Rev. Jesse Jackson Slams Michigan Gov. Snyder For “Trampling Democracy”…in Chicago (Not Detroit) Newspaper Op-Ed

You have to wonder: Did the Reverend Jesse Jackson submit his op-ed piece to either The Detroit News or the Freep before he shot it off to the editors of the Chicago Sun-Times? Did the editors of those two Michigan papers take one look at Jackson’s essay on the evils of Governor Rick Snyder and decide that the piece was just, well, a bit too pointed for their editorial tastes? Or did Jesse Jackson deliberately snub Michigan’s two largest newspapers with a combined daily circ. of 650,000 in response to, perhaps, coverage which has been somewhat critical of his long-time involvement in our state’s politics. In 2000, editorialists at The Detroit News called Jackson “incendiary.” In 2007, a News columnist wrote that, “the reverend’s rants are ruinous.”

In May 2011, when thousands of protesters marched in Lansing to protest Governor Snyder’s proposed budget, the Chicago Tribune sent a reporter to cover the event and published a piece the same day about the protests at the Michigan capitol. In contrast, the Detroit papers did not send reporters to Lansing, and neither paper published anything about the protests the day of the event. A2Politico’s Chris Savage wrote about that journalistic lapse, and his piece touched a raw nerve with readers state wide. The piece has been shared 1,222 times on Facebook. In the comment section below Chris’ piece, Nick Assendelft, Politics and Government Editor at The Detroit News tried to explain why his paper had published nothing about the May 21, 2011 protest. Assendelft writes:

We don’t publish a newspaper on Sundays so you’d have to check the Sunday Free Press to see if they had a story. I’m not sure if they did. Since we don’t have a Sunday paper we didn’t send a reporter to the event and would have relied on the Associated Press to cover it. By Monday, it’s an old story, so I’m guessing that’s the reason you didn’t see an item in this morning’s paper.

We do try to update our Web site all day Saturday with breaking news, however. Unfortunately, AP didn’t send their first story on the protests until just before 9:30 p.m. We should have posted that story on our Web site Saturday night or even Sunday morning, but I can’t tell you why we didn’t since those who work Saturday night at not her today. Their weekly shifts usually go from Tuesday through Saturday or Wednesday through Sunday.

We have covered many of the protests in Lansing over the past few months on both sides of the issue, so we certainly have let our readers know there is discontent over and support for Gov. Snyder’s plans and those of the Legislature. We’ll continue to monitor those events as they come up and will staff them when possible.

Thank you for your questions and I hope I’ve answered them to your satisfaction.

Well, no, actually. The answer is a load of hooey. Blame the Associated Press?  Blame the staffers working the night shift? The Chicago Tribune sends a reporter, and The Detroit News editorial staff sits around waiting for something from the wire service? Is it any wonder Jesse Jackson’s essay about Michigan’s governor ended up being published in the Chicago Sun-Times?

For those who may not be aware, Jesse Jackson has been very vigorously gnawing on Governor Rick Snyder’s political behind for the past several months. In particular, Jackson is vociferously opposed to the expanded Emergency Manager (Public Act 4) law jammed through by eager Republicans in the Michigan Legislature and signed by Governor Snyder. The title of Jackson’s essay published on June 28, 2011 says it all: “Michigan’s governor tramples democracy.”

Jackson writes: “Michigan faces harrowing economic troubles, but it is not broke. This is an expression of the governor’s insistence on cutting taxes on the rich and the corporations, and forcing working families to bear the costs of the recession. And it is not surprising that these emergency financial managers are being foisted disproportionately on cities and school districts with the poorest people and the highest numbers of minorities. Democracy, the governor seems to suggest, is something they can’t afford.”

The race card.

U.S. Representative John Conyers told a talk show host in late-April 2011 that he was of the opinion that the Emergency Manager law as expanded is in violation of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Conyers said he intended to bring up Michigan’s EM law with President Obama in May, when the Congressman had a scheduled White House visit, as well as discuss the possibility of a federal lawsuit with the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder. Michigan’s other U.S. representatives, including John Dingell, who represents the 15th Congressional District, where Snyder lives and votes, have not uttered a peep in public about the EM law, its application, public protests in response to the law, lawsuits filed against the law, or whether any of them sees the imposition of Emergency Managers as a subversion of democracy and the undermining of locally-elected government.

Reverend Jackson’s essay begins very cleverly, with a reference to President Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. Jackson writes, “Abraham Lincoln mourned the sacrifice of those who had given the last measure of devotion to insure that a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.’ Now, without the clash of armies, government of the people is at risk of perishing in the state of Michigan.”

Just two days before his opinion piece was published in the Sun-Times, Jackson told an audience of about 100 people in Pontiac, Michigan that, “Pontiac being under the control of an emergency financial manager is a small piece of a bigger puzzle to take away an individuals’ right to vote,” according to various news sources. In April, Jackson told church and municipal leaders in Benton Harbor, Michigan they should form a coalition and file suit against the actions of that city’s state-appointed emergency financial manager. At the Benton Harbor event, Jackson called on residents to fight what he referred to as Snyder’s “draconian policies.”

Jackson’s essay ends with a one-two punch. First, he implies that Michigan’s governor is downright unpatriotic. “Perhaps Gov. Snyder has forgotten the words of the Pledge of Allegiance that every schoolchild learns. We pledge our allegiance not to the corporate state, not to one party or one ideology, but to the republic, one nation, under God with liberty and justice for all.”

Then, Jackson hits Snyder where it really hurts, right in the approval ratings. The final sentence of Jackson’s opinion piece reads: “In the state of Michigan, Gov. Snyder — now one of the most unpopular governors in the country — has decided to use the economic crisis to trample that pledge.”

Ouch. Of course, at a March 2011 speech at labor rally held at AFSCME union headquarters in Detroit, Jackson told union members: “The Governor is running a confederate agenda without the flag, whether here or Wisconsin, this anti-labor, anti-civil rights, stripping workers of their rights, using the voter ID to make access more difficult,  it’s a state’s rights agenda.”

Ouch. Shock Doctrine, indeed.

On Saturday June 25, 2011, about 50 Washtenaw County residents gathered at a meeting held at the Ann Arbor Community Center to generate publicity for a statewide effort to repeal Public Act 4 (the Emergency Manager law) by a Detroit non-profit group called Michigan Forward. The Washtenaw County Democratic Party recently passed a resolution in favor of supporting the move to repeal the Emergency Manager law, but leadership of the Washtenaw County Dems has taken a position of “neutrality” on the effort to recall Governor Snyder. Conversely, the Oakland County Democratic Party recently passed a resolution to support the recall effort.

Below, watch a video of Jesse Jackson speaking about the need to repeal Snyder’s Public Act 4 law: