Posts Tagged: Jesse Jackson

‘We Must Repeal the Stand Your Ground Law’: Jesse Jackson Tips His Hand After Zimmerman Arrest

Posted by & filed under The Blaze.

George Zimmerman hasn’t even been in jail for a single day and hasn’t been found guilty of anything yet (in fact, his trial hasn’t even started), yet Jesse Jackson is already trying to use Zimmerman’s shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin to push a fondly cherished wish of left-of-center Floridians. That is, he’s trying to use the case as a pretext to repeal the “Stand Your Ground” law, which some observers have blamed for Martin’s death at Zimmerman’s hands.

Laura Flanders of the Nation has video and the full quote in a short blog post:

George Zimmerman was behind bars Wednesday night, forty-five days and countless rallies after he went free after shooting unarmed high school junior Trayvon Martin in a Sanford, Florida, gated community. Zimmerman now faces the possibility of life in prison, but the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who has led some of those rallies, says that the mobilizing shouldn’t end.

“When Rosa Parks was arrested [for refusing to go to the back of the bus], if we had focused on the bus driver and not on the states’ rights law, we would have missed the point….  We must not just settle for Zimmerman, we must repeal the Stand Your Ground law.”

As luck would have it, Reverend Jackson and I were both at Ohio University as the news from Florida came in. Here’s what he had to say.

The internal logic of Jackson’s statement, comparing the case of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the case of Trayvon Martin, might not be fully consistent with either. The bus boycott was enacted in order to protest a specifically racist policy, whereas the Stand Your Ground law applies with equal force to whites and blacks, and has no alleged racial motivation behind it. Moreover, Rosa Parks did not die as a result of the bus policy, nor were the bus company employees ever charged with a crime. Either way, it’s not clear that the shooting of Trayvon Martin is indicative in any way of a wider trend of racially motivated violence. In fact, it appears to be an isolated incident, which would make it just the opposite.

Is Reverend Jackson distracting from his own cause?

 

Rev. Jesse Jackson: Jesus Was Killed Because He ‘Occupied’ the Corrupt Temple

Posted by & filed under The Blaze.

Tim Tebow wasn’t the only famous figure to deliver an Easter message this weekend.  Reverend Jesse Jackson marked the occasion with a message of his own– that Jesus was an “Occupier.”

(Related: Tim Tebow Draws Massive Crowd to Celebration Church on Easter Sunday)

Jackson was speaking to a crowd of predominantly “Occupy Chicago” individuals when he made the analogy, right after a “Chicago Spring” event.

After introducing Jesus as an “immigrant” and “refugee,” as “someone who fought for the poor because He was among the poor,” Reverend Jackson asked the group to recall when Jesus cleared the moneychangers out of the Temple in Jerusalem.

“But why was he killed?” he asks. “Because he fought, and he occupied the corrupt Temple.  He went to the house of prayer to pray, and found corruption [in] the holy place.”

Jackson becomes somewhat difficult to understand after that, but he clearly refers to a “woman across the street” who “is the 99%.”  Perhaps he is referring to the woman Jesus spoke of in Mark 12:41-43:

41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

This is not the first time Reverend Jackson has referred to Jesus as an “Occupier.”  Back in December, he said Jesus, Ghandi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King were all Occupiers.

I wonder how these lauded men would feel about the rampant crime, rape, and filth reported at the Occupy camps?