Rev. Jackson, the Fat Lady is Singing

Before taping a "Fox & Friends" segment, Rev. Jesse Jackson, with his microphone on, sat next to another man. Turning to him, Jackson, speaking softly, launched into an attack on Barack Obama. "Barack, he's talking down to black people on this faith-based …" said Jackson. "I want to cut (Obama's) nuts off."

Even before Fox aired the remarks, Jackson appeared on CNN and offered a pre-emptive apology. "I said something I felt regret for," said Jackson. "It was crude. It was very private and very much a sound bite -- and a live mike. And so I feel -- I find no comfort in it. I find no joy in it. So I immediately called the senator's campaign to send my statement of apology to repair the harm or hurt that this may have caused his campaign, because I support it unequivocally."

Yes, Jackson ran for the presidency in 1984, and even more credibly in 1988. Geraldo, as do others, suggest the green-eyed monster -- envy. And what about a possible personal dislike of Obama? When the senator first announced his candidacy, Jackson withheld his endorsement. Jackson later criticized Obama because, in Jackson's opinion, Obama only mildly weighed in on the Jena Six "scandal." Jackson accused Obama of "acting like he's white." Still, Jackson's outburst seems too over-the-top, far too angry.

Did Obama incur Jackson's wrath because of the candidate's shifts and flip-flops on a number of issues -- Iraq, Iran, FISA, NAFTA, the death penalty, abortion, the Second Amendment, the disposition of Jerusalem, the abandonment of his former pastor (Rev. Wright) and his church of 20 years, and public financing of election campaigns? Apparently not. Jackson made no reference to Obama's newfound positions.

What about differences of opinion between Jackson and Obama on policy and ideology? No, since both denounce the Bush administration, oppose the Iraq war, support universal health care, want taxes raised on the so-called rich, and seek a playing-field-leveling governmental role in education, job training and welfare.

What about Obama's condemnation of men who irresponsibly breed children and then abandon them? Obama, a few weeks earlier, before a predominantly black church audience in Chicago, said: "We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. That doesn't just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father. … Don't just sit in the house and watch 'SportsCenter' all weekend long. … (Kids should) replace the video game or the remote control with a book once in a while."

Recall that Jackson, while mentoring then-President Bill Clinton over his Monica Lewinsky problems, brought a co-worker to the White House -- his mistress. Jackson even took a photo of the visibly pregnant woman and the president in the Oval Office. So Obama's comment, which describes the destructive and destabilizing phenomenon that black actor/comedian/activist Bill Cosby calls "unwed fathers," perhaps struck too close to home for Jackson.

Obama's success suggests that America edges closer and closer to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of evaluating people based on content of character rather than color of skin. Obama, on the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the civil rights march in Selma, Ala., said: "The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way. They took us 90 percent of the way there. We still got that 10 percent in order to cross over to the other side."

Even Jackson, in one of his "nuts" apologies, said of Obama: "He's running the last lap of a 54-year marathon. He is running that race. I am a part of that race."

Jackson, and his race-card-waving cohorts, derive stature, power, significance and self-enrichment by claiming that racism remains a serious problem in America. After complaining about the lack of minority beer distributorships, for example, Jackson's sons ended up with a lucrative Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Chicago. Author Kenneth Timmerman, in his book "Shakedown," describes the Jackson modus operandi -- playing the race card for self-enrichment, as well as that of friends and family.

Rather than display pleasure at America's obvious progress, or pride in his role in getting us there, the anachronistic Jackson now morphs into a shrinking, petulant, self-pitying "leader" -- with little left to lead.

It’s a bit of a read, but here’s an interesting passage from my book, Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago and Jackson’s shakedown of Anheuser-Busch;

The King of Beers

In early September of 1982, Jesse Jackson, head of the Chicago-based Operation P.U.S.H. (People United to Save Humanity) and B.W. Smith, a P.U.S.H. representative in Buffalo, New York, simultaneously announced the beginning of a nationwide boycott of Anheuser-Busch products. Smith also served on the National Selective Patronage Council, an organization that purportedly represented fifty African-American organizations. In his announcement, Jackson, whose command of facts and figures often seems to change as the situation demands, claimed that African-Americans were spending about $800 million yearly on A-B products, yet only one of the brewery’s distributors was black-owned. He also claimed that blacks made up somewhere between fifteen to twenty-two percent of A-B’s customers. If these figures can be believed as reasonably accurate, the number of African-American consumers of Busch products in Chicago would have had to figure to be at the low end of Jackson’s parameters, perhaps even lower. Despite the best efforts of Anheuser-Busch, their products have never been popular in Chicago’s black community.

