This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

June 09, 2004

Partisans bring anti-Bush message

Jesse Jackson, labor leaders urge voters to ignore issues like guns, abortion

By Tom Searls
Staff Writer Charleston Gazette

The Rev. Jesse Jackson joined with labor leaders at a Charleston rally Tuesday, telling people not to be fooled into voting for personal issues over policy issues in the November election.

“You know prayer in school ain’t no issue,” Jackson told several hundred people crammed into a downtown hotel. “As long as they teach arithmetic you’ll have prayer in school.”

Jackson’s four-day bus trip with labor leaders, including United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, began in Pittsburgh on Sunday. The “Reinvest in America: Put America Back to Work” tour will be in Beckley today and end with a rally in Portsmouth, Ohio. (article continued below picture)

Over 50 AFSCME Council 77 activists attended the Charleston rally. The photo is of some of those members who stayed after the event ended to pose with Reverend Jesse Jackson, UMWA President Cecil Roberts and State Auditor Glen Gainer.

Jackson called on those in attendance to change to a “low CARB diet.” Explaining it as “no [Vice President Dick] Cheney, no [Attorney General John] Ashcroft, no [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, no [President] Bush.”

Miners were split between candidates four years ago, helping George W. Bush to be the first Republican to carry West Virginia on a first run for the presidency since the Great Depression. The state, and neighboring Ohio and Pennsylvania, are considered pivotal states in the upcoming presidential sweepstakes.

Roberts assailed the Bush administration for the loss of jobs, despite Bush promising to create a million jobs while campaigning in 2000.

“We just thought he meant in the United States. He meant China, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam. Not here,” Roberts told the cheering crowd.

Jackson noted U.S. firms have located in Bermuda or other offshore locations where they avoid U.S. taxes. “It’s like someone going to Canada in time of war and getting a Purple Heart,” he said.

State AFL-CIO President Jim Bowen urged the crowd to stay away from divisive issues that worked for Bush in West Virginia four years ago: guns, abortion and school prayer. “And they’ve added a new one for us this year: gay marriage,” he said.

Instead, he said working people should vote about policies and issues. “Don’t let them put those blinders on you,” Bowen said.

Roberts said those who wave the Bible should read the Bible and not attack others. “I know where my heart is. I don’t have to ask Dick Cheney,” he said.

He noted the tour began in a Pittsburgh church. He vented against those “people [who] have waved the Bible and proclaimed themselves more Christian than the rest of us.”

The Vietnam veteran noted he did not see Cheney, Bush or Ashcroft while he was there. “These people are not only hawks, they’re chicken hawks,” he said.

Jackson, in a Scripture-laced speech, said this year Bush supporters won’t get away with offering voters “a flag, a prayer cloth and a gun.”

He said assault weapons, whose ban is set to end in September, should remain banned, noting people do not hunt with such weapons. “We’re all for people’s right to bear arms to protect their homes and hunt,” the Greenville, S.C., native said.

Health care for all people was also a hot topic, with speakers noting the Bush administration has called for universal health care for Iraq, but not in the United States. “Something’s wrong with that kind of system,” Jackson said.

The United States still has 35 million people living below the poverty level, Roberts said, noting many work more than one job.

“Most poor people work every day,” Jackson said. “They’re not on welfare, they work every day.”

He urged people to register their neighbors to vote and get them to the polls. “Crazy is really doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” he said.

Republican spokeswoman Mary Diamond assailed those at the gathering for attacks on Bush while the nation mourns the loss of former President Ronald Reagan.

“It’s sad that when the country pauses to remember a great, optimistic and transformative leader like President Reagan, John Kerry’s surrogates continue to spread distortions and hate,” she said in a statement.

Jackson opened his speech with a prayer for the late former president and his wife, Nancy.

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