Jesse and Arafat.

Jesse and Castro.

Jackson always points to his success in launching a boycott against national food chain A&P.Operation breadbaskets shinning hour. For sixteen weeks Jackson's picketers surrounded A&P stores on the south side of Chicago.But according to Hurley Green,Jackson himself scarcely bothered to get his hands dirty."Willie Barrow actually led the boycott" recalls Green."She was out there every day for sixteen weeks.She actually accomplished it,not Jackson."Reverend Willie T. Jrown is still working with jackson today. But while the media and the black public focused on A&P,Jackson was drawn into the consequences of another success:breadbaskets successful boycott of Red Rooster. The Red Rooster food stores were notorious in Chicago for the poor quality of their products and their high prices.The Chicago city authorities,not famous for cracking down on lapses in hygiene,had fined them 32 times for flagrant violations of various regulations,from selling spoiled meat to short weighting.Nevertheless,they were unlike Jackson's other targets in that they had black employees,some of them prominent in the chains management.In July 1968,as Jackson's campaign against Red Rooster intensified,the company's personnel manager,Ron Johnson,( black),lashed out at Jackson for his boycott."Jesse Jackson is hurting black people" he said.After calling Jackson "an opportunist and a liar" he went on:"he's using the boycott to further enhance his own image and doesn't care one bit about the black community". But despite the Resistance,Red Rooster management eventually caved.The price of Jackson's boycott was unusual: he demanded that the company pad it s payroll by hiring twenty members of the black stone rangers,the biggest and most violent street gang on the south side,carrying them on the books with such puffed-up titles as "outside store inspector" and "inside store inspector" and of course security guards.The gang was initially named after the territory it controlled at south 64th street and blackstone avenue.Jeff Fort referred to the gang as the black stone rangers;later,the black p stone rangers or black p stone nation.

For many years Jacksons aids circulated a photograph of jackson,Dr Ling,and the Reverend Abernathy on the lorraine motel balcony,which they claimed was taken only minutes before king was shot.Once again it was a lie.That picture-a posed shot-had been taken a day earlier.When King was assassinated,the scene was different. Reynolds writes: a photographer for the public broadcasting library,documenting the poor peoples campaign,caught forever in his camera lens all those who were on the balcony seconds after the gun blast.They were pointing in the direction from where the shots were fired,a two story brick rooming house about 200 feet across the street.Jesse was not identified in the photos among them. When the ambulance came Abernathy and young accompanied king to the hospital.Twenty minuets latter,camera crews from NBC,ABC,and CBS started arriving at the motel."Jesse to me from across the lot and said ' don't talk to them '" Branch recalls. I agreed because I thought he meant none of us were supposed to talk until breathy got back from the hospital.So I walked away" But that wasn't what Jackson had in mind. Hosea Williams recounts what happened next."I was in my room.I looked out and saw Jesse talking to these tv people.I came out to hear what was being said.I heard Jesse say 'yes, I was the last man in the world king spoke to'.Williams says he was so furious that he climbed over a railing and rushed towards Jackson,until he was restrained by a police officer."I called Jesse a dirty,stinking,lying so-and-so,or something like that," Williams said."I had no hang ups about Jesse talking to the press.That was ok but why lie?
SUNDAY Q&A Unmasking Jesse Jackson Geoff Metcalf interviews 'Shakedown' author Ken Timmerman -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted: March 31, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: Over the last 30 years, Jesse Jackson has managed to declare himself with the help of the mainstream media the most prominent leader of black Americans. Recently mired in a scandalous extramarital affair, questions about Jackson's financial transactions and credentials now have made their way to the light of day. Author Kenneth Timmerman explores those questions in his new book, "Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson." Using groundbreaking interviews by the author and documents just released by the government, Timmerman portrays Jackson as a master manipulator of the public. WND writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Timmerman about many of the facts he uncovers in "Shakedown." Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time. By Geoff Metcalf 2002 WorldNetDaily.com Q: "Shakedown" is an amazing piece of work. You so clearly demonstrate that Jesse Jackson is a ubiquitous and chronic liar about big things, little things, anything. A: He is a compulsive liar a bit like Clinton. Q: He actually makes Clinton look like a second stringer, and he is a world-class liar. The audacity of Jesse is epic. There is so much to cover that this is difficult, which is why people have to buy this book. Let's start with Jackson's academic achievements, or lack thereof. A: He went to the University of Illinois for one year in 1959-1960. He wanted to play quarterback and claims the coach on the team said, "You can't play quarterback because you're black." Obviously, an early encounter with racism, right? Q: So who did play quarterback, since Jesse didn't? A: I went back and checked that, and guess what: There was a black quarterback for the University of Illinois that year, and his name wasn't Jesse Jackson. Q: Did he earn the title "The Reverend"? A: I don't think so, and many of the black preachers I interviewed for "Shakedown" don't believe so either. I describe a two- to three-year process for earning that title. Jesse Jackson got himself ordained two months after Martin Luther King was shot. It was essentially a political ordination, a shotgun ordination. He did not go through the long procedure. He was not licensed to preach, as far as I could determine. I went to the church where he was ordained. He did not go through this two-year process. He never submitted himself to the authority of the church. He has never had a church himself, and he has been accountable to no one. Q: Did he ever get a degree? A: He did not. He flunked out of the Chicago Theological Seminary after less than a year. But the good news, I guess, is he was finally awarded an honorary doctorate from that same theological seminary more than 30 years later. Q: And by the way, who was board of that institution? A: (laughing) I was getting there. In the year 2000, he was finally given that degree after "Junior" Jesse Junior, the congressman was put on the board of the seminary. Q: I'm sure that was just an interesting coincidence. A: Yes. Q: I know you are getting a lot of questions regarding the epiphany, to some people, that Jesse Jackson's actions during the assassination of Martin Luther King were not exactly the way Jesse tells the story. A: It is a pretty extraordinary story. The liberal media has been complicit with Jackson for all of these years since 1968. When they think of Jesse Jackson, most people think of the story he has told and the spin that he has put on it. Q: If you tell the lie long enough and consistently enough, it eventually becomes accepted as fact. A: That's right. And that is the way it has become. The first time Ron Daniels was on with me, he tried to claim that Jesse Jackson had in fact cradled Martin Luther King in his arms, and that is the lie. Q: Was Rev. Abernathy lying? A: No, Abernathy told the truth, and it is because of Abernathy that we know the truth. Q: And what is the truth? A: Jesse Jackson was not up on the balcony. They even tried to show the picture of Jesse Jackson up on the balcony with Martin Luther King. That picture was taken the day before. It was a publicity shot. Q: As are most of the things that Jesse gets involved in. A: That's right. He goes there for the cameras, and you are going to hear that in this story. He was not up on the balcony with Martin Luther King. He was down in the parking lot talking to a bunch of musicians Ben Branch and others. When the shots rang out, he fled and hid behind the swimming pool area and reappeared 20-30 minutes later when the television cameras arrived on the scene. That's when Jesse Jackson told other Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers, "Don't you talk to the press whatever you do." Q: That's my job! A: Yes, that's my job. Nobody had given him that job. He took that job. Call it "entrepreneurial instinct" if you wish, but on the spot he realized that he had an opportunity to spin the events to create his own persona and create a possibility for him to become a leader in the black movement. He had no prospects at that point. Q: We know there were pictures all over the place of Jesse with blood on his shirt. Given that Jesse was in the parking lot when Dr. King was shot, where did that come from? A: The next morning, he flew to Chicago and went on the NBC "Today Show." In the meantime, he had hired a public relations agent. So here is a guy who is in such grief from Martin Luther King's assassination that he comes back to Chicago and has the presence of mind to have himself taken from interview to interview in a chauffeur-driven car with a P.R. agent. The P.R. agent takes him to the NBC "Today" show, he appears in a shirt that he claims is smeared with Dr. Martin Luther King's blood and he says on national television, "He died in my arms" an absolute, patent lie. Q: What I don't understand is why Abernathy and those who were there didn't jump up and scream, "Slow down! That ain't the way it went down." A: That's a legitimate question, and I don't have a clear answer for it. All I can tell you, from what I understood, is Abernathy was too much of a gentleman and did not want to confront Q: He paid a price for that. A: He did. But he did not want to confront Jackson openly. He felt it would divide the leadership of the civil-rights movement at that time. He let Jesse do his thing up in Chicago, figuring, I suppose, that it wouldn't harm what Abernathy was doing down in Atlanta. Q: And Abernathy assumed, obviously incorrectly, that he was going to get a piece of the action anyway. A: Abernathy did assume the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King's leadership. He became the new leader of the SCLC, but he didn't have the charisma and he didn't have the following that King did. Q: I want you to explain to our readers how Jesse stuck it to Abernathy with that Black Expo scam. A: Actually, that's a really important story that I tell in "Shakedown." People in Chicago who were around in the late '60s and early '70s know the story. I tell you, I sure didn't. Q: It was news to me, too, and this wasn't a mere or simple bureaucratic oversight. There were some very specific Machiavellian legal things that had to be structured and implemented. Please explain the Black Expo scandal, and be sure to mention Angela Parker. A: Angela Parker was a black reporter from the Chicago Tribune who discovered the rot in the state of Denmark, if you wish. Angela Parker did the research and discovered that Jesse Jackson was fiddling with the money from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Operation Breadbasket. This was after Martin Luther King was shot.

