Jackson Protest March Puts Spotlight on Poor

On the eve of President Reagan’s second inauguration, Jesse Jackson led a march Saturday to protest unemployment and poverty that contrasted sharply with the pomp and bustle in the streets of the capital.

“We are here to remind the Administration that all is not well in this land of ours,” Jackson said, pointing out that 6 million more people have fallen below the poverty line since 1980. He said one-fourth of all blacks are unemployed and every seventh person in America is poor. He warned: “There is a top to our economy; there is also a bottom. It’s not all private airplanes and limousines.”

Jackson, a 1984 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, led an estimated 700 chanting and sign-carrying Rainbow Coalition marchers for six blocks past the White House and on to the Washington Monument, stopping frequently for questions and prayer. The march ended with a speech that covered topics from South Africa to worker-owned industry, all to cheers and calls of “Run, Jesse, run, 1988.”

“We must begin to march by the tens of thousands . . . saying put America back to work,” Jackson told listeners gathered in the wet snow.

Jackson, who wore a sign saying, “Jobs, Not Bombs,” was joined by his son and daughter, Yuseff and Santita, and by Richard Hatcher, mayor of Gary, Ind.; John Jacob, president of the National Urban League, and Washington Mayor Marion Barry.

Along the route, Jackson called on the Reagan Administration “to meet with us and hear what we have to say” before the 1985 budget is approved. He assailed tax policies that he said are “taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”

He called the events of the inauguration “vulgar expressions of ostentatiousness--$25,000 dresses, diamonds and gold from South Africa.”

Jackson supporter Leemon Houston hawked a tray of Jackson, Rainbow Coalition and Reagan buttons for $2 each to marchers and observers. Houston said he had a wife and children to support and did not mind selling Reagan buttons because “(Reagan is) gonna stick it to me for four more years--I got to get my paycheck off him.”