Continuing his argument of economic entitlement, Jackson also questioned why only two-percent of A-B’s $254 million annual advertising budget was being placed through African-American ad agencies. The call for a boycott was instigated by Jackson after Anheuser-Busch management refused to meet the civil rights activist and share information about its business with Jackson and Operation P.U.S.H. representatives. “When they have refused to meet,” said Jackson, “they have in effect rejected this body of distinguished Americans,” and then slipped into one of his trademark Doctor Seuss-like malapropisms. “P.U.S.H. and Busch must meet in the marketplace.”

When notified of the Chicago minister’s call for a national boycott of Anheuser-Busch products, a Busch spokesman rebutted a portion of Jackson’s argument, claiming that A-B had three minority-owned distributorships, not one as Jackson claimed, with one more coming online.

The timing of the boycott seemed peculiar. The day before Jackson grabbed national headlines with his challenge to A-B, brewery officials in St. Louis had proudly announced the establishment of a $5 million fund to help finance additional minority ownership of its distributorships. “Our record of commitment,” said a Busch representative, “speaks for itself.”

NAACP Says “No” To Jackson

Days after the boycott officially began, the seven regional directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People met in New York. After the meeting began, the group felt it necessary to renounce any involvement with Jackson and Operation P.U.S.H.’s boycott of A-B products. Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. kept quiet in any condemnation of Jackson and his actions, but allowed the directors to make a public statement concerning the boycott. The tone of their statement indicated an uneasiness by the board with Jackson’s actions. “The N.A.A.C.P. does not have a campaign against the Anheuser-Busch Company nor have any of its (1800) units been authorized to form coalitions with other groups for that purpose,” clearly chastising P.U.SH. To emphasize their displeasure with the possible inference that anyone in the N.A.A.C.P. might have projected a tacit approval of Jackson’s boycott, they added a warning. “N.A.A.C.P. units may not join any coalitions to carry out programs without the express approval of the national office.”

But in an example of African-American unity, not one of the seven national N.A.A.C.P. regional directors directly mentioned Jackson by name or his Operation P.U.S.H. Director Virna Canson, described by local newspaper columnist Vernon Jarrett as “…[a] militant N.A.A.C.P. West Coast director.” Jarrett noted, however, that Canson did take umbrage with the decision by any local black organization to declare a national boycott without canvassing other minority-led organizations for approval. Noting that the power of a national boycott of any product or company can be a powerful one, Canson emphasized that boycotts are “…our weapons of last resort, and we must not permit anybody to play with the boycott or the ballot like they are basketballs to be dribbled carelessly.” During the national N.A.A.C.P. meeting, Jarrett added, several Chicagoans had questioned why Anheuser-Busch had been singled out for Jackson’s declared boycott rather than Schlitz, Miller, Pabst, or G. Heileman. At the time, Heileman’s Old Style brand was the number-one selling beer in Chicago.

The delegates’ questions had validity. A-B had demonstrated a history of contributing to minority programs and subscribing to the policy of affirmative action since 1969. That year, the Congress of Racial Equality had asked their members to support a boycott of Anheuser-Busch products, alleging that minorities accounted for less than three-percent of A-B’s 5000 employees. Busch officials moved quickly to stem any problems with the black community and soon adopted a company affirmative action program, bringing up its minority hiring to eighteen-percent of its employees, estimated in 1982 to be around 14,000.

With its new hiring policies in place, the brewery also began a minority-purchasing plan that was putting millions of dollars into black advertising agencies and banks. A-B had also been counted on for years for its sponsorship of the United Negro College Fund’s annual telethon. The fact that the St. Louis brewery had just announced the establishment of a $5 million fund to help finance additional minority ownership of its distributorships, one day before Jackson’s call for a boycott, only added to the confusion by N.A.A.C.P. delegates.

William Douthit, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, was as perplexed about the calling of the boycott as the Chicago delegates at the N.A.A.C.P. meeting. “Anheuser-Busch is the last company in this country that I would want to see pressured on behalf of the black community. Busch has done hundreds of things for the black community on its own, without any push from anyone.”

Another fact that Jackson conveniently chose to ignore in justifying the boycott was that A-B was one of the few large American corporations with two African-American vice-presidents. One of these men, Wayan Smith III, a Busch vice-president and a member of the board of directors and Jackson had actually established a cordial relationship while informal discussions between A-B management and Jackson of an “economic covenant” had been going on, starting about a year before the boycott. Smith had even spoken at Operation P.U.S.H. headquarters in Chicago as a guest speaker for the group’s national convention in July of 1982.