Q: And he was creating corporate shields to isolate things, too. A: That's correct, and he did that with his half brother Noah Robinson, of whom I will say more. Angela Parker went down to Atlanta and presented all the evidence to Rev. Abernathy. Abernathy is floored he just can't believe it. He comes up to Chicago to the Marriott Hotel at the airport and hauls Jesse Jackson invokes him in front of the entire board of the SCLC. Jackson responds with his typical street-hustler reaction. He brings his gang-member friends, and they all come with these big picket signs to meet Rev. Ralph David Abernathy. Q: With the "Blackstone Rangers"? A: Yes. And the picket signs read, "Don't get messy with Jesse." It was as if he was going to go meet a white lynch gang. He's going to meet Abernathy, OK. Abernathy presents the evidence in front of him, eventually, and tells Jackson, basically, "You have been embezzling funds from the organization." Q: But he didn't even fire him? A: No. He suspended him for 60 days. Jackson slams the door and rages out, and within a week, he says, "If they're going to suspend me, I'm going to leave." Then he sets up his own organization called Operation PUSH. In the meantime and this is extremely important because it shows what Jackson does when he is challenged, especially by people within the black community he singles out at the next weekly meeting of his organization, in front of hundreds of people (some people say thousands of people), Angela Parker, who comes as a reporter to cover the event. He points his finger at her and says, "This woman has been destroying black leadership." And, of course, she is black. She gets hooted and howled out of the meeting. When she goes back home, she has to have bodyguards because people are picketing her house. She has to change houses. Jackson really unleashed a movement of hate against this woman. And what she did was her job as a reporter. Q: It is what Jackson does against any opponent. The first thing he does is call them a racist, but he couldn't exactly call Angela a racist. A: No. So he said this woman is trying to destroy black leadership. He sicked the dogs on her there is really no other way of saying it. This is the kind of story I try to tell in "Shakedown." I think it is so important to know that side of Jesse Jackson the liberal media doesn't want you to hear. Q: The other thing that is important is the almost symbiotic relationship he had with criminals the street gangs. A: They were criminals. In one of the interviews he did with me for the book, he claimed he was just trying to rehabilitate the street gang members. Q: Wait a minute, in that Black Expo flap, his deal with the gangs was, "Don't hassle us and I'll give you a piece of the action." A: That's right, and in fact, they came and shook him down. Jesse thought he was in bed with the street gangs and that they were willing to go along with him. They wanted a third cut! The funniest story was told to me by one of Jesse Jackson's friends, Hermene Hartman. She said the treasurer, Cirilo McSween this wonderful man from Panama, who had been a track star but is short in stature had been stripped naked and taken out into the alleyway as the gangs were trying to get the money out of Jackson. Taking Cirilo McSween out in the alleyway and stripping him buck-naked is probably what made Jackson turn over the money. Q: One of things I found fascinating was when you hear the lies over and over again even though you know they are lies a certain amount of it almost insinuates its way into your subconscious. For example, the fiction about him being a poor little black boy coming up the tough way. How difficult was his youth? I mean, he was middle-class, wasn't he? A: Yes, he was solidly middle-class. His parents were solidly middle-class. His biological father, Noah Robinson the same name as Jesse's half brother was a wealthy black businessman in Greenville, S.C. His adopted father, Charles Jackson, who was very proud, was a World War II veteran and a postal worker. He was very proud of providing for his family. They never wanted for anything. In the '50s, they had a telephone in their house when, in America at large, that was not terribly common, and in a black community it was a sign of being a solid middle-class citizen. Q: I was delighted to see you included a previous interview subject of mine, T.J. Rodgers. I really liked him, and you mention him in the book when Jesse tried to shake T.J. down. T.J. told me the board originally said, "Don't make waves; go along to get along." But T.J. got ticked off. A: Yes, he did. Originally, he was going to adopt the "under-the-desk" reaction, which the board had wanted him to do. Then he listened to Jackson coming into work the next morning on talk radio saying what he considered to be outrageous things. He got into his office and said, "Forget this!" He closes everything off, cancels his appointments, calls some people, does some research, puts together an opinion-editorial and then challenges Jesse Jackson to a debate. He said, "Let's talk about the facts. You're accusing us of racial discrimination. We have 35 percent minorities in our company and throughout the Silicon Valley. You say we should have 37 percent. What do you know, my friend? Let's talk about this." Q: Actually, Rodgers said he made a standing offer to Jackson: "You send me the resumes of qualified black candidates, and I've got more jobs than people to fill them. I'll hire them." And he said he still hadn't heard from Jesse. A: You are absolutely right. He said, "Please send me those young people who have been through science or tech studying computer sciences. I'll hire them in a heartbeat." But that is not what Jesse Jackson is into. One of the myths of Jesse Jackson is that he's there to help the black community. Jesse Jackson is not doing things to help the black community. What I discovered doing "Shakedown" is that Jesse Jackson is there to help himself first. It's called "Me-first Jackson" in Chicago. Then he helps his family beer distributorships for his sons. Then he helps his close entourage, the black-elite friends. And these are a dozen, two dozen people around him who have become hundred-million dollar millionaires. Q: Before we rip anymore leaves off the onion, please tell our readers who Noah Robinson and Jeff Fort are. A: Noah Robinson, Jesse Jackson's half brother, graduated from Wharton School of Business in 1969. He had a promising career ahead of him. Jesse Jackson said, "No, brother, come with me in Chicago. I want you to be my partner." He brought Noah Robinson into Operation Breadbasket. They subsequently went into business in the Breadbasket Commercial Association and into Operation PUSH as well. Jesse then introduces Noah Robinson to Jeff Fort, who was the head of Blackstone Rangers. This was the biggest and at the time, the most violent street gang in Chicago, subsequently convicted of killing more than 200 people. Jeff Fort and Jesse Jackson are closely tied. Noah Robinson gets involved in the gang, he gets lots of business, he becomes a businessman in Chicago partly with the gangs, partly with Jesse Jackson. He gets lots of contracts with the city government that Jesse helps him get through these minority set-aside programs. Q: Mayor Daley didn't like Jackson. A: No, not at that point. At one point, Noah Robinson boasts they are going to be like the Rockefellers. Jesse is going to do the politics, and Noah is going to do the business side of the family. They are going to be a big family in Chicago. Over the years, Noah goes bad. Jeff Fort certainly goes bad and gets put in prison. Q: Whenever you kill a couple of hundred people, eventually folks will start to frown on that. A: He got caught. That was the problem. Even Jesse couldn't keep him out of jail. Jeff Fort eventually gets put in jail for life in '86 in a plot where he took $2.5 million from Libya. He was going to blow up U.S. government installations on behalf of Col. Gadhafi (of Libya). Eventually, Noah is arrested in '88 and convicted of murder-for-hire, drug trafficking and racketeering while Jesse Jackson is running for president. The curious thing about this that I found in researching this book is nobody asked Jesse Jackson the question. Here he is, a candidate for president of the United States, while his half brother, business partner and close associate is arrested and indicted for murder-for-hire and all these other things. Q: Why, the inimitable malfeasance on the part of the media not to pop that! If it were a Kennedy or Donald Trump, they would excoriate him in the press. A: It was 1988. What if it had been George Bush, the father, or Dan Quayle, who gets his National Guard records taken out? Here you have another candidate, Jesse Jackson a Democrat, a left-wing extremist and his half brother gang member goes up for murder-for-hire, and nobody asked the questions. Q: It is beyond amazing. Let's talk a little about his personal finances, because WorldNetDaily reprinted your segment about the blind trust on his home. Who fronts the money for that? A: I couldn't find out. I pulled all the records. Q: Well, you could find out if Jesse and his wife would agree to permit it. A: That is absolutely correct. You have to ask them, and they have to agree to it. The house was bought in 1970. They didn't buy the house; it was bought for them. Today, it's a million-dollar house in an exclusive enclave in the south side of Chicago. It is not middle-class; it is upper-middle class. It's not a gated community, but I can tell you it's set off from the badlands in a very serious way. It was put in a blind trust. To this day, nobody knows who actually put up the money to buy that house for them. In the same way, when Jackson bought a house a three-story, 15-room mansion in Washington, D.C., from Howard University in a sweetheart deal nobody could tell, according to the documents I pulled, who paid the mortgage, the refinancing and all the rest. It wasn't Jackson. Somebody was always picking up his bills. Q: I reread your book, because, frankly, despite the fact that Jesse is a dirt bag, you have to give him points for the very cool way he has been able to, and continues to, finesse that corporate blackmail to this day. A: (laughing) You are absolutely right. I have seen him in action. I went to some of his conferences, and I've read reports of other conferences. Q: I mean, T.J. Rodgers is in the minority. A: Oh, absolutely! Most corporate CEOs have given in. Look, according to Jesse Jackson, Bill Gates is going to host his conference in the Silicon Valley this year. Q: Once upon a time, corporate executives would tremble if "60 Minutes" showed up on their doorstep. That's chump change now; don't let Jesse show up, because he's going to get his hand deep in their pockets. A: And it's big money. When Viacom was trying to and they did successfully merge with CBS but wasn't sure it would be able to, Jackson originally was filing papers with the FCC to block the merger, like he did with so many other corporations. You're talking about mergers in the range of $50 billion to $100 billion huge deals requiring federal approval. And in these federal approvals, you have the possibility for interest groups such as Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH or Citizenship Education Fund to say that they object and to give reasons for their objections. Q: And let's be clear here, they don't object because of any effort to help the poor, downtrodden ghetto resident. They object so that they will be bought off with a piece of the action. A: Let the readers judge. What happened in this particular case with Viacom, and in so many others, is Jackson and his groups objected. The companies went nuts and sought to have "negotiations" with Jackson. They wound up paying off huge sums of money hundreds of thousand dollars to Jackson and his groups. And guess what? All of a sudden, those objections disappear. Q: And from the corporate standpoint, it is cheaper than being involved in a 10-year lawsuit where lawyers are eating up billable hours. A: You better believe it. I've had a number of CEOs come to me and say paying Jesse Jackson $400,000 or $500,000 was the price of doing business. By the way, I think that shareholders have something to say to corporate leaders who do that. Q: This is extortion. Jackson doesn't use a gun, but he might as well. But from the corporate side, the CEO's responsibility is to maintain the value of the stock. A: The CEO's responsibility is not to let himself be extorted and not to pay an inordinate high price for the extortion. Q: If they can pay Jesse $500,000 to buy him off instead of $5 million to lawyers A: And that is exactly the calculation that many of these CEOs have made. I think the record is pretty clear. I tried to lay it out in "Shakedown" so people could see it and judge for themselves. Look at the facts, look at the documents. I present quite a bit of that. Q: I've got to ask you this, because Jesse Jackson has had a tough year. Between Bill O'Reilly badgering him incessantly and now your book, is Jesse at the end of the road? A: I wouldn't count him out. He's a politician first and foremost, and politicians have a way of coming back. Q: It is fascinating that his followers still buy into this stuff, though. A: He still has very faithful followers, but the question is, will the liberal media continue to support him? Wait and see so far they are. No. 2, will the corporate CEOs continue to pay him off? That seems to be

diminishing somewhat. And No. 3, and most importantly, I think, will the black community continue to stay silent about him? I wrote this book because black pastors came to me and said, "You've got to write this book. We can't do it. We can't talk out against him." So I tried to give voice to them in my book. Now, I hope that would give them courage and let more leaders of the black community come forward and speak their mind about Jesse Jackson.

Los Angeles Times Dec 16,1987.A Clash Within The Mixed Blessings of Rev. Jackson.
Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, Calif. Author: GAYLORD SHAW Date: Dec 16, 1987 A Clash Within The Mixed Blessings of Rev. Jackson He grew up in the segregated South, neither poor nor rich, neither firebrand nor Philistine. But over the years, that truth was not enough for Jesse Jackson. He later made up events to suit the needs of the moment and to enhance his mystique. To demonstrate his radical credentials in 1969, he said he showed his contempt for white customers he served as a teen-ager in a hotel coffee shop by spitting in their food in the kitchen. "I did not do that, and I really shouldn't have said it," he says now. To enhance his bona fides as a victim of poverty, he told a Chicago television interviewer that "I used to run bootleg liquor and buy hot clothes. I had to steal to survive." But his stepfather Charles Jackson remembered it differently. As a Post Office employee in the 1950s he earned a salary equivalent to a teacher's, and told Jackson biographer Barbara Reynolds: "We were never poor. We've never been on welfare. My family never went hungry a day in their lives." To demonstrate the personal hurt of racial discrimination, Jackson has allowed to stand uncorrected an account in three biographies and numerous profiles that he left the University of Illinois in 1960 because coaches told him he could not play quarterback-only whites could call the signals. But university records show that the quarterback for Illinois that year was Mel Meyers, a black. Jackson left after being placed on academic probation during his second semester, according to the late Ray Eliot, then head football coach. Other Jackson recollections that bolster his credentials as one who knows first-hand the horror of society's boot on his neck cannot be independently verified. One such scene in his hometown of Greenville, S.C., about 1950, he would say many years later, was "my own most frightening experience . . . a traumatic experience I've never recovered from." As an 8-year-old, he said, he hurried into a neighborhood grocery store operated by a a white man named Jack. Other customers were crowded around the counter. "I was in a hurry. I said, `Jack, I'm late. Take care of me.' He didn't hear me so I whistled at him. He wheeled around and snatched a .45 pistol from a shelf with one hand and kneeled down to grab my arm in his other fist. "Then he put the pistol against my head and, kneading my black arm in his white fingers, said, `Goddamn it! Don't you ever whistle at me again, you hear?' " The other black customers in the store did nothing, Jackson said. "That was the nature of life in the occupied zone." Is it real or a respinning of history? Jackson didn't tell his parents at the time, he said, for fear his father "would kill Jack or be killed." None of the grocers who were around then and could still be located can remember a white grocer named Jack who kept a .45 on a shelf. Jesse Jackson Called the 'Godfather' of Shakedowns

By Marc Morano CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer October 23, 2001 (This is the second of two articles focusing on Jesse Jackson's business dealings) (CNSNews.com) - A Washington D.C. public relations executive is warning clients about the consequences of "appeasement" in dealing with Jesse Jackson, and labels Jackson the "godfather" of corporate shakedowns." Nick Nichols' book, entitled The Rules for Corporate Warriors: How to fight and survive attack group shakedowns, </B>follows a highly publicized deal in August of this year between Jackson and Toyota Motor Sales USA, in which the automaker agreed to spend nearly $8 billion over ten years to increase minority participation in the company. Prior to the agreement, Jackson had threatened to organize a boycott against Toyota. Toyota is also accused of buckling under Jackson's pressure by diverting a portion of a $300 million bond offering to supporters of the civil rights leader. Toyota claims the bond offering was merely a "coincidence," and unrelated to its agreement with Jackson to boost minority participation at the company. "We have had protection rackets for several thousand years because they work. The Mafia has made protection an art form. Jackson has taken a lesson from history," Nichols told CNSNews.com. He defines a shakedown as occurring when a group or individual like Jackson makes "a highly exaggerated or completely bogus allegation and the message to the company is you either do things our way or we are going to take this public, embarrass you, hurt you on Wall Street and do a lot of damage." The next step, Nichols said, involves the corporation consulting with a public relations firm, which usually recommends that the company meet the demands of the pressure group. But Nichols cautions against taking this advice. "That is the attitude that was held by [former British Prime Minister] Neville Chamberlain when he tried to do this with Adolf Hitler. It didn't get him anywhere and it's not going to get them anywhere," he stated. When a company gives into these types of demands, they are open to even more pressure, according to Nichols. "Once your corporation has been marked as a company that is prepared to pay up and roll over, other groups who also make a living from doing this kind of thing start to go after you," he stated. Nichols cites Starbucks' decision to meet the demands of the organic food industry as a recent example. "Starbucks rolled over. Now every time you pick up the paper, someone new is attacking the company. It's an easy hit for people who simply want to engage in a protection activity." Nichols expects more corporations to give in to the demands of Jackson because "a lot of corporate executives are getting counsel from PR flacks and others to basically engage in appeasement. It's a lot easier to do than to fight back." A Quid Pro Quo? Critics say Jackson's agreement with Toyota shows a familiar pattern. Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center (NLPC), said Toyota's finance division sold a $300 million bond offering, with a portion going to two financial contributors of Jackson, just one week after Jackson's boycott was delayed. The NLPC filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year alleging that Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund (CEF) had violated several tax code provisions. "There is a $300 million security offering that gets farmed out through the underwriter to two of Jackson's biggest supporters on Wall Street," Boehm said, noting it happened just one week after Jackson announced he was delaying the boycott against Toyota. "Sometimes things are exactly what they look like. This is one of those times," Nichols said. "You have a quid, a pro and a quo." The New York Post reported that Toyota sold a $300 million issue of medium-term notes through Goldman Sachs, "listing two street firms whose owners are big Jackson supporters - Blaylock & Partners, and Williams Capital - as sellers of the issue." Blaylock & Partners contributed $30,000 to CEF and also benefited from Jackson's opposition to a merger between AT&T;and TCI, Boehm alleged. "[Jackson] dropped his opposition when the companies hired Blaylock & Partners to float an $8 billion bond offering. AT&T;then gave [Jackson's] CEF $425,000," according to Boehm. Williams Capital has given Jackson at least $50 thousand in contributions, Boehm said. "That would be strictly coincidence and not part of our reason for using them," Mike Michels, a spokesman for Toyota told CNSNews.com, regarding the multi-million dollar medium-term note sale involving the two firms. "There was no quid pro quo," he said. Boehm counters, "I think it is what is looks like. It is no coincidence at all. It was the payoff." Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH organization threatened the nationwide boycott of Toyota because of a company ad featuring a black man with a gold tooth reflecting the company's RAV4 sport utility vehicle. The ad was denounced as racist and Toyota quickly dropped it. But in May, Jackson began his boycott campaign demanding more minority participation in the company.

On June 20th, after a series of meetings with Toyota, Jackson announced he was postponing the boycott and set a deadline of Aug. 1 to resolve the issue. Toyota made it known that it wanted to resolve the boycott threat by working with Jackson to reach an accord. According to Boehm, the stock offering was made at the end of June and Toyota's agreement with Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition to increase minority hiring was finalized Aug. 8. Michels laments that there is a "lingering perception that our corporate diversity plan was in some way a contract or some kind of agreement with Rev. jesse jackson. It is not." He instead credits Jackson with allowing Toyota "to delve into our diversity programs much more comprehensively than we had in the past" and giving the company "an excellent opportunity to look at it in a holistic fashion." A Familiar Pattern? Boehm believes Jackson's threatened Toyota boycott followed a familiar pattern. "He makes a threat, the corporate folks who are being threatened cave in by giving money to Jackson's groups, or friends, or business associates and then a boycott is averted. That is exactly what happened here. It's a one, two and three that has characterized virtually every one of his boycotts," he said. Keiana Peyton, a spokeswoman for Operation PUSH, told CNSNews.com that Jackson has been proven financially clean. "In the probes that have already been completed, they have found no financial improprieties," she said. Boehm said he is unaware of the "probes" referred to by Peyton. "To say he has been cleared, I would like to know who cleared him and when. Just about anytime he has ever come under official scrutiny, he has never come up clean," Boehm said. When pressed to name the probes to which she was referring, Peyton would only reference a Jackson media relations effort earlier this year. "We had a national press conference with CNN, local papers, FOX News. We gave them a tour of our financial records and financial offices and again those accusations that were raised, no evidence was found," she offered. Boehm explained that "Jackson's entire career has been marked with financial irregularities going back to grant money in the 1970s with federal auditors to the present day use of charitable funds to pay his mistress." The latter accusation refers to a scandal that became public earlier this year when Jackson admitted he had fathered a child out of wedlock with a former employee, Karin Stanford. According to the NLPC, Jackson also may have used funds from his Citizenship Education Fund to help Stanford buy a house in Los Angeles, a charge Jackson's organization denies. "There is a compelling pattern that Jackson helps those in the minority community that help him first," Boehm noted. Peyton defended Jackson's tactics and said there was nothing unusual about them. "There might be persons, that the reverend or our trade bureau members are familiar with their records, their work histories, their ability to provide services. The average person would only want to recommend persons that they have worked with personally or could vouch comfortably for them," she explained. "But as far as it being exclusively for a particular group of people, that is not the case at all." 'Just Say No' Nichols, who runs his own PR firm, counsels his clients to fight back against any potential shakedown artists. "The corporations who engage in [fighting back], normally you don't see much coverage of them because the attacker usually goes away once they find out they can't get away with it," he said. When confronted, he advises clients to "just say no" and "notify federal law enforcement that your company is the potential target of a shakedown on the part of some group or organization." He maintains that reporting the activity to law enforcement would have a chilling effect on the group's pressure tactics. For corporate executives skittish about such action, Nichols warns that they have no alternative. "You have to stand up and fight even if you do sustain some short term damage because in the long run the damage is going to be far greater," he advised.

Jesse Jackson Accused of 'Racketeering' by Top Black Businessman

By Marc Morano CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer October 22, 2001 (CNSNews.com) - One of America's wealthiest African-Americans, asked by Jesse Jackson to assist with Jackson's "Wall Street Project," says the tactics used by the civil rights leader amounted to "racketeering." A prominent black broadcast executive says he's been the victim of intimidation at the hands of Jackson and is fighting the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to block the sale of his television stations. A black entrepreneur seeking aid from one of Jackson's groups describes it as "a boys club to me, an inner circle," that he cannot penetrate. Officials with Jackson's various interests largely refused to comment on these complaints, which represent a growing number of concerns about some of the methods used by Jackson to advance his agenda. But increasingly, more African-American business professionals are wondering whether the reverend represents American blacks to the extent Jackson says he does. Accusations that Jackson 'Stiffed' the Poor Businessman Harold Doley, Jr. said he thought Jackson "was going to do what he was saying," in launching the Wall Street Project. Founder and chairman of the New Orleans-based Doley Securities, Inc., and rated as one of the country's 100 wealthiest African Americans by Securities Pro, a newsletter covering blacks on Wall Street, Doley was asked by Jackson in 1996 to help with the Wall Street Project, a program designed to promote minority participation in corporate America. As the first African American to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1973, Doley was thought to be able to open many doors for Jackson on Wall Street. "I got to really know Jackson," explained Doley, who added that he shared the project's stated goal of "making corporate America look more like America from the entry level to the board room." He explained that Jackson's original vision appealed to him. "This is what is appropriate, this is where America needs to be going," said Doley. "I felt what he was doing was good, good for America, and good for my business." But after initial exuberance about the Wall Street Project, Doley became disillusioned. Jackson went after the multi trillion-dollar pension fund industry in his quest for minority empowerment and worked for legislation to require 10-15 percent of the nation's pension funds, depending on the state, to be brokered or managed by minority firms. Doley disapproved of the methods Jackson employed in persuading the pension industry to aid minorities. "What worried me was the way he operated, dealing with these veiled threats," he stated. Doley soon realized that Jackson's efforts "directing an enormous income from pension [funds]" were only being channeled to "roughly 10 firms that qualify." He doubts most Americans know "that they were paying and putting money in Jesse Jackson's coffers to the tune of $170 million in commissions a year, 10 percent of which is going to Jackson."

Doley says he was a first-hand witness to how "Jesse in effect stiffed the poor people of America." According to Doley, Jackson gave political cover to a bank merger that "cut out $330 billion dollars" over a 10-year period to poor communities in the U.S. The merger did not meet the minimum standards of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which requires that financial entities do not negatively impact poor areas of the country. According to Doley, representatives from Operation PUSH and the Wall Street Project went before the Federal Reserve Board and testified that the deal was in the best interests of America, despite the fact they did not meet CRA guidelines. Doley could not believe Jackson would support a merger that "fell short by $330 billion dollars going into communities in terms of mortgages and services provided by financial institutions. This was a tremendous loss." According to Doley, Jackson "knew the mega mergers were not meeting the guidelines ... but Jesse was getting contributions because of his support" for the deals. An incredulous Doley decided to personally confront Jackson about his support of the bank merger. The meeting was not very productive. "I said, 'man, you cannot do this.' And I went over the numbers quickly and he just walked away," Doley recalled. Despite Doley's protestations, the merger was finally approved. Doley says he then saw Jackson in a completely different light. "What he was doing was a kind of RICO operation, both criminal and civil. It was racketeering." Doley consulted with several attorneys, confiding that "I am concerned that what is going on here may be illegal." The attorneys' advice was simple: "If you have to ask, get out," they offered. "I just eased on out," Doley recalled. After spending about two years working with Jackson, he now calls him a "Civil Rights Entrepreneur" whose moneymaking ability is beyond comparison. He noted that in 1996, Rainbow PUSH had a gross income of $695,000 and by the year 2000, it grossed $17 million. "He's done better than any goddamn dot-com stock that I am aware of," Doley said. His advice for young entrepreneurs who may want to partner with or join one of Jackson's organizations is blunt. "I tell them they could go in the hood and go into a partnership with a crack dealer if all they are interested in is the money," he explained. When contacted for reaction to Doley's charges about Jackson, press spokeswoman Keiana Peyton of Rainbow PUSH, refused to answer any specific questions, stating only that Jackson's efforts have "opened the market and evened the playing field for persons who have historically been locked out of this access to business and capital." Powerful Broadcaster vs. Powerful Civil Rights Leader "I am not giving in to him, I won't give in to his pressure tactics," broadcaster Eddie Edwards of Glencairn Ltd., told CNSNews.com. Edwards is trying to sell his television station group to Sinclair Broadcast Group, but Jackson has stepped in and petitioned the FCC to try and block the sale. Edwards, of Pittsburgh, is considered one of America's most powerful black broadcasters, coming in only second to W. Don Cornwell of Granite Broadcasting, according to Media Week magazine. He traces his troubles back to his decision to start his own Black Broadcasting Alliance (BBA), a competitor to what he calls the Jackson-friendly National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB). The Black Broadcaster Alliance was formed because "NABOB tries to control minorities in broadcasting," according to Edwards. "None of my difficulties began until I started BBA. They really came after me," he explained. Edwards said Rainbow PUSH attorney David Honig accused him of being a "front man" for Sinclair Broadcasting. Edwards recalled that Honig told him, "You, in short, play by our rules and deal with us or we will get you." But Edwards was not easily dissuaded. "I am not going to be intimidated. I told them once, twice, a hundred times. I am from the same street they are and I have worked too hard to get where I am and if you think you are going to try and muscle me through words and through manipulating the system, you got another thing coming," he stated. Jackson petitioned the FCC to halt Edwards proposed sale of 19 television stations to Sinclair and the approval of the deal has been in legal limbo since May of 1998. The deals are estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. Martin Leader, an attorney for Sinclair Broadcasting, explained that the company has probably "lost millions of dollars" because of the FCC delays. Edwards bristles at the charge that he is a "front man" for Sinclair. "I don't have to dignify that. My 35 years in the business is second to none," he offered. Leader said Edwards "owns 100 percent of voting stock [in Glencairn]" "Sinclair people have nothing to do with Glencairn and the commission has so found that," he added, referring to earlier FCC letters. CNSNews.com obtained a copy of the petition that Leader filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on September 10. The petition calls for "prompt action" by the FCC in rendering a decision. The US Court of Appeals for District of Columbia has ordered the FCC to respond to Leader's petition by November 14th. "The FCC's inaction on the applications has evidently been caused by the refusal of Sinclair to accept improper demands by the commission to sell broadcast stations to minority purchasers solely because of their race and the resulting hostility that continues at the commission," the petition states. According to affidavits filed by Leader, the chief of the Mass Media Bureau at the FCC, Roy Stewart, met with Sinclair representatives in April of 1998 and stated, "If you repeat anything that I say here, I will f*****g deny it." Stewart then allegedly told Sinclair representatives that "Chairman Kennard wanted to see more minority ownership in broadcasting" and made it clear that they did not regard Edwards as a viable minority, according to the affidavits. Stewart "made it very clear that if Sinclair could do something to assist in [the goal of minority ownership] ... it would be very beneficial to the processing of its applications," the affidavits allege. They also accuse Stewart of threatening Sinclair by stating that if they did not cooperate, "Chairman Kennard would make it 'really painful' for the company." Leader said the FCC did not see anything wrong with Sinclair or Glencairn business dealings before Jesse Jackson got involved. The FCC had previously approved seven applications between Glencairn and Sinclair. Edwards maintains "Jesse and his group have strong relationships with individuals within the FCC." He added, "The stations out there that have cooperated with [Rainbow PUSH] had to render favors of some kind and I refuse to play that game." He noted that the temptation is great to give in to the tactics because "most broadcasters can't afford more delays. Delays cost money." But he remains resolute, declaring, "I am the first black or white person to step up and to speak out [against Jackson]." "The influence that Jesse Jackson has in Washington, there are people genuinely afraid of this man," Edwards said. However, he added, "Jackson does not represent all black people. Peyton, a spokeswoman for Jackson, declined to comment on the specific charges made by Edwards and Sinclair Broadcast Group. She reiterated that Jackson "has worked to even the playing field for minorities and female-owned businesses that have not in the past had access to meet with certain businesses to even showcase their talents and abilities." Young Entrepreneur Disillusioned Frederick Jones is a young African American entrepreneur who became disillusioned with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH organization after multiple attempts to seek aid for his small business. "The more and more I got into it, I started finding out that if you didn't have ties with the reverend or didn't have money invested, you weren't getting helped," he told CNSNews.com. Earlier this year, Jones approached Rainbow PUSH with a complete business plan and expected to receive consultation and help.

"Every article I read had these prominent minority business people who are supposed to be so helpful with their guidance, with their time, but nobody returns your phone call, nobody talks to you," he stated. Jones is in real estate development and information brokering. He explained that he contacted several of Jackson's organizations, including the Wall Street Project, because its goal is to "partner with minority business people and help mentor you and guide you along and help with introductions." A frustrated Jones said he called many members of Jackson's inner circle, including Chester Davenport of Georgetown Partners, who would not take or return the phone calls. "I called so many times that [Davenport's] secretary Eunice knew my name and my voice," he stated. Jones claims Rainbow PUSH tried to extract a $250 small business fee from him and another $250 registration fee for a conference. In a phone conversation with one of Jackson's organizations, he was asked whether he had "joined Rainbow PUSH." Jones asked, "Is it necessary?" The answer he received from a woman who refused to identify herself was, "It helps if you are a member of the organization, to get help from them." Jones said he complained that none of the promotional material said "members only." However, according to Jones, the woman persisted that Jones "should call the Rainbow PUSH offices and ask for a membership package." Jones has since lost interest in receiving any help from Jackson. "It's a boys club to me, an inner circle," he lamented. Peyton countered that "every Saturday here in Chicago, we host trade bureau meetings, open to the general public, to come and network. She added "that membership in Rainbow PUSH is recommended but not a prerequisite," to receiving business consulting and support. But Jones is soured from his experience. "Why would you want to join something that is going to keep you an outsider?"