"We are living in a time when it can be hard to hope. Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to it, to things you just didn’t think were possible. Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other — and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all."
" Everywhere we see greed and bigotry being celebrated, and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength; we see science and expertise denigrated while ignorance and dishonesty, and cruelty and corruption, are reaping untold rewards. Every single day we see that. And it’s hard to hope in those moments.
So it may be tempting to get discouraged, to give in to cynicism. It may be tempting for some to compromise with power and grab what you can, or even for good people, to maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm to pass.
"But this man — Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson — inspires us to take the harder path. His voice calls on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope; to step forward and say “Send me” wherever we have a chance to make an impact — whether it’s in our schools, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods and our cities. Not for fame, not for glory, or because success is guaranteed, but because it gives our life purpose, because it aligns with what our faith tells us God demands, and because if we don’t step up, no one else will."
President Barack Obama
at the Memorial for Rev. Jesse Jackson on March 6, 2026.
"Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to it, to things you just didn’t think were possible."
On Saturday we woke up to a social media post from Boss Chaos, currently the commander in chief and fomenter of an illegal and unconstitutional war, which in its earliest days managed to kill more than a hundred school girls in Iran. With language that no President has ever used, that borders on a promise of genocide, he announces another day of intense bombing: “Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.”
We woke up to a stories about the continuing savagery of the implacable cruel and lawless federal thugs known as ICE: kidnapping a woman and her two young boys from a legal hearing, lying to her lawyers and sending them to detention in a place unknown to them in order that they could not file habeas corpus, and then quickly deporting them. One of the boys, six years old, is deaf, and was hustled away without his hearing device. The trauma inflicted is unspeakable.
This story appears in the Guardian, along with two related stories: of a man in California who died in ICE custody after he was refused medical care, and the death of an ICE prisoner in Arizona who was also denied medical care.
Jesse Jackson was a model of hope in dark times. His "Keep hope alive" came long before Obama. He was a voice and a force I knew about throughout my adult life.
He had an astute political mind, and his 1988 platform when he ran for the Democratic nomination for President remains a model for candidates today. (I had press credentials to cover live his debate with Dukakis in western Pennsylvania when they were the last two candidates standing, but I wound up consigned to the secondary press room watching it on closed circuit TV.)
He went on campaigns for immediate changes but he also played a long game (and so he earned his tears at the moment that Barack Obama was elected President. Martin Luther King didn't "get there" for this moment, but Jackson, who was with King in his last moments, did.)
But Jesse Jackson also knew that people live in the present, every moment, and they need ways of getting through such very dark times as these, when official evil is relentless and overwhelming.
For young people, "You are somebody" made a difference. At the memorial, Isiah Thomas, NBA Hall of Fame player, told how he heard those words directly from Jackson when Thomas was a boy in a soup line in Chicago with his mother.
And for young people today, Obama highlighted the idea that life doesn't have to be focused on money values but on the value of finding something "that gives our life purpose." Dedication to that purpose is going to be the story of the next several generations.
For the not young especially, finding and living in moments of beauty and empathy--for instance, moments in that Memorial itself--is vital and vitalizing. And it, too, is an expression of resistance, as well as the renewal of hope.
