Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition were ostensibly and outspokenly pro-labor and pro-farmer. Rev Jackson’s working class politics, it seems to me more consistently expressed, and more creatively interwoven with the struggles for equality and social justice than the practice and politics of contemporary social movements on campuses and in communities. Not many have done it – mastered this dialectic – better than Jesse in my lifetime.
Thus, given the movement of a considerable section of high school educated white workers to Trumpian politics and the nearly calcified divisions between urban and rural America. both of which are taking place within the context of an existential threat to democracy and social progress engineered by the MAGA movement, a serious examination and adaptation of Jesse’s politics and practice to current circumstances seems obvious.