The Brooklyn Paper: SNA Newspaper of the Year, 2007

The current issue
By Neighborhood
Not Just Nets
GO Brooklyn
Perspective
Parenting
Brooklyn Cyclones
The Brooklyn Bride
Brooklyn Boom
Classifieds
About The Paper
RSS Feeds
Brooklyn Public Library

Civil rights and modern wrongs in Bklyn

By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Paper / Noelle D’Arrigo

Similar stories

Share this story

digg
del.icio.us

The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to a Fort Greene church to talk about the mortgage crisis, but the old politician in him couldn’t resist talking about everything else.

As the star attraction at Monday’s mortgage meltdown forum at the Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church, Jackson was trying to keep hope alive for the 2,200 Brooklynites who lost their homes in 2007.

He even unveiled a quintessentially Jackson chant to get the message across. “Restructure loans, not repossess homes,” the modest audience repeated along with him.

But the conversation veered into a wide range of current and historical events:

Brooklyn Bridge Realty

• On the Democratic presidential nomination: Jackson, who saw his own bid for the Democratic nomination fail in 1984, after calling New York City “Hymietown,” issued a warning to superdelegates who are pledged to Hillary Clinton even though their districts voted for Barack Obama. Jackson said that such superdelegates — like Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Clinton supporter who was in the audience — “should reflect the will of the people.”

• On a recent assertion by former Black Panther and Communist vice presidential candidate Angela Davis (see story at right) that racism is no less overt than in the 1950s: “We’ve gotten better at hiding it,” Jackson said

• On why the South was at the forefront of the civil rights movement instead of Jackson’s beloved New York: “You could pull off a bus boycott in Montgomery the way you never could in New York for a year.”

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

< East River bridges brace for spruce-ups
Music: Swede as sugar >

Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.

American Housewares
Water Street Restaurant
Perelandra