Jesse Jackson, the Profit

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 26, 2001 | by Steve Miller, | Jerry Seper

Two Washington Times reporters detail how the reverend has lined his pockets under the guise of selflessly crusading for social justice and economic parity for minority communities.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson's opulent lifestyle has prompted his critics to ask this question: Where does the 59-year-old activist get the money to pay for three homes, first-class travel and a $3,000 monthly child-support payment to a former mistress?

"That's a good question," says Don Beachem, vice chairman of the Illinois Minority Community Alliance and a Cook County, Ill., sheriff's deputy who claims to have his finger on the pulse of Chicago's black community. "The only thing I can tell you is what I hear": that Jackson's financial support comes from a conglomerate of eight nonprofit and public organizations. Jackson's organizations, financed by corporate America and a multitude of loyal followers, include the 30-year-old People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH) and the Citizenship Education Fund (CEF), both of which are tax-exempt and nonprofit. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, formed in 1996, is a for-profit corporation.

Jackson has an estimated annual income of about $300,000. His home, a large two-story white stucco located a half-mile from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago's South Side, sits in the upscale Jackson Park Highlands. It's an old section of town that, despite high crime levels that force homeowners to bar windows, also boasts beautifully baroque houses valued between $100,000 and $125,000. At various times, Jackson also owned two other homes, one purchased for $40,000 in 1984 in Greenville, S.C., and another purchased for $100,000 in 1985 in Washington.

Steve Taylor, publisher of a regional black newspaper, the Kankakee City News, recently wrote an editorial accusing Jackson of playing the race card to make himself one of the wealthiest black ministers in the nation. Jackson denies such accusations, maintaining that he simply has lobbied corporations to steer business and capital toward minority entrepreneurs. "Rather than race, we talk business," Jackson says. "If what I have to offer holds no value to [a corporation], then we don't talk."

The companies that do talk and give out money, some of them Fortune 500 corporations, have become generous contributors to Jacksons' nonprofit organizations. The CEF, for example, has received nearly $4 million in pledges from SBC-Ameritech, AT&T, Viacom, GTE and Bell Atlantic in recent years.

Jackson, though, is uncharacteristically humble about his role in attracting corporate largesse. "This is my job," he said during a recent 90-minute interview with the Washington Times, the sister publication of Insight.

That job, as defined by Jackson, is attracting capital for black businesses. Self-dubbed as "The Wall Street Project," Jackson has been lobbying corporate America to invest in minority businesses. His efforts have produced significant results, including a commitment by AT&T to broker $1 billion in bonds through Blaylock & Partners LP, a black-owned firm in New York.

In his earlier days as a civil-rights activist, Jackson was saddled with questions about one of his organization's accounting practices: Government auditors challenged the way Jackson's PUSH spent $1.7 million in federal grants. The program received $6.5 million from various federal agencies during a short period of time at the end of Jimmy Carter's administration. In 1979, auditors reviewing grants said that $737,000 had been improperly spent and questioned another $1 million. (Other criticism also came from Department of Education auditors, who contended that PUSH had failed to account for how it spent $1.2 million of $4.9 million in federal grants.) The organization negotiated a settlement with the government to repay more than $500,000 in the early 1980s.

The controversies associated with the grant money days are over, says Jackson. "They gave us federal grants when we didn't even want them," he notes, explaining that his appearance on the TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes had prompted government officials to besiege his fledgling organization with ways to solicit public funding.

Whether or not Jackson has instituted stricter accounting practices in his organizations, the perception remains that he lives on public dollars. With characteristic urgency, he refutes that misconception. "We don't have any taxpayer money," Jackson says. "We don't want any taxpayer money. I learned my lesson. It was distracting. We didn't ask for it. We were going out and talking to kids at that point, and you don't need government money to do that."

True enough, none of his nonprofit organizations take grant money and haven't for years. Yet this has not stopped Jackson's benefactors from taking advantage of the tax-exempt status some of his organizations enjoy. His Rainbow/PUSH and Push for Excellence had incomes of more than $4 million in 1998, and the affiliate tax-exempt CEF declared revenue of $9 million in 1999.

Jackson draws a $120,000 annual salary from PUSH, a nonprofit group formed in 1971 and incorporated in 1977. He also earns close to $150,000 annually in speaking fees, as well as an undisclosed sum of income from CNN, where he has hosted a public-affairs show, Both Sides With Jesse Jackson, since 1992. (The show recently was taken off the air.) Jackson's speaking fee varies according to the ability of the audience to pay, notes spokesman John Scanlon, a New York-based public-relations agent. The fees are arranged through a separate public entity known as Jacqueline Inc., controlled by Jackson's wife.