So it was a surprise when press director Frank Watkins, a spokesman for Jackson, elaborated on why Jackson had actually called for the A-B boycott. Aside from Jackson’s claim that management was refusing to sit down with him to discuss economic parity, Watkins declared that A-B had launched an attack against Jackson, Operation P.U.S.H. and the civil rights movement. “The reason [for the boycott] was that they [A-B] attacked us. So we had to, you know, respond to defend our integrity and our organization, and in the final analysis, the civil rights movement itself.”

When Smith heard Watkins explanation, he denied any attacks by A-B management on Jackson and argued that he could “document several meetings with Jackson and written invitations to Jackson seeking his cooperation.”

Jackson Lawsuit

N.A.A.C.P. leaders and Douthit weren’t the only ones to express their displeasure with the boycott and Jackson. As the boycott dragged along, both sides taking potshots at each other, the St. Louis Sentinel and the St. Louis Argus, both African-American newspapers, entered the fray. Both papers focused their wrath, not on A-B but rather on Jesse Jackson. The Sentinel personally attacked Jackson calling him “self-serving” and alleged that he “…badgers and intimidates” black business leaders into joining the economic arm of P.U.S.H. The paper went on to claim that Jackson had demanded $500 each from black businessmen to support his A-B boycott.

As a result of the newspapers’ allegations, Jackson filed a $3 million lawsuit against the more vocal St. Louis Sentinel both on his own and Operation P.U.S.H.’s behalf. But after the Sentinel, with approval from the court, moved to force Jackson to open the financial books of P.U.S.H. to prove the Sentinel’s contentions, Jackson suddenly dropped the lawsuit.

It’s interesting to note that it took Jackson’s forced disclosure in 2001 of a love child and charges of payments to his mistress before he made the financial books of Operation P.U.S.H. and related organizational records available, nineteen years after the Sentinel had tried to force him to do so.

The Boycott Drags On

During the twelve months in which the boycott lingered on, both sides increased their vocal attacks towards each other, with Jackson often instigating each new campaign. At first, A-B took a muted response approach to Jackson’s laundry list of complaints, hoping the boycott would loose momentum. But after the Chicago Tribune printed an in-depth explanation by Jackson that attempted to answer the same three lingering questions that had dogged his boycott from the beginning—Why Busch? Why Busch first? Why P.U.S.H. alone?—Anheuser-Busch started to step up its response to Jackson’s charges.

A-B board member Wayan Smith III became the brewery’s point man in the war of words, answering Jackson’s growing list of charges. These had now been broadened by Jackson to include allegations of a lack by A-B to institute “…reciprocal trade with the black community…refusing to share basic information that other companies have shared with us,” complaints that the brewery’s public-relations firm, Fleishman Hillard had launched “a national discrediting campaign” against the Chicago activist and Operation P.U.S.H. and demands by Jackson to meet personally with brewery board chairman and president, August A. (“Three Sticks”) Busch III.

At a press conference held at Anheuser-Busch offices at 4841 South California on Chicago’s South Side, Smith finally lashed out at the boycott, calling it “ill-founded.” After listing A-B’s long list of contributions to minority groups, the brewery board member admitted that “…we do not understand the boycott ourselves.”

Jackson’s boycott took on a darker façade when P.U.S.H. officials started alluding that A-B Chairman Busch was to black economic development what former Birmingham, Alabama police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner was to the early civil rights movement. The thought of equating brewery C.E.O. Busch with the man who had directed police dog and water cannon attacks against civil rights protesters in the 1960s was over the top and Wayan Smith III responded forcefully. He called the P.U.S.H. boycott “…morally indefensible, intellectually dishonest and factually in error.” Smith also claimed that the brewery’s sales figures were indicating that the boycott was not succeeding.

But somehow, someway, Jackson got his hands on internal A-B documents that showed that despite record sales, the boycott was effective, especially in Chicago’s African-American community. Playing into Jackson’s hands, Anheuser-Busch representatives admitted that the reports were authentic.

For a while, the boycott and the continuing battle between Smith and Jackson seemed to take on a comical tone. During the boycott, Jackson would take his entourage to various A-B plants throughout the country. Because of Jackson’s need for publicity, Smith would be tipped-off in advance as to where Jackson was headed. In each city, Jackson would arrive at the local A-B brewery and demand to speak with plant officials. Officials would willingly comply and grant Jackson access to the brewery but would then escort Jackson to a quiet office where Smith would be patiently waiting. Thwarted by Smith’s checkmate, Jackson would leave the brewery to the awaiting crowd of media, cameras ready. As local black leaders stood with Jackson, he would ceremoniously pop open a can of Budweiser, pour the contents on the ground, and declare that “Bud’s a dud!” This little example of guerilla theater would be played out a number of times in different cities.

