people in poverty. We cannot stand idly by.
We must fight
for a change now.

Under this regime we look at
Social Security. The '81 budget cuts included
nine permanent
Social
Security benefit cuts totaling 20 billion over five years. Small businesses have suffered
under Reagan
tax cuts. Only 18 percent of total
business tax cuts went
to
them. 82 percent
to
big businesses. Health care under Mr. Reagan
has already been sharply cut. Education
under
Mr. Reagan has been cut
25 percent. Under Mr.
Reagan
there are now 9.7 million
female head
families. They represent 16 percent of all families. Half of all of them are poor. 70 percent of
all
poor children
live in a house headed by a woman, where there is no man. Under Mr.
Reagan, the Administration
has cleaned up only
6 of 546 priority toxic waste dumps. Farmers'
real net
income was only about half its level in 1979.

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Many
say that
the race in November will be decided in the South. President Reagan
is
depending on the conservative South
to return
him to office. But
the South, I
tell you, is
unnaturally conservative. The South is the poorest
region
in our nation and,
therefore,
[has]
the least to
conserve. In
his appeal to the South, Mr. Reagan is trying to
substitute flags and
prayer cloths for food, and clothing, and education, health
care, and housing.

Mr. Reagan will ask us to pray, and I believe in
prayer. I
have come to
this way by the power
of prayer. But then, we must watch
false prophecy. He cuts energy assistance to
the poor,
cuts breakfast programs from children, cuts lunch programs from children, cuts job training
from children, and then says to an empty table,
"Let us pray." Apparently, he is not familiar
with
the structure of a prayer. You thank the Lord for the food that you are about
to receive,
not
the food that just left. I think that we should pray, but don't pray for the food that left.
Pray for the man that took the food to
leave. We need a change.
We need a change in
November.

Under Mr. Reagan, the misery index has risen
for the poor. The danger index has risen for
everybody. Under this administration, we've lost the lives of our boys in Central America and
Honduras,
in
Grenada, in Lebanon, in nuclear standoff
in
Europe. Under this Administration,
onethird
of our children believe they will die in a nuclear war. The danger index is increasing
in this world. All the talk about the defense against Russia.
the Russian submarines are closer,
and their missiles are more accurate.
We live in a world tonight
more miserable and a world
more dangerous.

While Reaganomics and Reaganism is talked about often, so often we miss the real meaning.
Reaganism is a spirit, and Reaganomics represents the real economic facts of life. In 1980,
Mr. George Bush, a
man with reasonable access to Mr. Reagan, did an analysis of Mr.
Reagan's economic plan. Mr. George Bush concluded
that Reagan's plan was ''voodoo
economics.'' He was right. Thirdparty
candidate John Anderson
said "a combination of
military spending,
tax cuts, and a balanced budget by '84 would be accomplished with blue
smoke and mirrors."
They were both right.

Mr. Reagan talks about a dynamic recovery. There's some measure of recovery. Three and a
half years later, unemployment has inched just
below where it was when
he took office in
1981. There are still 8.1 million people officially unemployed. 11 million working only parttime.
Inflation
has come down, but
let's analyze for a moment who has paid the price for this
superficial economic recovery.

Mr. Reagan curbed inflation by cutting consumer demand.
He cut consumer demand with
conscious and callous fiscal and monetary policies. He used the Federal budget to deliberately
induce unemployment and curb social spending. He then weighed and supported tight
monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Board
to deliberately drive up interest rates, again to
curb consumer demand created through borrowing. Unemployment reached 10.7 percent. We
experienced skyrocketing interest rates. Our dollar inflated abroad. There were record bank
failures, record farm foreclosures, record business bankruptcies. record budget deficits, record
trade deficits.

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Mr. Reagan brought inflation down by destabilizing our economy and disrupting family life. He
promised he
promised in
1980 a balanced budget. But
instead we now have a record 200
billion dollar budget deficit. Under Mr. Reagan, the cumulative budget deficit for his four years
is more than
the sum total of deficits from George Washington to
Jimmy Carter combined.
I
tell
you, we need a change.

How is he paying for these shortterm
jobs? Reagan's economic recovery is being financed by
deficit spending 200
billion dollars a year. Military spending, a major cause of this deficit, is
projected over the next five years to be nearly 2 trillion dollars, and will cost about
40,000
dollars for every taxpaying family. When
the Government borrows 200 billion dollars annually
to finance the deficit, this encourages the private sector to make its money off of interest
rates as opposed to development and economic growth.

