Rev. Jesse Jackson urged his audience, during yesterday’s keystone speech for the 14th annual Cesar Chavez Commemorative Celebration, to consider the parallels between Cesar Chavez, the labor activist who founded United Farm Workers, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

EnlargeEnlarge
Jesse Jackson speaks at Cesar Chavez commemoration event #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/7348
Alvin Chow

Jesse Jackson speaks at Cesar Chavez commemoration event

“I hope that in time this will become the King/Chavez commemorative celebration,” he said. “We’ll use this time to blend the works of these two giants who share a common agenda, a common destiny.”

As a civil rights activist during the 1960s, Jackson worked closely with King in the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition. He is also the founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a national organization dedicated to political empowerment and changing public policy. In 1984 and 1988, he ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. He made an especially strong showing in the 1988 election, receiving one third of the party’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

Speaking to a crowd of more than three hundred in Kresge Auditorium, Jackson kept returning to the idea of unity between disparate groups, urging the audience that blacks and Latinos could wield immense political power if they worked together.

“Tom Bradley ran for mayor of LA in the early 70s,” he said. “He didn’t get the Latino vote and he lost. Next time he got the votes of East LA and he won again and again.”

“That is King and Chavez’s legacy. Those who once picked cotton and grapes in sovereign shame could now pick presidents and governors.”

Jackson reserved special heat for those who would advocate an English-only America.

“Most people in the world tonight are yellow, brown, black, non-Christian, poor, female, young and don’t speak English,” he said. “That’s the world in which we live. And to glorify one language for communication is ignorance and retardation. Are you telling us that we can’t learn another language? Is it a brain thing or an attitude thing? It couldn’t be a Christian thing. Jesus did not speak English.”

In his far-ranging talk, Jackson also talked about gun control, New Orleans, his days in the civil rights movements, his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 and the importance of developing moral character.

“There’s no intrinsic value in color,” he said. “You didn’t decide to be black or brown, or have your first language be Spanish. But you can decide to have character.”

Jackson closed the speech by telling the audience about Chavez’s funeral and about its duty to remember this man.

“The power of unearned suffering. The power of authenticity. The power of genuineness. The power of one who united his whole people,” he reminded the audience. “He lifted this race of people on his shoulders!”

The Cesar Chavez Commemorative Celebration is a week-long, annual event sponsored by El Centro Chicano and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA).