The PSC mourns the loss of Rev. Jesse Jackson, two-time presidential candidate, faith leader, and champion of organized labor. For more than 65 years, from his youth spent opposing segregation in North Carolina to his time organizing in Chicago to his breakthrough presidential campaigns and his decades as an elder statesman of the movement, Jackson was one of the nation’s most effective advocates for civil rights and social justice.
Unions are stronger today thanks to Jackson’s moral leadership, his solidarity on the picket lines, and his clear demand for an inclusive workers’ movement with jobs on the shop floor and seats at the bargaining table for workers of color, immigrants, and women. His 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns with their unapologetically leftist agenda and rejection of Reaganomic cruelty galvanized rank and file activists and union leaders alike. He inspired a new generation of leaders in our communities, our unions, and the Democratic party and built the template, with his Rainbow Coalition, for the kind of multi-racial, class conscious, populist coalition that can reclaim our nation from the forces of hate and authoritarianism in power today.
Jesse Jackson’s clarion calls for racial justice, labor justice and economic justice will never be forgotten.
Published: February 17, 2026
