wfn.org | Jesse Jackson to speak at RCC 2000

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 10, 2000	News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-31-71B{134}

By United Methodist News Service

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for the
March 29 opening banquet of the Religious Communications Congress 2000 in
Chicago.

About a thousand participants are registered for the March 29-April 1 event
at the Marriott Downtown. The theme is "Faith Stories in a Changing World."

Introducing Jackson will be his longtime friend, the Rev. Joan Brown
Campbell, who recently retired as top staff executive of the National
Council of Churches and now is director of the department of religion at the
Chautauqua Institute.

In 1999, the pair led a 19-member delegation of U.S. Christian, Muslim and
Jewish leaders on a humanitarian mission to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and
successfully secured the release of three U.S. soldiers being held by Serb
forces. 

"Rev. Jackson has been one of the great storytellers and creators of stories
in the 20th century," said Shirley Whipple Struchen, a United Methodist and
RCC 2000 chairwoman. "He has helped us to have a cadence of public language
and has kept the faith issues of our time before public leaders and thus
before all of us." 

Jackson will share what he considers to be the stories of the 21st century
with RCC 2000 participants. Founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition, the 59-year-old minister has been a major political figure for 30
years and has been a leader in a variety of movements for empowerment,
peace, civil rights, gender equality, and economic and social justice.

He began his activist career as a student leader and continued as a young
organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, working as an
assistant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He founded People United to
Save Humanity (PUSH) in Chicago in 1971 to advocate for economic empowerment
and better educational and employment opportunities for the disadvantaged
and communities of color. In 1984, he founded the National Rainbow
Coalition, a national social justice organization devoted to political
empowerment, education and changing public policy. The two groups merged in
1996.

As a world leader, Jackson worked against the apartheid system in South
Africa, acted as an international diplomat in sensitive situations and was
appointed by President Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright in 1997 as a special envoy for the promotion of democracy in
Africa. He also is known for his commitment to youth and his work with the
American labor movement.

Jackson ran for the U.S. presidency in 1984 and 1988 and was elected as the
U.S. senator from Washington D.C. in 1990. An author and holder of more than
40 honorary doctorate degrees, he has hosted the television show "Both Sides
With Jesse Jackson" on Cable News Network since 1992.

RCC 2000 includes a mixture of plenary sessions, workshops and evening
performances. The closing banquet will feature Emmy-winning journalist Mary
Alice Williams and Yolanda Adams, who recently won a Grammy Award for her
contemporary gospel album, "Mountain High ...Valley Low." The Thompson
Community Choir, a Chicago-based interfaith singing group, will back Adams.

Ella Jenkins, a well-known performer of children's music for more than 40
years, will be a part of the morning plenary session on April 1. The Chicago
native uses music and instruments from diverse cultures to encourage
audience learning and participation. She received the ASCAP Foundation
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and has been named "One of Chicago's
Living Treasures."

On the morning of March 31, a media panel will discuss the relationship of
media, faith and community and how those groups should interact in the
decade ahead. Panel members are the Rev. Art Cribbs, a broadcast and print
journalist and United Church of Christ minister from San Diego, Calif.; Mark
Pinsky, senior religion reporter for the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel; Haroon
Siddiqui, editorial page director for the Toronto Star, and Gayle White,
religion editor for the Atlanta Constitution-Journal. Lydia Talbot, a
broadcast journalist from Chicago, will moderate.

Registration for RCC 2000 is open through March and can be done by mail or
at www.RCC2000.org online. For registration information, call (212)
870-2985. 

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United Methodist News Service
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