By Kevin Alexander Gray

When I’m out in public inevitably someone will ask me whom do I support in the presidential race. When I say nobody, it’s often met with skepticism. Yet according to the latest poll of likely Democratic primary voters, many of us are still in the undecided column. I suppose the disbelief in my case stems from my somewhat ongoing involvement in politics for over twenty years. I was a volunteer with Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign. Four years later, I coordinated his ‘88 South Carolina bid under the tutelage of the late Dr. Walker Solomon, who served as the campaign’s chairman.

Jackson won the South Carolina Democratic caucus in 1988, garnering 64% of the vote. It was Jackson’s first and biggest percentage victory. Jackson won 11 states and 7 million votes. He won most of the South, picking up 90% of the black vote along the way.

The Rainbow experience is a constant factor in my political calculations. Jackson’s 1984 Democratic National Convention speech energized me. Our mission, he said, was “to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.” His constituency was “the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief…”

That’s what I believe, and it’s where I’m from. It’s where Jackson came from, which is why he connected to people in a genuine way. I’m not suggesting that a candidate be like Jackson. Still, I want to hear someone who takes on the needs of the poor and working class not as an afterthought, but from the beginning of the journey.

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