Jackson continues Wall Street waltz: critics claim the reverend's annual shakedown of corporate America does little more than line the pockets of select cronies and his "nonprofit" empire

Insight on the News, Jan 28, 2002 by Kenneth R. Timmerman

The Rev. Jesse Jackson will launch his fifth annual Wall Street extravaganza to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. day as big checks keep rolling in to fund his shakedown operation. Will corporate America ever learn?

Jackson, a self-styled reverend without a church, is hoping to start 2002 with a bang by calling several hundred of his most intimate friends to a three-day celebration in New York City starting Jan. 15. They will pick up the tab, of course; in some cases, major corporations such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs will pay $50,000 or more for the privilege of playing host to Jackson's gala as "platinum" sponsors.

Coca-Cola will be there, grateful to have survived Jackson's latest shakedown secured with the expert assistance of race-baiting legal eagles Johnnie Cochran and Willie Gary. So will Verizon Communications Inc. after paying Jackson's groups $800,000 in 1999 in recognition for his efforts on behalf of racial "healing."

"Gold" sponsors include AOL Time Warner and Prudential Financial, while among his "silver" friends are Pepsi, Daimler-Chrysler and AT&T, whose chairman, C. Michael Armstrong, has been a staunch Jackson ally and major contributor to the Democratic Party.

If past events are any gauge, this month's festival should earn Jackson's nonprofit groups another $2 million in sponsorship fees, which the corporate donors deduct from stockholder pockets to contribute tax-free.

Just how much loot the event actually brings in is being kept very close. Despite Jackson's eagerness for publicity, his assistant in New York, Feni more Fisher, who has been negotiating with corporate donors, provides no clues of the event's potential. He refers even simple questions, such as the number of companies signed up, to a press spokesman in Chicago, who didn't return phone calls by press time.

Jackson launched his Wall Street gambit in 1997 with the benediction of Bill Clinton, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and corporate bigwigs such as Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill. It took off like a dot-com at the height of Internet madness. Revenues for Jackson's nonprofit empire skyrocketed from $4 million in 1997 to more than $14 million just two years later. His corporate tax returns for last year are not yet available, but it doesn't appear that the Bush presidency or the revelation of Jackson's love child have damaged his prodigious fund-raising capabilities.

The question critics are asking is why -- what do Jackson and his racial brokerage have to offer corporate America, let alone Main Street or the inner city? What's going on here?

Jackson claims in an interview for a soon-to-be-released book that his approach just makes good business sense. "We bring to Wall Street as shareholders, not sharecroppers, a key to Wall Street's growth: market, money, talent and location. It's a compatible relationship" he says.

But many of Jackson's critics argue that he has done little to bring business into impoverished communities. They instead charge him with expending most of his efforts on enriching a select few cronies -- people such as bond broker and "silver" sponsor Ron Blaylock -- who in turn made substantial contributions to Jackson's nonprofit empire after reaping the benefits of his racial-brokerage service.

Jackson believes there is poetic justice in hitting up Wall Street On behalf of black bond brokers such as Blaylock, who receive millions of dollars per year in fees. "Wall Street was built on the shipping industry, importing Africans and exporting cotton. So there were Africans enslaved in New York. Without the slave trade, there couldn't have been a Wall Street" he told this reporter.

Critics got an unusual glimpse of the seamy underside of Jackson's operation during a heated exchange last month at a public meeting between Toyota board members and a group of black business and community leaders at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Some 200 black businessmen came to the Dec. 10 meeting, where Jackson and Toyota Motor Sales Vice President Irv Miller unveiled Toyota's plan to dole out $700 million in contracts to minority businesses. Toyota's "21st Century Diversity Strategy" was a direct outgrowth of Jackson's threat last August to lead a black boycott of Toyota because of a print ad he claimed was racially offensive.

"It was implied at the meeting, and not corrected by Toyota officials in attendance, that in order to receive these contracts, businesses should pay anywhere from $250 to $2,500 annually to Jackson's International Trade Bureau, essentially making him the gatekeeper to these benefits" conservative black activist Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson says.

Jackson workers handed out brochures detailing the contribution scheme to every table at the luncheon. "Membership in the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition International Trade Bureau is open to minority and women business owners who want to maximize their growth potential," the brochure declares. "Annual dues are based upon a firm's annual gross revenues," with small firms expected to pay $250 annually and firms grossing more than $5 million to pay $2,500 or more.