Jesse Louis Jackson, a civil rights activist and leader, was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina and raised by his mother. He received a scholarship to the University of Illinois, then he went to North Carolina A&T State. After graduation he went to the Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Baptist Minster, in 1968. In 1965, Jackson joined Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC. He founded the Operation PUSH in Chicago in 1971. It was founded to pressure large corporations to provide jobs and economic opportunities for minorities. On 1986, he also founded the (NRC) National Rainbow Coalition, of which he is still President of the organization. He went on to form other organizations, during the 70"s and 80's. In the 1980's, Jesse Jackson's two presidential campaigns broke new grounds in U.S politics. Even though he did not win either; he changed forever the notion that a black president in America was inconceivable. Jackson still continues to fight for peace and equality, for example, he has a ten-point program for equal opportunities in education.
We need to rebuild our schools to create the facilities infrastructure that has the capability to join the computer age. As Senator Carol Moseley-Braun has persistently pointed out, many of our schools, urban and rural, have crumbling infrastructure. They need wiring simply to plug in a computer, let alone connect to the Internet. But to wire these schools, you must first go through walls of lead paint and asbestos. Many of our schools have leaking roofs, lack heat and sanitary bathrooms, and are overcrowded.
We affirm the need for higher academic standards, sound management, and accountability. We need a strong emphasis in the home, church, school, and mass media on character education. Ethical standards are the key to our growth as a nation.
Greater parental responsibility and involvement, in partnership with our schools, are needed to support the education of our children. Parents with jobs or an economic livelihood are key to this partnership. We plan to mobilize 2 million parents (40,000 parents in 50 cities) and 5,000 ministers and judges to reclaim our youth.
We need Superintendent and Chief Executive Officer leadership that is empowered to achieve these goals.
We need mandatory training for public school teachers in their subject areas, and an increased salary and benefit base that lends itself to more professionalism, accountability, and stability among our teacher workforce.
Our youth must be taught the skills of survival and success. They must have a grasp of the economic system to allow them to effectively pursue jobs and create wealth. Our youth must be taught to market, barter, sell, and trade--to gain the entrepreneurial skills that allow them to apply economic principles and make money legally.
Our children need health care and early childhood education programs. Studies demonstrate the correlation between physical and mental well-being, Head Start opportunities, and the ability to learn.
In a world where everyone is a neighbor--one button away on the Internet--multilingual education is essential.
We encourage the media--a primary factor in the development of the minds and values of our children--to stop the demeaning stereotypes that unfortunately shape the visions of our children's future. By age 15 our youth have: seen 18,000 hours of television listened to 22,000 hours of radio seen one quarter of a million conflicts resolved by killings spent 11,000 hours in schools spent less than 3,000 hours in church