Faith

Veteran American civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson visited Reading on Wednesday 25 March 2009 to discuss how to tackle the problems of knife crime and drugs.

The former US presidential candidate spoke on faith, politics and empowerment in a speech at the Globe church in Portman Road, Reading, at the invitation of Reading West MP Martin Salter and chairman of the home affairs committee, MP Keith Vaz.

Martin Salter, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Keith Vaz

Listen to Rev. Jesse Jackson's talk with the press before his speech to the Reading community here:

Read excerpts below:

"One of our concerns now is that for so many years we fought for freedom, our dignity and decency and security.

"We've always fought for victory over some extra and oppressive force. Sometimes it was military occupation of some sort, fighting some foreign force - foreign to our values.

"Today we stand here and face the issue of self-destructive violent behaviour. We've come too far to surrender to our worst instinct and our worst fears.

Rev. Jesse Jackson addressing the Reading audience

"There must be a renewed commitment to non-violence, and to see non-violence as a source of strength, and violence as a form of weakness.

"Violence makes people surrender all your options. You have nothing to do but kill and be killed.

"We must choose to live and let live and not kill and be killed."

"Therefore we must resist the knifings, killing people and stabbing people.

"You must stop the killing and choose the healing, and give our young people a sense of hope and vitality.

"Children in the light see the light one way, and those in darkness see the light in another way.

"Those who see the light fight for higher and brighter futures, those in darkness simply recycle their pain.

"You must help us spread the light, spread the hope, spread the education, spread the opportunities - and that becomes our commitment.

Boney M's Liz Mitchell and Rev. Jesse Jackson

"But through all this embrace our children. We must show them love and the care that they deserve."

On what the Reading community can do to put those theories into practice:

"These children need day care, they need employed parents, they need organised recreation, they need adult supervision.

"They need a way out and if they say the way out then they can make it.

"If we lead them to have jobs or organised recreation then we lead them to recycle their worst fears.

"The concern we have now is that as jobs are leaving, drugs and guns are coming as a kind of sub-economy. We must not allow that to become as devastating in Britain as it has become in America. We must intervene."

On community activism as an alternative to policing:

"Police intervention has a role to play because we need police to intercept the knives and guns, but then you also need educational intervention and job training intervention.

Reacting to news Barack Obama will be president

"If you do not have education, no job-training, the parents don't have jobs they wallow in despair. We must break that cycle.

"The way out is not more jails. America today 2.3 million Americans are in jail, and many of them black, and 500,000 Latino, because we somehow believe that locking them up is a solution.

"We must choose to lift up, not lock up.

"If we embrace them early enough, we can persuade them to go to a way that's helpful and hopeful."

On the possibility of a black British prime minister following the election of Barack Obama:

"If the Great Briton chooses its leadership and doesn't limit based on gender or race, it could be very soon.

"In America blacks didn't change, whites began to change, and the two are inter-grown.

With Reading West MP Martin Salter

"We were capable long before we were allowed to show our full array of talents.

"If we can be part of Britain that's representing in soccer, in tennis, in boxing, we can be world champions in politics too. It's a matter of barriers coming down.

"As we mature we become better and we've watched America this last 54 years grow to this point of being able to go to school together, and share neighbours together, share work together, now we're voting together.

"That is a process of development and so there is no talent shortage among blacks in Britain, the women and people of colour must have their day in the sun."