Juneteenth Special | The Fight for Freedom Isn't Over with Yusef Jackson

[00:00:00]Mr. Yousef Jackson, president of the Rainbow Push Coalition. Thank you for joining. How are you? I haven't um had a chance to speak to you in in a bit.

[00:00:09]>> You know, thank you for asking, Don. I'm doing well. Um obviously in the wake of my father's passing, it's been a very challenging transition for me and for my family, but you know, we've been lifted up by the prayers of many. So, I want to thank you and your listeners and our friends for always being kind to our family. the Instagram memes and the reals and things, the the media has been so kind with the coverage of my father's work that it's lifted us up. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, who've been praying for our family, which has given us strength. Um, obviously, we're concerned about our mother and she's strong, too.

[00:00:42]>> Well, we're sending love and and prayers and thoughts to you. I I do want to talk to you about the future of uh the Rainbow Push Coalition. I also want to talk to you because this is June and it's Junth, right? Junth and economic freedom. You are carrying on the work of your father, the the great work of your father. And in uh Junth is a time I think to um to reflect and to uh figure out how to evolve and transition uh into helping uh helping folks especially around the day that we marked that we were freed. Tell me what the the coalition is doing in order to do that.

[00:01:19]>> Let me tell you what Junth means to me.

[00:01:21]Junth means to me first primarily it's a time in which uh the Texas slaves did not realize they were free until two months later after the Civil War. It reminds me as my father would say power conceds nothing without a struggle. And so when you saw Reverend Jesse L.

[00:01:36]Jackson um after the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 64 Civil Rights Act and it was kind of funny at sometimes he said, "Hey, Reverend Jackson's everywhere.

[00:01:44]He's doing everything." He had a ubiquitousness Don that at one level people kind of thought was sort of funny. It was like what is he doing in all these places? The fact of the matter is racism and sexism was so culturally pervasive in every aspect of American life. Reverend Jackson went to challenge the law in all of the places. So slavery changed the law changed with the 13th amendment. But what hadn't changed was the culture and that's what created June 19th June Junth. Thomas Jefferson reminds us right that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Now, if the richest, whitest, slaveowningest president can tell you the price of his liberty requires eternal vigilance, imagine what it requires from us.

[00:02:25]>> Junth marks um delayed freedom for enslaved people in Texas. What does that history teach us about freedom uh in America today? Yousef, >> it teaches us that freedom is uh is can be transitory, that life and uh and progress is not linear. It means that we can't take our freedom for granted. It means that we can have we can have post 1965 the first generation of African-Americans and immigrants born fully infranchised legally in the United States. The first generation of women where sexism was made illegal in the United States. But at the same time, after 61 years of progress, it can it can go back. It's not just 61 straight years. We can reverse, we can regress to the mean of the original interpretation of the constitution, which that only 6% of the country could vote. The richest, whitest, slaveholders, and land owners were the voters. And we've worked to expand the concept of democracy from that narrow group to greater groups and more and more of America ever since that time and from 1965 to the present was the greatest expansion of democracy in our history. The democracy we practice is a 1965 democracy, not the 1776 democracy.

[00:03:37]>> You know, I was reminded yesterday by someone on my show the quote uh from there's a quote that goes similar to this u for Harry Tubman. It says, you know, I could have freed a a thousand more if they knew they were slaves and that which is what Harry Tubman talks about. You said that some communities still never got the memo that they are they were free. What do you mean by that, Yousef? What you know, you think about that amazing quote from Harriet Tubman that I could have freed more if they had known that they were slaves.

[00:04:09]You know, I I say that post pie 1896 um we never gave up on the hope of America and the promise of America. We never gave up on our God. In 1900, James Weldon Johnson wrote, "Lift up your voice and sing. We will march on till victory is one even though we have been disappointed by the results by the by the political actions after the civil war." Hayes Tilden in 1896 and from the Supreme Court we built community to survive a long narr. We built 1906 and 1908 1911 the divine nine the omegas the alphas the the Greeks we built the NAACP we built the Urban League and so what we did is we prepared for long rainy seasons. So I will say today when you think about Harriet Tubman in 2026 with what has happened with Caverus Louisiana starting with Shelby to Clay and what's happened with the civil rights act what's happened with the voting rights act. Hey guys it's raining a big storm and a flood is coming. We're going to have to build an arc to protect the community and all the things valuable in it. However long the last time we did from 1896 to to 1954 1964 1965. It could be a long period. This may not be a moment. It could be an era >> in 2026 because I said I mentioned evolving, transitioning, moving moving forward.

[00:05:25]Yousef, in 2026, what do you think the biggest barrier still facing, still limiting freedom of black Americans?

[00:05:32]What are those barriers?

[00:05:34]>> Well, I I think we got I think we got the new one with the Klay decision. We can't underestimate the value of losing uh almost half of the black representation that we have in Congress.