Seven months after the boycott began, A-B representatives announced that their former Chicago South Side company headquarters location would now be the headquarters of the Hometown Distributing Company, A-B’s fourth black-owned distributorship, but first in Chicago. The business would also be the first wholesaler to come online since A-B’s establishment of a $5 million fund to help finance additional minority ownership of its distributorships.
Although a fourth black-owned beer distributorship had already been planned before the boycott had been announced, a Jackson aide took advantage of the news, calling it “…further evidence that the boycott is working effectively.”

The Boycott Ends

As the boycott continued, with Jackson still demanding to negotiate with Chairman Busch but finding Smith thwarting his actions at every turn, Busch finally contacted Washington attorney Edward Bennett Williams and asked him to intercede with the stalemated negotiations. Jackson agreed to meet with Williams in a Washington hotel. In a short time, it became apparent that some sort of agreement between Jackson and the brewery was imminent. Whatever the end result of a year’s worth of battles would be, both sides were sensitive to saving face.

After representatives and attorneys for P.U.S.H. and A-B got together for a final round of negotiations, Williams, C.E.O. Busch, and Jackson met alone for a little over an hour. After the meeting, August Busch III announced an agreement. “We are determined to strengthen our partnership with the minority community. We are determined to continue to increase our proper and fair role as a responsible company, responsive to community needs.”

The agreement included:
Making $23 million in purchases from minority suppliers, an increase of $5 million from 1982.
Awarding $10 million in construction contracts to minority-owned companies, double the 1982 figure.
Depositing $14 million in minority banks, a $4 million increase over 1982.
Increasing advertising with minority-owned media to $8 million, four times the 1982 figure.
Doubling a $5 million special fund set up by the brewery to help increase the number of black distributorships.

It appeared to be a clear victory for Jackson, but on some points he seems to have come up short. Jackson never got a signed agreement to these proposed commitments by Anheuser-Busch. He also lost a major element of his demands to have a joint committee of P.U.S.H. and Busch officials oversee the agreement. Jackson acquiesced to the brewery’s demand that A-B officials alone would be responsible for monitoring the progress of the unsigned agreement.

Anheuser-Busch and Jackson Today

Sixteen years later, Anheuser-Busch officials announced that two of Jackson’s sons were going to purchase the River North Distributing Investment Capital Corporation, A-B’s most lucrative beer distributorship in Chicago. Yusef Jackson, an attorney for the Chicago law firm, Mayer Brown & Platt and his brother Jonathan Jackson, would be joined by Donald Niestrom. Jr., a veteran of the Chicago beer trade.

The story of how the Jacksons and Anheuser-Busch came into such a relationship was elaborated on by Yusef during a number of newspaper interviews. At a Los Angeles, California dinner party hosted by billionaire supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle in 1996, Jackson and brewer scion August Busch IV struck up a conversation. “We had a lot of common themes in our lives,” recalled Yusef and as the conversation progressed “We started talking about doing business,” related Jackson.

Young Jackson had been brought along to the party by his father, Jesse, who was the featured speaker at the Burkle affair. After the gathering, young Busch mentioned to Burkle that he had enjoyed his conversation with Yusef and questioned Burkle whether the younger Jackson was “…someone we should work with?”

The question may have been more than rhetorical. Back in Chicago, problems had been brewing at A-B’s River North distributorship. For a number of years, the local company had been guided by J.C. Alvarez, a Hispanic woman and Donald Niestrom, Sr., a white Chicagoan with years of experience in the beer business. It was reported to be an unfortunate mix of leadership at the North Side distributorship as the partnership failed to gel.

Along with the clash of personalities exhibited by the two, allegations of fiscal irregularities and racial discrimination at the distributorship surfaced.
With threats looming by some black employees to picket the business, charging that blacks were being ignored for promotions, A-B knew it had a potential problem on its hands, especially after employees threatened to bring in the N.A.A.C.P., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and finally, Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/Push organization.

Before the problems could peak, however, Anheuser-Busch sent a team of brewery officials and auditors to investigate the complaints at the River North distributorship, eventually replacing Alvarez and Niestrom with a temporary general manager. As the disputes and accusations faded at the distributorship, August Busch IV and Yusef Jackson were putting the finishing touches on the purchase of the River North location by Yusef, his brother Johnathan and Donald Niestrom, Jr., son of the recently-deposed Donald Niestrom, Sr.

