An Honest Conversation With a Prominent Black Activist Who Works for Pete Buttigieg

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Abe Jenkins is a Charleston native and a fixture in the political scene in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. His grandfather was the revered civil rights activist Esau Jenkins, a businessman and civic leader who organized the black community on the islands around Charleston. Esau and his wife, Janie, transported black students to Charleston’s public schools and black residents to their jobs in the city; in an era of literacy tests and poll taxes, the Jenkinses used the daily commute to teach friends and neighbors how to read the passage of the constitution required to register to vote. Esau, whose motto was “Love is progress; hate is expensive,” is now featured in the Smithsonian’s African American History museum.

Abe, Esau’s grandson, got hooked on presidential politics when he worked as a field organizer for Barack Obama in South Carolina in 2007 and early 2008. Obama won the primary by nearly 30 percentage points, and Abe went on to work for Obama in half a dozen more states. “(Obama) had a lot of young people that got involved in that campaign, and I was their elder statesman even 12 years ago,” Jenkins says. “I might’ve been the oldest field organizer in the country.”

Jenkins, who’s now in his mid-60s, paid attention when President Obama name-dropped former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in 2017 as part of a new generation of Democratic leaders. Last year, he met Buttigieg in Charleston and came away impressed. On his own, he started a Facebook page to galvanize support among black voters for Buttigieg. Soon afterward, the campaign asked him if he’d serve as the political director for South Carolina.

Buttigieg’s struggles with voters of colors are well-known by this point. In some polls, he’s garnered zero percent support from black voters. Black voters make up the majority of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, and so Buttigieg has his work cut out for him here.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pete-buttigieg-south-carolina-abe-jenkins-black-vote-presidential-campaign-960063/

[BootinUp]

1. this looks good.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. What a great, in-depth article!

Thank you for posting it, my dear Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin!

[BootinUp]

3. "Who's this Pete?"

nice read.