Even
money abroad, we don't have enough
money domestically to finance the debt, so we are
now borrowing money abroad, from foreign banks, governments and financial institutions: 40
billion dollars in 1983. 7080
billion dollars in 1984 40
percent of our total. over 100 billion
dollars 50
percent of our total in
1985. By
1989, it is projected that
50 percent of all
individual
income taxes will be going just to pay for interest on that debt. The United States
used to be the largest exporter of capital, but under Mr. Reagan we will quite likely become
the largest debtor nation.

About two weeks ago, on July the 4th, we
celebrated our Declaration of Independence, yet
every day supplyside
economics is making our nation
more economically dependent and less
economically free. Five to six percent of our Gross National Product is now being eaten
up with
President Reagan's budget deficits. To depend on foreign
military powers to protect our
national security would be foolish, making us dependent and less secure. Yet, Reaganomics
has us increasingly dependent on foreign economic sources. This consumerled
but deficitfinanced
recovery is unbalanced and artificial. We have a challenge as Democrats to point a
way out.

Democracy guarantees opportunity, not
success.

Democracy guarantees the right
to participate,
not a license for either a majority or a minority
to dominate.

The victory for the Rainbow Coalition
in the Platform debates today was not whether we won
or lost, but
that we raised the right issues. We could afford to
lose the vote. issues are nonnegotiable.
We could not afford
to avoid raising the right questions. Our selfrespect
and our
moral
integrity were at stake. Our heads are perhaps bloody, but not bowed. Our back is
straight. We can go home and face our people.
Our vision is clear.

When we think, on this journey from slaveship
to championship, that we have gone from the
planks of the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1964 to fighting to
help write the planks in the
platform in San Francisco in '84, there is a deep and abiding sense of joy in our souls in spite
of the tears in our eyes. Though there are missing planks, there is a solid foundation upon
which
to build.

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Our party can win, but we must provide hope which will
inspire people to struggle and
achieve. provide a plan
that shows a way out of our dilemma and then
lead
the way.

In
1984, my heart is made
to feel glad because I know there is a way out justice.
The
requirement
for rebuilding America is justice. The linchpin of progressive politics in our nation
will
not
come from the North. they, in fact, will
come from the South. That
is why I argue over
and over again. We look from Virginia around to Texas, there's only one black Congressperson
out of 115. Nineteen years later, we're locked out of the Congress, the Senate and the
Governor's mansion. What does this large black vote mean? Why do
I
fight to win second
primaries and fight
gerrymandering and annexation and atlarge
[elections]. Why do we fight
over that? Because I
tell you, you cannot hold someone in the ditch
unless you
linger there
with
them. Unless you
linger there.

If you want a change in this nation, you enforce that Voting Rights Act. We'll get
12 to 20
Black, Hispanics, female and progressive congresspersons from the South. We can save the
cotton, but we've got to
fight
the boll weevils. We've got to
make a judgment. We've got to
make a judgment.

It
is not enough
to hope ERA will pass. How can
we pass ERA?
If Blacks vote in great
numbers, progressive Whites win. It's the only
way progressive Whites win. If Blacks vote in
great
numbers, Hispanics win. When Blacks, Hispanics, and progressive Whites vote, women
win. When women win, children win. When women and children win, workers win. We must all
come up together. We must come up together.

Thank you.

For all of our joy and excitement, we must
not save the world and lose our souls. We should
never shortcircuit
enforcing the Voting Rights Act at every level. When one of us rise[s], all
of us will rise. Justice is the way out. Peace is the way out. We should not act as if nuclear
weaponry is negotiable and debatable.

In
this world in which we live, we dropped the bomb on Japan and felt guilty, but
in 1984
other folks [have] also got bombs. This time, if
we drop the bomb, six minutes later we, too,
will be destroyed.
It's not about
dropping the bomb on somebody. It
is about dropping the
bomb on
everybody.
We must choose to develop minds over guided
missiles, and think it out
and not
fight it out. It's time for a change.