Although neither brother had any experience in the beer trade, Yusef claimed to have studied the beverage industry in college. Despite their beer trade inexperience, Bank America, under the auspices of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based Nations Bank, gave the brothers a $6.7 million loan to help complete the purchase of the assets, equipment, and warehouse on Goose Island. If that was the price for the entire operation, as critics wondered, it was an awfully good one. In 1991, Anheuser-Busch had spent $10.5 million, including an incentive of $2.6 million from the City of Chicago, to purchase the land and build the 79,000 square-foot warehouse.

Neither the Jackson brothers nor A-B would comment on the price or particulars of the deal. Said Yusef when pressed for more information on the purchase, “We negotiated a straightforward deal and paid a competitive price for the company along with its property.”

The business is indeed a gainful one. With a territory that extends from Lake Michigan, west to Harlem Avenue, north to Irving Park, and south to Roosevelt Road, the distributorship is estimated to sell $30 to $40 million worth of Anheuser-Busch products yearly.

What Goes Around, Comes Around…or Does It?

Ironically, perhaps, the Jackson brothers initially refused to answer questions by the local press as to how many of the one hundred or so drivers and sales representatives they now employ are minorities, ironically, the same sort of question that their father had demanded of Anheuser-Busch years ago.

A statement by Yusef Jackson, in his position as company president, only deepened criticism of the Jacksons’ hypocrisy. “River North Sales and Services is …a private business. All of our actions in acquiring and operating this business have been ethical and proper. As for your questions, much of the information involved is either proprietary or personal. Our choice is to keep it private.”
Anheuser-Busch, in answering a related query by the Chicago Sun-Times as to how many A-B distributorships are currently owned by minorities, responded that it has “…several minority owners” but refused to say how many. This certainly would indicate a different tone by the brewery than in 1982 when they were countering Jesse Jackson’s accusations of low minority ownership with an exact count of three black-owned distributorships, with one more on the way.

In March of 2001, patriarch Jesse L. Jackson was attempting to quell a growing plethora of questions about his finances. This was a result of the revelation of a federally-financed $763,000 no-bid contract from the State of Illinois awarded to P.U.S.H. and a payment of $35,00 from one of Jackson’s organizations coupled with a monthly payment of $3000 to Karin Stanford, a former employee with whom Jackson had fathered a child. As part of his damage-control campaign, Jackson was willing to sit for a two-hour interview by Sun-Times reporters and members of the paper’s editorial board. A part of the interview follows:

Sun-Times: Did you have any role with your sons getting the beer distributorship?
Jackson: If Bush is qualified to run the country, they are qualified to run a beer distributorship. At some point those guys met August [Busch IV] and they started doing business. I know nothing about it, really. I don’t know how they did that. Their business is private and apart from what I’m doing. They paid all the right dues and exercised the right discipline to become business people and political leaders. I respect that, and I want all other people to respect that, too. I can take my hits. I will take them. But they should not be profiled or otherwise suggestions dropped that they are less than able to do what they do. That is very insulting to me. Very insulting.

In perhaps the same reposturing vein as his father, River North CEO, Yusef Jackson, later decided to be a bit more candid with the press about the racial makeup of the distributorship’s personnel. Jackson claims that the 100-man work force now consist of fifty-three percent white, twenty-seven percent black, nineteen-percent Hispanic and one percent Asian. Jackson adds that one-half of the firm’s sales force is composed of women.

As seen earlier, Bud products haven’t been favored by Chicago beer drinkers since the early 1970s. Locally, Schlitz wrestled the number-one sales position from A-B in 1973, Old Style had its strong run during the late ‘70s and ‘80s, keeping A-B at bay, and Miller products have dominated local beer sales since the overwhelming acceptance of its Lite beer. Some beer authorities have speculated that A-B’s lack of favor in Chicago might be due to the brewer’s history of union problems, turning off the taste buds of Chicago’s working-class beer drinkers. But in how many white, working-class neighborhood bars, the Jackson/A-B ownership question played out over and over again after the 1983 Jackson/A-B agreement. The purchase by Jackson’s sons of one of the largest A-B beer distributorships in Chicago and the lingering questions by the local media as to how this occurred has added to the Jackson family/A-B controversy.

Could the Jackson family’s relationship to Anheuser-Busch hold some responsibility for A-B’s lagging sales here, especially in the white, working-class neighborhoods of Chicago? A-B’s sales might be lagging in Chicago but for the Jackson’s, at least, Bud is certainly not a dud.

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