Rev. Jesse Jackson on Welfare & Poverty Civil Rights Activist

Voice of the poor, the disenchanted, & the disillusioned

We spend more on corporate welfare than on AFDC

Poor are not lazy; they do our dirty work

They are not lazy; they raise other people’s children. They work in the hospitals, they mop the floors, and they change the beds. They empty our bedpans, and yet when they get sick, they cannot afford to lie in the bed they make up every day.

Why are they in this trap? Their wages have been falling every year for over 20 years. Their conditions grow worse. Their neighborhoods are terrorized by crime. Their young cannot find work. Those who escape face extra obstacles to find loans to buy a home.

Washington has abandoned them. You must not.

Deal forcefully with “permanent disaster areas” in cities

I would declare poor communities in a state of emergency and deal with the unemployment rate, the mortality rate, and the T.B. rate. I would set up medicine tents and embarrass the governments into opening up their food storehouses. I would enlarge all the city departments that feed and heal people. The welfare of the people would be attended to before any new golf courses or stadiums were built. I would call the National Guard to deal with injustices that make the ghetto a permanent disaster area. There’s no reason the Army couldn’t come down the street looking for slum landlords. The Army would force unions to let minorities in. And those who did not pick up the garbage would themselves be picked up. An Army like that wouldn’t have any trouble getting volunteer soldiers because it would be engaged in a relevant war.