Our foreign policy must be characterized by mutual respect, not by gunboat diplomacy, big
stick diplomacy, and threats. Our nation at
its best
feeds the hungry. Our nation at
its worst,
at its worst, will mine the harbors of Nicaragua,
at its worst will try to overthrow their
government, at
its worst will cut aid to
American education and increase the aid to
El
Salvador. at its worst, our nation will
have partnerships with South
Africa.
That's a moral
disgrace. It's a moral disgrace. It's a moral disgrace.

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We look at Africa.
We cannot just
focus on Apartheid in Southern Africa. We must fight
for
trade with
Africa, and not just aid to
Africa.
We cannot stand idly by and say we will
not
relate
to Nicaragua unless they have elections there, and then
embrace military regimes in Africa
overthrowing democratic governments in Nigeria and Liberia and Ghana.
We must fight
for
democracy all around the world and play the game by one set of rules.

Peace in
this world. Our present
formula for peace in
the Middle East is inadequate. It will
not
work. There are 22
nations in the Middle East. Our nation must be able to
talk and act and
influence all of them. We must build upon Camp David, and measure human
rights by one
yard stick. In that region we have too many interests and too few friends.

There is a way out jobs.
Put
America back to
work. When I was a child growing up in
Greenville,
South Carolina, the Reverend Sample used to preach
every so often a sermon
relating to Jesus. And he said, "If I be lifted up,
I'll draw all men
unto
me."
I didn't quite
understand what
he meant as a child growing up, but I understand a little better now. If you
raise up truth, it's magnetic. It
has a way of drawing people.

With all
this confusion
in this Convention, the bright lights and parties and big fun, we must
raise up the simple proposition: If we lift
up a program to
feed the hungry, they'll come
running. if we lift
up a program to study war no
more, our youth will come running. if we lift
up a program to put America back to work, and an alternative to welfare and despair, they will
come working.

If we cut
that military budget without cutting our defense, and use that
money to rebuild
bridges and put
steel workers back to work, and use that money and provide jobs for our
cities, and use that
money to build schools and
pay teachers and educate our children and
build hospitals and train doctors and train
nurses, the whole nation will come running to
us.

As
I
leave you now, we vote in this convention and get ready to go back across this nation
in
a couple of days. In this campaign, I've tried to
be faithful to
my promise. I
lived in old
barrios, ghettos, and reservations and housing projects. I
have a message for our youth. I
challenge them to put
hope in
their brains and not dope in their veins. I
told them that like
Jesus, I, too, was born
in the slum. But just because you're born in the slum does not
mean
the slum is born
in
you, and you can rise above it if your mind is made
up.
I
told them in
every slum there are two
sides. When I
see a broken window that's
the slummy side.
Train
some youth
to become a glazier that's
the sunny side.
When I see a missing brick that's
the slummy side. Let
that
child in the union and
become a brick mason and build that's
the
sunny side.
When I see a missing door that's
the slummy side.
Train
some youth to become
a carpenter that's
the sunny side. And when I see the vulgar words and hieroglyphics of
destitution on the walls that's
the slummy side. Train
some youth to become a painter, an
artist
that's
the sunny side.

We leave this place looking for the sunny side because there's a brighter side somewhere. I'm
more convinced than ever that we can win. We will vault
up the rough side of the mountain.
We can win. I just want young America to do me one favor, just one favor. Exercise the right
to dream. You must
face reality that
which
is. But
then dream of a reality that ought to be

that
must be. Live beyond the pain of reality with
the dream of a bright
tomorrow.
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Use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress. Use love to
motivate you and
obligate you
to serve the human family.

Young America, dream. Choose the human race
over the nuclear race.
Bury the weapons and
don't burn
the people. Dream dream
of a new value system. Teachers who teach for life
and not just for a living. teach because they can't help it. Dream of lawyers more concerned
about justice than a judgeship. Dream of doctors more concerned about
public health
than
personal wealth. Dream of preachers and priests who will prophesy and not just profiteer.
Preach and dream!

Our time has come. Our time has come. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In
the end, faith will
not disappoint. Our time has come. Our faith, hope, and dreams will prevail.
Our time has come.
Weeping has endured for nights, but
now joy cometh
in the morning. Our
time has come. No grave can hold our body down. Our time has come. No lie can
live forever.
Our time has come.
We must
leave racial battle ground and come to
economic common
ground and moral
higher ground.
America, our time has come.
We come from disgrace to
amazing grace. Our time has come. Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled
masses who
yearn
to breathe free and come November, there will be a change because our
time has come.

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