This is the Reverend's base, an organization that goes back 42 years from when he as a young man joined Martin Luther King Jr. crusade for freedom. King appointed him to head up "Operation Breadbasket," an economic empowerment arm of the civil rights movement.

After King was murdered, and he was there with him in Memphis-he left the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to form Operation Push (People United To Save Humanity.) When he later ran as a presidential candidate with the multi-cultural Rainbow theme, The pressure tactics of PUSH fused with the the non-racial mroe expansive Rainbow spirit.

On Saturdays, a day chosen not to conflict with Sunday church services, Jackson holds forth in the huge building on Drexell and East 50th Street on the South Side. He invited me out to speak and show a clip of my film IN DEBT WE TRUST.

 

The day started at 6 AM, which is when he gets cranking, with the taping of his TV show, an hour-long discussion program that airs at 9 Saturday Nights worldwide on the WORD network, a globally distributed religious broadcasting outlet. He wanted me on to explain the predatory lending and subprime menace which I explore in my film and new book, SQUEEZED: America As The Bubble Bursts (ColdType.Net).

The program was not rhetorical but analytical with an emphasis on context and solutions. It has no sponsors perhaps because it is a freewheeling exchange of views.

 

Jackson is not just talking to his base or the victims of predatory lending, On Friday, he had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with proposals for what can be done. He called for a Marshall Plan and an agency like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation used in the depression or like the Resolution Trust Corporation set up to resolve the Savings and Loan (S&L) scandal to provide relief to people who lost homes and savings. He told me that Sandy Weil, the former Wall Street CEO and mogul called him at 5 in the morning to discuss it with him.

After the show broadcast from the basement ended, I went upstairs to the community hall for a breakfast of eggs, grits and a biscuit and a conversation with folks waiting for a panel of the "Entrepreneurs University," an empowerment and educational program for small businessmen which meets there. Foreclosure lawyers and lenders, including representatives of state agencies, were in another oom discussing ways to restructure mortgages with troubled homeowners. (Chicago has an almost 30% foreclosure rate.)

(Nearby Detroit is harder hit. Yesterday, residents of the Detroit area who opened their paper were greeted with 122 pages of the 2008 Tax Foreclosure list for Wayne County. The current figure for Wayne county reports that a staggering 1/4 homeowners are in default on their mortgage.) This is worse than Katrina, a disaster in the making. Motown may soon be notown.

At ten A.M, the service begins. It is also broadcast live on WORD and a local outlet. The place was a beehive of activity, packed, energized, maybe even sanctified. This was a weekend to remember the civil rights struggle. There was a fabulous gospel choir,a band and amazing soloists including some local pastors who dropped in to sing and testify. He has built an important and internationally respected institution which carrying on the momentum of the civil rights struggle from protest to politics to economic survival. He is, as we said in the Civil Rights days, "keeping on, keeping on."

 

And I say this as someone who is mindful of all the criticisms of Jesse's flaws, failings and disappointments. Who among us is perfect? But who among us has his stature and history?

The room was rocking and I thought of my lanzmen who used to live in this onetime Jewish neighborhood and who once worshiped in this very building and how they would feel about the energy and love so visible in a hall, filled with passionate and classic church ladies but with a sprinkling of younger people. Jesse's son, Jonathan, now a businessman and Rainbow Push spokesman talked about ongoing police abuse in Chicago and appealed for people to sign a petition to stop it.. There were also educators present who described their efforts to improve the education of black boys and young men.

And then, it was my turn. Jessie brought me up to the platform and I was so electrified that I did some preaching of my own about the white collar crime wave behind the subprime crisis. I as on fire. I think he was as amazed as I was.There was a call and response from the crowd, people applauded and I felt real good after so many months of writing about all this and feeling like I was on my own planet with few listening or realizing the extent of the calamity. He showed a clip of the film and the response to that was enthusiastic too. Many bought DVDs afterwards and I have a feeling it will be shown again all around town. (To order a copy visit InDebtWeTrust.com)

I realized that what a novice I was as a preacher when Jackson did his signature thing. I would like to think I inspired him to go higher, because he went from speaking to sermonizing with eloquent and electrified, teaching, getting the congregation to repeat his words—"restructure, don't repossess." They all later sang GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN and they meant it.

I flashed back to the churches I visited during the civil rights movement back in the South in the 60's where politics and religion became one in a blend of inspiration and resistance. It seemed like that movement may be on the verge of being reignited, This will be a movement for economic justice, not just civil rights. (Although remember that the March on Washington in 963 was for JOBS and justice and Dr. King was supporting a strike by garbagemen when he was struck down.)

We'll see what happens in New York later today (There is also a March on the Federal Reserve Bank on LaSalle Street in Chicago.) Both will probably be small because there wasn't much time to organize. Think of it as a start of an ongoing campaign, a way to put the issue on the larger agenda.

Watch Out Wall Street: the Samaritans are coming to confront the Scrooges.