No one knows how many times the Rev. Jesse Jackson shouted that phrase at political rallies or college campuses in the 1980s and ’90s, including the University of Washington, with much heart and conviction. Amazingly and eerily, it’s almost as if he knew where our nation would be decades later.

Jackson worked tirelessly all his adult life for justice and equality for poor people, for union workers and to empower Black communities. Jackson died Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 84.

In today’s world he would be considered a diplomat or global influencer. As a private citizen in the 1980s and ’90s, and often against the federal government’s wishes, Jackson negotiated the release of 700 hostages in Iraq and Kuwait, three U.S. soldiers in Yugoslavia, a U.S. Navy pilot captured in Syria and 22 Americans held prisoner in Cuba.

“Although he didn’t have a local congregation in Chicago he did have organizations like the Rainbow/Push Coalition ” and Operation Breadbasket, said the Rev. Johnny J. Youngblood, pastor of House of Hope Fellowship in Tukwila. He first met Jackson in 1994 in New York and kept in touch over the years. “The rainbow represents inclusion. So the world was his pulpit, and not just a local church on the block.”

Born in Greenville, S.C., Jackson ran for president of the United States in 1984 and again in 1988, when he won more than a dozen states and territories. His campaigns focused on workers’ rights and jobs, and uplifting those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Although he never held elective office, Jackson left an indelible mark on the United States and the world’s political and social landscape. And he lived to see two of his children serve in Congress.

Jackson was a behind-the-scenes figure in the Civil Rights Movement as a younger protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Youngblood said. Like Jackson, he grew up in the South, attended a historically Black university and share membership in the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

“Protests are protests, but signing of the laws happen afterward. Protests brought attention but the behind the scene” is where the details of what happens next takes place, said Youngblood.

Jackson visited Seattle several times for such behind-the-scenes meetings with tech leaders, including in 2018 when he encouraged diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring and contracting at Amazon. He chastised the global company then for having an all-white 10-member board. He later spoke with The Seattle Times editorial board. “What is in jeopardy today is the ideal of the American dream,” Jackson said. “We are a multiracial, multicultural society, which is an experiment. You cannot impose on this experiment white male, race supremacy or religious bigotry. It does not fit.”

In closing his speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Jackson extolled:

“We must never surrender. America will get better, and better. Keep hope alive!”

— Seattle Times