Rev. Jesse Jackson at UI says Spokane would-be march bomber ‘more sick than mean’

Freedom does not mean equality, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told a packed house at the University of Idaho on Monday night.

“We are all free, but we are becoming less equal every day,” the civil rights leader said, pointing to a widening economic disparity.

About 4,500 turned out to hear Jackson at the Kibbie-ASUI Activity Center to mark Black History Month. His lecture, “Keep Hope Alive,” targeted young people who he said are challenged with the struggle for economic justice, just as their predecessors fought for racial justice and voting rights.

“Black history is not for blacks only,” Jackson said. “Blacks were the catalyst for change, but they were not alone” in suffering the effects of inequality.

We must ask ourselves who we are as a nation, when 1 percent of us control as much wealth as 90 percent of the rest, when 59 million are without health care, 30 million are without jobs and 50 million lack food security, Jackson said.

“Is not our character measured by ‘how we treat the least of these’?” Jackson said.

When President Barack Obama was elected it was “midnight for our economy” because the banks had chosen investing over lending. The problem today is that when the banks were bailed out, it was not linked to lending. “So the banks got bailed out and we got left out,” he said.

“We have globalized capital. Now we must globalize human rights.”

During a news conference in advance of his address, Jackson said that whoever left a backpack bomb on the route of Spokane’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day march last month “was more sick than mean.”

“We must address the issues that drive us to sickness,” he said.

Jackson spoke of the conditions in the United States today that make unthinkable violence thinkable. Law enforcement continues to hunt for clues to the apparently racially motivated bomb attempt in Spokane.

“We are the most violent nation on Earth,” Jackson said, a nation where each year 32,000 people are killed by gun violence. Yet we remain “addicted to semi-automatic weapons.”

The Super Bowl, Jackson said, was not just a game but “a metaphor for our dreams of America.”

“On the playing field there is an inherent sense of justice,” Jackson said, where referees and instant replay make sure the game is played fairly. But off the field, minorities and the poor are still struggling to find their place in America.

On the subject of Egypt, Jackson said the United States “chose stability over democracy and ended up embracing tyrants” as it has done in Africa and Latin America.

“Today we have achieved freedom in America,” he said. “Now we need to achieve equality.”