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Purists of the left attack Jackson for his readiness to deal with capitalists (even, in the past, to adopt President Reagan's idea of enterprise zones). He is voraciously inclusive, and thinks no one should go away from a party without his or her piece of the cake. "Let's make a deal" is the constant offer of this hyperactive opportunist and optimist. His original civil rights project, Operation Breadbasket, began as a demand for higher black employment by corporations, but Jackson added "What can we do for you?" and established "covenants" endorsing firms for black consumers. On that basis he made further demands for blacks in managerial positions, in what looks to some like economic coercion but is thought of by Jackson as economic statesmanship. Everybody gets something -- bosses get cooperation and customers; workers get some control over their working conditions.
Jackson is an includer, not an excluder. He likes to be liked; he hates to lose any audience (which makes him run perpetually late, lingering with every group to complete his sale). Jackson is a performer, and, like Reagan, to whom he bears some unexpected resemblances, he is a master at wrapping a deeply felt conviction inside a one-liner. And he is bad at firing anyone. His receptiveness to anybody who will join him can be ludicrous, as when he took a wrestler named "Silo Sam," who claims to be seven-foot-seven, along on several stops the day after he met him, accepting Silo's public endorsement at a Teamsters' meeting, along with Billy Carter's, as a sign of his support from "ordinary people."
Despite his alacrity for inclusion, he has been rebuffed by repeated exclusions in the past. Ann Lewis, the Democratic strategist, remembers one of her first endeavors with Jackson. They were at the Japanese embassy in Washington, part of a delegation to protest racially condescending remarks made by Premier Nakasone. "Before we went out to meet the press," she recalls, "Jesse gathered us together and said, 'We cannot contribute to any further racism. These people do not know how much trouble they are in, and we must not add to the flames by our remarks.' " Then, as Jackson drove Lewis home, he complained of a party-sponsored dinner in 1986 that had included all the former Democratic presidential candidates yet pointedly excluded him. "He was hurt by that," says Lewis. "But I said he could not let them define themselves as the party. We are all the party."
Back in the '60s, Jackson was treated as a Johnny-come-lately to the civil rights movement, given minor and thankless tasks. As a result of David Garrow's important book Bearing the Cross, we now know that the civil rights movement was internally riven by the time Jackson joined it. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was being shoved out of its original nest in Atlanta and was meeting resistance from established black preachers in Chicago. Jackson, who was not even a minister yet (and therefore less of a threat) was given Operation Breadbasket to operate on indeterminate territory partway between SCLC and Chicago's local pastors. The group met, as its successor Operation PUSH still does, on Saturday mornings, so as not to invade the sacred turf of the Sunday preachers. Jackson was "included out" from the beginning.