Hangers On Week: Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 29 February 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Throughout this election year, we’re going to be doing a few special series tied to the notable stretches in an election cycle, from primaries to conventions and October surprises and more. This is “Hangers-On Week” our look at the point in the primary calendar where candidates are, for one reason or another, still hanging around.
For the third episode of Hangers On Week, Jody, Niki, and Kellie look at Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988, evolving from civil rights activism to electoral politics, and trying to push his message towards larger economic justice issues.
Who else deserves to be on our list of hangers-ons? What other categories would you slot candidates into? Let us know!
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:10.0 | We are rolling right along with what we are calling hangers on week. |
| 0:13.6 | It is traditionally this period in an election calendar, an election cycle where the |
| 0:17.4 | field is thinning as they say, but there are still a bunch of candidates hanging |
| 0:21.1 | on for one reason or another. So we're looking at why those |
| 0:24.2 | candidates hang on, who some of the most notable ones have been in the past, and the |
| 0:28.4 | reasons that they can't, and the reasons that they hang on and those candidates |
| 0:31.5 | are actually really interesting and teach us a lot about |
| 0:34.4 | American elections and American politics and changing American eras. That is definitely the case for today's subject |
| 0:41.6 | Jesse Jackson, activist, preacher, and former associate of Dr Martin Luther King, and by the mid to late 80s he is trying his hand at Democratic Party politics and making a compelling case as he builds his so-called Rainbow Coalition. |
| 0:56.9 | So please welcome to the hangers-on-stage, Jesse Jackson Democratic candidate in 1984 and 1988, I guess, failed Democratic |
| 1:05.2 | candidate, if you want to call that clearly unsuccessful, but very influential and interesting |
| 1:09.0 | ways here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. |
| 1:14.4 | Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. Have you eased into Hangers On Week? |
| 1:19.4 | Are you feeling like we got a little rhythm here? You know, it's... |
| 1:22.1 | We are hanging in on |
| 1:23.2 | exactly yeah maybe some listeners will be like oh this is going on a little too |
| 1:27.1 | long and that's the point we're trying to get up commentary people wrap it up so you know Jesse Jackson we've touched on him before I think we've touched on that |
| 1:36.7 | 1988 election a number of times very interesting character and we'll get to the |
| 1:40.8 | kind of like what he does when we look at him in this light of as a as a hangar on right a sort of primary politics |
| 1:48.5 | Figure but let's paint a sketch of who he is especially especially into the 80s. I mean, we could go through his civil rights activism CV, |
... |
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