[00:05:45]We can't underestimate uh the value of eliminating the infrastructure for civil rights protections. We can't underestimate what the administration has done to dismantle the infrastructure we had to make the country more fair, more equal. And so, one is recognizing that some of us, I think, have been so spoiled by what we've had that we've said, hey, maybe we actually don't need those things. We can survive with the uh with the current infrastructure that we have. No, that's not true. The work they put in was for a reason and we've had success with it. Not as fast as we've wanted. We haven't closed the gaps to the extent we've wanted, but we can't give on the work that we've done. We deserve to be here. This the interesting thing about it, Don, is we continue to be uh torn apart by these issues of class and culture. The fact of the matter is all Americans are feeling a pinch at the grocery store. All Americans are feeling a pinch at the gas station. White Americans, black Americans. I have so many white women friend business owners who are no longer using their health insurance because they can't afford it. And when you think about that, if the white middle class is having that kind of pressure, you can imagine the kind of pressure that we're having. So I think it's the recognition that it's in a stormy season and that we've got to act. And I think that if we're not if this doesn't give us the motivation to begin to register and mobilize in great numbers June, July, August through November, then we're really going to find ourselves in quite a pickle come November. Is economic opportunity now the the next civil rights battle?

[00:07:14]>> Well, we have two. It it we at one point we thought that was the next battle. My father used to call it the symphony of the the symphony of freedom from from emancipation to civil rights to voting rights to economic rights, right? Silver silver rights we call it. The fact of the matter is the political rights that foundation is no longer stren as strong as it used to be. So we've got to fight on two fronts. the civil rights of voting rights as well as the economic rights. We never close the gap.

[00:07:41]African-Americans represent 3% of all the dentists in the country. There's no one to do my teeth. We represent a small percentage of the of the doctors. We represented in nurses. We can serve food on the planes, but we can't fly them.

[00:07:56]The professional opportunities for advancement of neighborhoods and communities and people and families in this country still evades us.

[00:08:06]Why? Why is that? Why do you think that happens?

[00:08:09]>> Because at every stage of advancement, something continues to pull us back. And I'll say, we still never give up on the hope and faith of America. Think about this. If you're challenging the professional schools, the medical schools where they won't even let us in.

[00:08:24]There's only four or five brothers per class. And when you look at the numbers, that's just not enough to build critical infrastructure. you you often talk about look that there's so much to discuss especially with the DEI of it all. I mean how but how much time do we have to discuss the hypocrisy around that and around uh the this idea of meritocracy in America would take us you know about two weeks to discuss >> yeah listen I'll tell you man what what I will say is everyone needs to keep hope alive why because what's keeping us back is not our aptitude or our attitude in many ways it is the systemic nature of the racism racism in society and this plan they have instituted since this new election has taken place shoot just 18 months ago has been very very effective at creating wider gaps than we expected.

[00:09:17]I mean 300,000 black women fired out of government five or 600,000 black women jobs affected. I mean what they're doing to us is absolutely nothing short of uh it's a hurricane in our neighborhoods and I think we're all too silent. I think the civil rights organizations, the church organizations, civic organizations have got to get back to the roots. And if if the civil rights organizations can't find a way to work together to solve some of these problems, work together with churches, we're together with people, then we're never going to get there. Right now, we're all acting as individuals in my opinion. And so, at our conference, June 10 through 13 in Chicago, I'm having a conversation with Jana Nelson. I'm having a conversation with Derek Johnson. We're going to hold civil rights organizations, the NAACP, the LDF, the Rainbow Hush Coalition to be accountable for how we're actually working together because we can only get out of this thing together.

[00:10:13]>> You know, Yousef, why do you always you often reference Tulsa, Harlem, Bronzeville when you're discussing black progress?

[00:10:21]>> Oh, because they're they're they're our north star. They were an example of the possibility of what can we of what we can do when we're working together and unbound by some of the systemic nature of the racism. And so we have to keep our minds and our face our our hope focused on the possibility of change, the possibility of justice, the possibility of of of the full expression of ourselves in our democracy. When the playing field is even, every single time we have success. My father used to use us sports examples. You know, when the playing field's even, the referees are wearing black and white, we can see the calls you're making. They're not behind some smoke filled room. We have success.

[00:11:02]We don't have those kinds of equal opportunities aside from the sports tables, sports courts.

[00:11:08]>> I I'm I'm often So, you use those as an example. You said they're the north star, but you also use a term uh that I find fascinating and you call it the new the modern sharecropping um is what you say is happening right now. And I I believe that has to do with generational wealth among African-Americans, which we have not had the opportunity to do so far thus far, at least not to the the extent that the larger culture has.

[00:11:34]The battle continues to be for equity participation in the country.

[00:11:41]We have borrowed board seats. We have borrowed CEO ships. We've never quite been able to change the culture of business opportunity to affect our neighborhoods. Uh uh Ford was able to build community by hiring people who could buy his cars.

