Campaigning in Free Verse

By John E. Yang

As always, Jesse Jackson was late--three hours behind schedule this time--as his motorcade sped through down town Baltimore on a chilly, misty afternoon last week. The procession of cars, vans and buses wove in and out of rush-hour traffic, red and blue lights flashing and police sirens wailing. Clots of office workers gathered outside the trendy shops and restaurants of Harborplace to watch. The caravan zipped by them and into East Baltimore, an area of sagging row houses, many disfigured by broken or boarded-up windows.

The streets initially were empty, but when the motorcade turned into North Bond, a crowd of 400 people came into view several blocks ahead. Many who had made the mistake of thinking Jackson would keep his schedule had turned out early and been waiting four or even seven hours to greet their hero, but their spirits had not been dimmed. When a navy blue Chrysler New Yorker pulled to a halt and the candidate leaped out, the crowd surged over wooden police barricades chanting, "Win, Jesse, win!" Jackson, smiling broadly, strode into the throng, surrounded by apprehensive Secret Service agents who formed a circle around him; one kept a tight grip on the back of Jackson's raincoat so that he could yank the candidate down immediately if any danger arose. None did; Jackson's admirers obviously wanted only to touch and be touched. A young man dressed in a dirty sweatshirt and blue jeans held his open right . hand in front of him and exclaimed in wonder, "I shook his hand! I shook the man's hand!"

Jackson worked his way through the crowd and into a campaign headquarters ("outreach center," in his terminology), and campaign workers arranged the scene for his speech. An aide pointed to the spot where the candidate would stand and shouted, "Rainbow, rainbow!" It was a signal to another assistant to plunge into the predominantly black throng and look for whites who could be brought up front to stand near Jackson, so that photographs would show the preacher as leader of a multiracial rainbow coalition.

There was nothing artificial about the response when Jackson emerged to speak. His talks are not connected discourses but collections of applause lines that bring shouts of "All right! . . . Talk it up, Jesse! . . . Yessir!" building steadily. He begins slowly, his voice strong but not strident, his phrases short. He gathers speed and volume, often breaking into a cadence that scans well as impromptu free verse:

Yesterday was a day

Of mixed emotions for me.

Jesus was crucified on Friday,

Resurrected on Sunday.

That's great joy

Because the stone was rolled away.

But for the poor of Baltimore,

For the malnourished of our nation,

For the poor mothers

Who cannot get prenatal care,

For children who cannot get

A breakfast program or lunch programs,

For the youth who can't get a skill,

They were crucified on Friday,

Crucified on Saturday,

Crucified on Sunday,

Crucified on Monday.

The hands are still bleeding,

The thorns are still on their heads.

I say it's time for the poor

To realize resurrection,

To stop the hammers, stop the nails,

Wheel the stone away.

So it went last week, on the streets of East Baltimore, on the campus of the largely black University of Maryland Eastern Shore in the town of Princess Anne, in the tiny Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Oxon Hill, Md., later in Texas at a San Antonio barrio and a West Dallas project, and on Friday night in the Mount Canaan Baptist Church in Shreveport, La. To dramatize his appeal to the poor, Jackson has taken to sleeping some nights in their homes rather than in hotels. Last Monday he stayed with William Jarrard, an unemployed white Baltimorean who bears an ironic resemblance to Archie Bunker; Wednesday in the San Antonio home of Hortencia Cabrera, mother of 14. To call attention to industrial pollution, Jackson on Wednesday also visited the West Dallas housing project apartment of Sarah Dean, whose five-year-old daughter Africia suffers from lead poisoning believed to be caused by a nearby smelter.

Staying in private homes may also serve to stretch skimpy campaign funds, but the practice adds to the already legendary chaos of the Jackson drive. Jackson's schedules are haphazard at best, and difficulty in finding the homes of the poor is making him even later than usual. In Baltimore, campaign workers had to hire a cab to lead a motorcade of aides and reporters to pick up Jackson at Jarrard's home Tuesday morning, and borrow $12 from a reporter to pay the fare. Even then, Aide Frank Watkins had to stop the caravan of vans and buses to ask exact directions from two children playing on a nearby sidewalk.

In Dallas, campaign workers did manage to line up a fleet of Cadillac limousines, which hauled reporters around Wednesday in a procession that looked disconcertingly like a funeral cortege. But on Thursday morning someone mistook the motorcade's destination for its point of origin, and the Limousines gathered in Fort Worth while journalists and campaign workers waited for them at the Loews Anatole Hotel in Dallas. Jackson aides rounded up two church buses to get the tour under way--90 minutes late. But one bus broke down and limped onto a goat farm near the town of Grand Prairie; reporters and camera crews had to hire a fleet of taxis to chase after the candidate. All of which seemed apt for a major campaign that has generated more excitement with less money and organization than any other in memory. In a self-satisfied moment, Jackson put it this way: "If Hart or Mondale had my budget, they could not compete. And if I had their budgets, they could not compete." --By John E. Yang