Author: Reggie Jackson

Reggie Jackson: Message Received, All Lives Don’t Matter!

The recent response to the alarming number of deaths in the black community in pockets around the country has been tepid, in my opinion. Many have written and responded that we need to do better, but what has really changed? Even as we are seeing in Milwaukee County an leveling out of COVID-19 deaths in recent weeks, blacks still account for an exorbitant number of cases and deaths as compared to their share of the population. As we look at where the largest clusters and concentrations of cases and deaths are, an alarming trend has shown its face. In...

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Reggie Jackson: Lessons from when San Francisco reopened too soon after the 1918 Flu Pandemic

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke In the age of the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, we can look to the past to learn some really valuable lessons. The Spanish flu, which began in Kansas, killed nearly 700,000 Americans. On of the hardest hit cities was San Francisco. The first case of the influenza in the city was on September 23, 1918, when Edward Wagner was admitted to a hospital and eventually placed on quarantine...

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Law and Disorder: Non-Violent Civil Rights Campaigns “Then” vs. Armed Protestors “Now”

“I think this is the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened. The nigras are just as free as we are, they have the same opportunity to work and build their part of the town up the same as we have. I just don’t understand it and don’t approve of it. I’m gonna stand up for my rights.” “Well I think if they remain peaceful it would be a lot better than perhaps the violence.” “I don’t think it’s the time right now, I think they have equal rights though.” “I don’t like it, I think it’s tryin to...

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Reggie Jackson: With coronavirus in our prisons and jails, do All Lives still matter?

“27 inmates at House of Correction have tested positive for coronavirus” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 17, 2020 “38 percent of Arkansas COVID-19 cases concentrated in state prison” – The Hill, April 21, 2020 “63 House of Correction inmates tested positive for COVID-19, along with 3 employees” – Fox6News, April 20, 2020 “73% Of Inmates At An Ohio Prison Test Positive For Coronavirus” – NPR, April 20, 2020 These disturbing headlines keep coming. As the coronavirus continues to kill tens of thousands of Americans, we get daily updates from city, county, state and federal leaders about the outbreak. One...

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Reggie Jackson: A COVID-19 Timeline and the President’s Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude

“The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude is really just my obnoxious way of saying lies travel fast. And boy, did my Terminological Inexactitude accelerate with velocity.” – Olive Penderghast, Easy A “This is a flu. This is like a flu”; “Now, you treat this like a flu.” – President Donald Trump, February 26, 2020 “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths.” – President Donald Trump,...

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Reggie Jackson: When white privilege comes up against a pandemic

“The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government. This intrusion results solely from force, or threat of force, undignified by any reasonable application of the principle of law, reason and justice.” – Alabama Governor George Wallace Speech, while refusing admittance of black students at the University of Alabama June 11, 1963 “It was with a heavy heart that I found it necessary to...

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