Jesse Jackson appeared on CNN to call for a boycott Florida campaign because of the George Zimmerman acquittal. Instead of boycotting Florida, I’m taking a trip next week for a “buycott.”1 I’m going to help the state as I buy something at the airport, rent a car, buy gasoline, eat at restaurants, and who knows what else. I’ll do more for the poor people of Florida than Jackson will.

Jackson described Florida as an “apartheid state.”

“As the heat keeps rising on this crisis, Trayvon is a symbol of a deeper malady. It’s Trayvon in Florida, it’s Oscar Grant in . . . Oakland, it’s Diallo in New York . . .  At some point the president must offer the moral leadership he has to offer. . . . No doubt, the inclination is to boycott Florida, to stop conventions, to isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state given this whole Stand Your Ground law. Homicides against blacks have tripled since this law has been in existence.”

The most dangerous city for blacks is Chicago, and it’s not because of a “Stand Your Ground” law. It’s not white people killing young blacks; it’s young blacks killing young blacks. It’s more dangerous in Chicago for blacks than soldiers in the war zones of Afghanistan.

If Jesse wants to call for a boycott, he needs to call for one in President Obama’s hometown and his own. Jackson’s Rainbow/Push organization keeps its national headquarters on the South Side of Chicago.

Calling for a boycott of Florida is designed to divert attention away from his own backyard.

Who will be hurt by a boycott of Florida? The very people Jackson says he cares about work in the service, convention, and tourist industries. There would be a ripple effect that would end up hurting millions of people.

When Jackson was asked what the Democrats can do about losing values voters to the Republicans, this was his answer: Values are about feeding the poor. . . . Help the helpless. This, he claimed, is the true Christian message. Of course, Jackson meant money from the government in wealth redistribution.

Jackson has been in the blackmail business for a long time. He’s made his money by agitating and threatening boycotts of companies that don’t do his bidding, that is, don’t “donate” to his Rainbow/PUSH “non-profit” organization.

Here’s an example from a 2008 CNS News story about Toyota, just one of many:

“Jesse Jackson’s latest corporate deal, which has Toyota Motor Sales USA agreeing to spend nearly $8 billion over 10 years to increase minority participation in the company, is being attacked by conservative groups who say Jackson continues a ‘shameless’ pattern of ‘shaking down’ corporate America for ‘private gain.’
“In announcing the agreement with Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition, Toyota called it a ‘comprehensive rededication to diversity and inclusion.’
“The company agreed to spend $7.8 billion over the next decade, or roughly a third more than what it currently spends, on a variety of programs to increase the hiring and training of minorities as well as the amount of business conducted with minority-owned equipment suppliers and advertisers.”

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), charged at the time “that Toyota had ‘yielded to threats and pressure from Jesse Jackson to spend millions of dollars with Jackson-related entities.”

Toyota spokeswoman Tracy Underwood “did acknowledge Jackson’s boycott threat, but said the Rainbow/Push Coalition founder had only served as a ‘catalyst’ for the changes.”

As the trial showed, Trayvon Martin was not killed because of the Stand Your Ground law. Furthermore, the Stand Your Ground Law is not just a Florida law, and it applies to everybody.

1. I first used the term “buycott” in 1994 to protest a homosexual boycott of Marietta, Georgia, because of its anti-homosexual resolution. [↩]