Jesse's snake oil.

• Author: Reed, Adolph, Jr.
• Position: Jesse Jackson

When I moved to Atlanta in the yearly 1970s, Hosea Williams (one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s many former "right-hand men" in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) was crafting a distinct role in post-segregation black politics: official, freelance militant activist. The substance of this curious role was simple. Whenever germinal expressions of collective discontent began to form among groups of black working and poor people--usually in a labor or consumer dispute or in a neighborhood after some outrage by developers, police, or other government authority --Williams would arrive, with an accompaniment of media fanfare, and assume spokesmanship. He would then dissipate the unrest through a series of marches, typically culminating in a rally at a symbolic location. And he would negotiate a settlement with the targeted firm or government agency, gaining small concessions for the group on whose behalf he bargained, as well as emoluments for his own organization.

Williams had the local news media's and elites' stamp of approval as the tolerably troublesome rabble rouser because he didn't really rouse the rabble. He did just the opposite. He took potentially volatile, spontaneous protests and channeled them to generate demands that were compatible with what powerful institutions and individuals were prepared to concede anyway. Not only did this strategy amount to selling out the insurgencies over which he inserted himself, and sometimes pimping them for his own personal and organizational gain; it also meant that he undercut the potential for development of a more broadly oppositional black political movement. He actually operated as a safety valve in local politics, funneling frustration into acceptably non-threatening forms, and supplanting the organizing processes that might have otherwise generated grassroots leadership and demands for radical change. His trump card was appeal to his prior association with King.

Jesse Jackson, like Williams a former King aide, has been attempting since 1984 to play a similar role in national politics. He functions to corral black and leftist insurgents and identify their baseline objective as advancing his status as a public figure. He then negotiates backroom agreements with Democratic Party elites that are mainly aimed at ensconcing his position as a legitimate power broker, ensuring his "seat at the table." This is one reason not to encourage or support a Jackson presidential charade--either for the Democratic nomination or as an Independent--in 1996.

This style of brokerage politics is nothing new for Jackson. For years he pursued a related course with Operation PUSH, one that political scientist Earl Picard characterized some time ago as the "corporate-intervention" strategy. PUSH'S main publicly visible program from its founding until Jackson's departure was negotiating "covenants" with market-sensitive firms. These agreements, occasionally induced by threat of boycott, committed corporations to hire black managers...