[00:12:00]The same across the immigrants who worked in the auto auto industry. The same across the folks who worked in the beverage industries. They're able to build community because they're able to hire each other. We're not able to hire each other. So, we still find ourselves in what Michael Harrington would call the other America. My father would call it the shady side of the fence. There's a sunny side and a shady side. And we find ourselves continually on the side where there is no equity. There's just borrowing. My father would say that, hey, African-Americans aren't socialists. We actually have too much capitalism. We're poached by high credit rates and high loan rates, and it's too much competition. So much competition that most folks would find that unfair.

[00:12:45]>> So my question is then, is this why Rainbow Push still matters among many reasons? Though >> Rainbow Push is a faith-based organization. The first thing that keeps us relevant is that we believe in the promise of America. We expand America uh the democracy of America for all people.

[00:13:06]So we're a coalition building organization. We believe firmly in the the in in our fighting for political power for our base and we believe that our base is fundamentally centered in blackness but at the same time it expands to build coalition. We have had the most success when we've worked together to expand rights for most people. Most white women when you walk around the country don't say don't don't believe that they owe their freedoms and liberties to the Civil Rights Act or Title Nine. But they do. The Civil Rights Act laid the predicate for Title Nine, which laid the predicate for the expansion of tremendous opportunity for white women. White women should really at one level the beneficiaries of the civil rights movement should be the biggest advocates of the continuation of the civil rights era legislation and the benefits that it it produced. They don't see them as that. And I think if we teach them how sexist and racist this country was together, women couldn't get a bank account until 1972. They couldn't work overtime. They were limited about how much they could live. All the things um they don't see >> couldn't get mortgages without a man signing for them or a loan from the bank without a man signing. Yeah.

[00:14:14]>> So since they since the generation we have now didn't work for that, they were born poor 1965. They're born on third base waking up thinking they hit a triple. That isn't true. That isn't true. We had to work for that. They need to work right alongside us to protect these rights because they're the beneficiaries of it. And you know, >> it's not just Yeah. Go ahead.

[00:14:34]>> They have a lot to lose, too.

[00:14:36]>> Yes. Well, it's not just them. It's Indian-Americans. It's Latino Americans.

[00:14:42]It's any immigrant or any, you know, hyphenated American. They owe the privileges and the rights and many of the freedoms that they have due to the civil rights movement and black people and people like your father.

[00:14:53]>> It's like 85 90% of America. And if you take all of the poor white workingclass men, you get up to like 98% of America.

[00:15:02]The entire country owes the privileges and and that we have to that movement.

[00:15:07]And that's okay. It's a contribution we made for the good of the whole. Why?

[00:15:11]because we never lose faith in the promise and commitment of America. And that's what makes African-American people so special.

[00:15:18]>> So, you just mentioned that that they don't realize that. So, I'll ask you this. Um, the further we get away from the civil rights movement, um, I think the fewer people not that everybody forgets. Uh, and then there's >> Yeah. Yes. And then there and then there uh there's this push to sort of erase the history, not teach about it in schools because it's going to make some people feel bad. But the further we get away, I think that younger people um aren't as aware as they should be. So for the younger viewers who are unfamiliar with the Rainbow Push Coalition and what we are discussing right now, why is this organization I'll ask you the same question with this demographic? Why is this organization still important today?

[00:15:58]>> You know, because for exact for exactly what you just said, we're an organization that's designed to help you understand where you are in the context of this space. It's a level we represent a level of political maturity that you have got to get to in order to have success for you and your generations.

[00:16:16]For example, we've got to move beyond just voting into voting and then holding you accountable. We've got to move just beyond having the right to vote to registering and mobilizing. the Jesse Jackson uh youth voter registration bill that just passed in the state of Illinois that the governor is prepared to sign has um everyone in the state of Illinois, the availability of a college of a high school diploma on one hand and then a voter registration card in the other. So we expect to have full voter registration of high school students in the state of Illinois within the next couple months. Why is that important?

[00:16:50]That's important because the rainbow push teach you civic engagement. The only opportunity you have to change the conditions you have is to participate civily. You're not going to overthrow this government militarily. You're not gonna The only opportunity you have to participate is to engage in politically.

[00:17:07]And through the political power of the distribution of resources, we have a chance to make economic change. It's not your own individual efforts alone. You have to still be excellent. You still got to be better. But you also have to work on the group politics of it all.

[00:17:22]The Rainbow Push Coalition teaches that fulfilling the American commitment to its people. Our objective, Don, is to gather at the eve of the 250th anniversary of the country and talk about the promises made yet promises unkempt from the Declaration of Independence through the end of slavery to the Civil Rights Act. We have to hold our country accountable to the promises made not only to African-American people, but to all people to be able to live fully infranchised in the American dream.

[00:17:49]Yuzf Jackson, the president of the Rainbow Push Coalition. Thank you for joining us. Have a great conference and happy Junth to you, >> sir. I love you. Thank you very much.

[00:17:59]>> I love you, too. Thank you very much.

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