Initially, Cheryle R. Jackson was flattered that then President-elect Barack Obama had added her to a list of six individuals who he felt were qualified to replace him in the Senate. But she didn’t seriously consider it at first.
As president of the Chicago Urban League (CUL), she had her hands full with the filming of Emmy award-winning NextTV, a reality-styled television show that advises individuals and business owners about economic empowerment. But then she started receiving e-mails and pleas for help at church, by phone and by email from panicked and desperate small business owners, job seekers, and people who were about to foreclose on their homes.
After seeing the devastating effect the economic crisis was having on small business owners, job seekers, and people who were about to lose their homes to foreclosure Jackson, a former aide to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, decided to take a leave of absence from the CUL and run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Roland Burris. Burris, who was appointed by Blagojevich under a cloud of controversy, announced that he would not run for a full term in 2011.
In Jackson’s opinion, the state needed a senator who focused on economic growth and who would be willing to fight for everyday people. None of the other four candidates had that, says Jackson, who was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She had already demonstrated that her bark had bite when she led the CUL in a civil rights lawsuit against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Education and the governor’s office for underfunding schools.
Despite having never held public office and being the only woman and minority running for Senate, Jackson, 44, says building her platform on job creation will resonate with the entire state of Illinois and not only the predominantly black South Side. In preparation for the February 2010 primary, Jackson made a stop by the Black Enterprise offices to discuss her platform, the goals of NextTV, and how she plans to change the state with help from small businesses.
BlackEnterprise.com: What was it about Chicago’s economic downslide that caught your attention and prompted you to run for Senate?
Cheryle R. Jackson: These are the toughest times that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. What really got me serious about the race was seeing business owners who saw their lines of credit evaporate over night due to no fault of their own.
One telltale sign that something very unusual was happening occurred when the Chicago Urban League held a job fair for 50 part-time Chicago Transit Authority bus driver positions in January. It was the coldest day of the year and 1,000 people showed up. But what was the most staggering to me was that one quarter of the people that showed up were double-degreed professionals. I knew then that we were chartering new territory; a new kind of crisis that I had not witnessed.
What advantages do you have over the other candidates running to replace Sen. Burris?
The biggest, most contrasting difference between me and all of my opponents — whether Democrat or Republican — is I am the only one with any practical experience in solving and working with the kinds of problems that everyday people face. I am the only one that doesn’t come from a life of privilege. There is nothing wrong with being privileged but it is not most people’s experience and it certainly is not most people’s experience today in the worst economic crisis we have witnessed in a lifetime.
Why do you believe that small businesses are an essential piece to the jobs puzzle?
There is a lot of talk about jobs training, but there is little talk about where these jobs are coming from. Unfortunately, they won’t be coming from multinational corporations. History shows that 80% of jobs [in the inner city] are created by small business. This is particularly so during times of deep economic recession. It has always been the case that small businesses have led the way forward out of recessions. They create jobs and they innovate.
What suggestions do you have to help small business owners raise capital?
Two things are going to be key to recovering the economy and getting us out of this crisis, solving the housing crisis and making certain that small business owners are up on their feet and going because that is where job creation happens. When job creation happens then consumer activity increases.
We saw a lot of leadership and coming together around the private and public sector to solve the crisis at hand with the financial services industries,
Wall Street and the auto industry. I think it’s that same sort of hyper-intentionality that we need to see around small business owners. We need to forge partnerships between the private sector, the public sector and small business owners to triage the problems.The Chicago Urban League has a history of being affiliated with television shows. It used to be involved with “People to People†and now it produces NextTV. What purpose does NextTV serve?
We wanted to get a Chicago Urban League show up and running again but I knew I didn’t want to do a typical public affairs show where you have a host and talking heads. I wanted to tell the stories of economic empowerment. I thought there was a better format to tell those stories of transformation. People learn best by doing rather then have someone else talk about it. I wanted the viewer to learn about why entrepreneurship is important and what all is involved with being an entrepreneur by watching someone else go through it, and not by having an expert, policy person or me talking about it in a professorial way.