Rev. Jesse Jackson: Guns and Not the Klan, are the Real Enemies

Chicago suffers unbearable levels of gun violence, yet the victims remain largely silent. They travel from funeral home to graveyard rather than march from church to gun shop. The president is applauded when he calls for action on gun violence, but before his plane leaves the tarmac, more are shot, including even the sister of one of the young children standing behind him during his address.

If we are to free ourselves of this terror, we will have to change our minds.

Victims of tyranny have three options. They can adjust, they can resent but turn anger inward, or they can fight back.

I recently spoke at the King College Prep High School, the school that Hadiya Pendleton was attending when shot to death. When I asked the students if they had a classmate in jail or knew someone who used drugs, nearly all said yes. When I asked if they knew someone who had brought a gun to school or secreted one in a car, they said yes. I asked if they would turn in someone who smuggled a gun into school — “No, no,” was the answer. I asked if they would turn in someone who had a rope and a white sheet and hood hidden in their car. “The Klan,” they said, “of course we’d turn them in to authorities.”

They are more forceful in defying the impotent Ku Klux Klan than in challenging the presence and reality of dope and guns. Silence undermines security and betrays the possibility of freedom.