Cle Jackson Believes In The Power Of Community Volunteering
In this issue, Mr. Cle Jackson who is the president of the NAACP Grand Rapids Branch is the third local resident being honored in the GR Times Community That Cares series. The series highlights individuals who have through the years demonstrated that they do what they do for the benefit of the community and they do it from the heart. The following is a GR Times interview with Mr. Jackson.
GRT: When did you become interested with volunteer work?
Jackson: My mother had my siblings and me involved in a lot of things. Even though we didn't have a lot, my parents taught us the importance of giving back through service. Helping the community that we lived in was just apart of our DNA. I was a Cub Scout and I graduated to Boy Scouts. Our troop was at Baxter Community Center. We were one of two all - African American troops in Kent County and our troop was the largest. I was an NAACP youth member and my parents actually kept my membership up throughout college. After I graduated, they told me how important it was to keep up with my membership and I have since then. I have always been engaged in this community.
GRT: Why should the NAACP be important to Blacks especially?
Jackson: The NAACP is the oldest civil rights organization in the country and it was really created to fight against any form of racial injustices for Black folks specifically. The passing of the 1965 voting rights act and the passing of Brown vs Board of Education — even though some people feel that segregation was not a good thing — those were a couple of the monumental things that the NAACP directly headed up with Justice Thurgood Marshall.
It is important that we continue to support organizations like the NAACP and other organizations like it – such as the Urban League –that are indigenous and of color.
The NAACP is more than 110 years old and it is critically important that we continue to support this organization through our membership and volunteerism. The majority of NAACP units or branches are all - volunteer based, so it is important to support organizations who are out here fighting in the streets and in the courts for the protection of our rights.
If you feel that these NAACP units are non - relevant, then it is up to you to get involved to make them more relevant.
GRT: Who has been one of your biggest influences?
Jackson: I would have to say that my father is one of my biggest role models. He is a World War II veteran and he has been an extremely hard worker his entire life. He instilled in me strong work ethics and the importance of being nice and kind to people and basically treating people the way that you would want to be treated. So my mother and my father, I would have to say, are two of my biggest heroes and the list can go on and on from there.
GRT: Why is your volunteer work with youth important to you?
Jackson: Working with youth is so important because they are not only the leaders of tomorrow, but they are also the leaders of today. It is critically important that we do everything we can and make as much of an investment in our youth, because we have to create a pipeline of leaders. We need to invest, inspire and encourage as much as possible.
We have to prepare them to be able to navigate different situations as leaders in the non – profit sector, corporate America or in government. We need prosecutors and chiefs - of - police, as well as magistrates, that are righteous, as well.
GRT: Why is important for people to vote in this particular election?
Jackson: There is so much at stake. Health care and Obama care are on the line, which will make take health care from millions of people who are currently covered. I consider it to be a right to have access to affordable, efficient quality health care.
The full restoration of the voting rights act is on the line and has not be fully restored yet. Economic instability. We still don't have a living wage.
The federal minimum wage in this country is $7.20 per hour, and in Michigan it is $9.25 per hour, while the average one bedroom apartment in the city of Grand Rapids is $1,000. How can anyone afford that type of rent or house payment with that income level? So economic instability is also under fire.
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