Back at Operation PUSH, Jackson Targets Gingrich

The Rev. Jesse Jackson made an emotional return to his civil rights roots Saturday, promising a nationwide drive to help Democrats retake Congress and evict Newt Gingrich from the House Speaker’s chair.

Jackson credited his Rainbow Coalition political action group for the victory of his son, Jesse Jackson Jr., in a congressional primary last week. He said the coalition would focus next year on key House and Senate seats needed to re-establish Democratic control on Capitol Hill.

“The Rainbow is going to defeat Newt Gingrich in 1996,” the senior Jackson declared before about 400 people in a speech flavored with biblical rhetoric, underscored at times by an organist and heavily seasoned with Gingrich-bashing.

The occasion was Jackson’s return to a church-like, gray-pillared building on the South Side that for 24 years has been the headquarters of Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity).

Jackson founded the civil rights group in the 1970s and led it for years but left in 1984 to form the Rainbow Coalition in Washington. He announced Friday that he is returning as Operation PUSH’s chief executive officer, although he will continue to live in Washington and lead the coalition.

Operation PUSH has languished in recent years, and Jackson said one reason for his return is to revitalize it. Even so, there were many empty seats in the well-worn auditorium that in the past was often packed on Saturday mornings with followers clapping to gospel music and drinking in Jackson’s fiery civil rights oratory.

Jackson quickly raised several thousand dollars in checks, cash and pledges.

Jackson said Operation PUSH will focus on economic objectives, while the Rainbow Coalition will focus on politics.

At a news conference after the meeting, Jackson said the GOP was guilty of “the utter abandonment of urban policy” and had “made jails a growth industry.”

He criticized Republicans for their opposition to job-training funds and measures “to level the playing field for the American worker.” He said Gingrich was trying to “shift a tax break to the haves” while taking benefits from the have-nots.