His ministry was poetry

American heroes

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated before my political awakening (the 1976 Presidential election for all three of you wondering) so my introduction to the effects of the Civil Rights Movement on the Democratic Party was Jesse Jackson, who passed away today at the age of eighty-four.

Jackson was a protege of King, and throughout his life was a larger-than-life personality who stood for people of color, the poor, the LGBTQ community, and for the better angels of our American experiment.  He was a lifelong critic of the Republican Party and its glorification of greed and utter callousness.  He ran for President in 1984 and 1988 (finishing a respectable third and second respectively), and those efforts in many ways paved the way for Barack Obama to become our President in 2009.  He was a gifted orator whose 1988 speech to the Democratic National Convention had me mesmerized and by its end I had never been prouder of the principles our Democratic Party represented.

Senator Raphael Warnock, in his tribute to Jackon today, said "His ministry was poetry and spiritual power in the public square.  He advanced King's dream and bent the arc of history closer to justice."

Truer words, friends, truer words.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jackson, and send a few more of those better angels our way.  We can surely use them.

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee