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26/03/09 : "If your mind can conceive it, and your heart can believe it, then you can achieve it" with Jesse Jackson :
Rev. Jesse Jackson, veteran campaigner for civil rights and for economic justice, and the first black man to seek the US Presidency, spoke to a huge audience in the Globe Church in Reading on 25 March at the invitation of, and introduced by, Martin Salter, Labour MP for Reading West.
Jesse Jackson founded the Rainbow coalition and, as Martin Salter said, this was a rainbow audience - young and old, all colours and all creeds, reflecting Reading's multicultural society.
In his speech, Jesse Jackson reflected on the battles that had been won, the ending of colonialism, the defeat of apartheid, the ending of the discrimination which meant many of those who came on the Million Man march he led to Washington couldn't book into a hotel there or buy an ice-cream, and the fact that a descendant of slaves is now President of the United States and living in a White House built by slaves.
This was no time, he said, to pause in the struggle. Black people now had freedom, but they did not have equality : equality in health care, in education, in training for jobs, and in jobs themselves. His message to people in the dark days of the struggle had been to believe in themselves, to say "I am somebody, I demand respect, we are all God's children" and that remained his message today.
His was very much a message of hope, and an inspiring one. As the Rainbow PUSH Coalition that Jesse Jackson leads says: "If your mind can conceive it, and your heart can believe it, then you can achieve it". Go, Reading, go.
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