[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4E17oxB7hA&w=560&h=315]
The Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for president twice in the 1980s drawing large crowds to hear him speak, but Monday it was evident that his star had lost its luster. Instead, a sea of empty chairs greeted the 70-year-old civil rights leader at Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza where he commemorated the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
The crowd also was mostly older with few young people.
Jackson didn’t address headline issues like Trayvon Martin or “Stand Your Ground Laws”, but instead chose to call for D.C. statehood claiming that the city was a “colony.”
“Taxation without representation is tyranny. We deserve the right for our vote to count now,” Jackson said, suggesting that people in communist Cuba and Venezuela have more voting rights than people living in the District of Columbia.
The sparse crowd then repeated Jackson’s words in unison.
“D.C. statehood now. Two senators now. A congressperson now,” said Jackson, who served as a shadow U.S. Senator from the District of Columbia. “After 246 years of legal slavery we were emancipated from slavery on this day, but not into democracy. Free from slavery but not for our vote to count.
“One thing worse than slavery is to adjust to it and not fight back,” Jackson continued. “D.C. is under occupation. We are a colony and we don’t like it.”
Jackson then went on to insinuate that D.C. was subject to “terror”.
