This American giant fought for hope, love and equality — values our current leader hates

For those of us who grew up watching the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has died at 84, he didn’t just march for freedom and rights. He charted a deeper path. For six decades, the man who stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and watched his mentor, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., struck down by an assassin’s bullet, carried King’s message of the “Beloved Community” for the rest of his life.

King’s Beloved Community was a vision of a society rooted in justice, unconditional love, and nonviolence, a place where poverty, hunger, and hate are replaced with reconciliation and inclusivity. For the stubbornly determined Jackson, it was not a fantasy. It was achievable through collective action to dismantle systemic inequality and promote peace.

Those were Jackson’s causes. His dying wishes. He never wavered. For a long time, he was the moral compass in America. But now, as we mourn him, we find ourselves in a country that isn’t just losing its way — it is actively ripping apart the Beloved Community.

Jackson believed in the Beloved Community. Donald Trump pushes “America First” and “Us versus Them.” A town square where Black, brown, and marginalized people don’t belong.

Consider the nature and temperament of these two men. The contrast is stark.

Jackson’s life was defined by sacrifice that included arrests, threats, and racism, the grinding work of coalition-building among people who didn’t always agree but believed in shared dignity. He was steeped in a theology of service. He was convinced leadership meant standing last in line and speaking first for those with no voice.

Trump’s public life is defined by vilification of others and glorification of self. He looks down on the downtrodden. He denigrates marginalized communities, mocks the disabled. He stokes division, hoards wealth, exalts power. After brushes with death, he suggests God spared him so he could impose policies that cause suffering.

Jackson absorbed blows for the powerless. Trump deflects responsibility to them. One saw public office as a crusade for morality. The other treats it as a platform for retribution and enrichment.

History will record that one man bent over backward to widen the circle of American democracy while the other narrowed it to fit the dimensions of his own: white, straight, nationalistic, shielded by phony Christianity.

Where Jackson possessed moral courage, willing to lose elections but win ground for justice, Trump has shown the instinct to dominate rather than persuade, to mock rather than minister. Jackson accepted defeat. Trump calls losses “rigged” and a “hoax.”

Jackson’s masculinity was rooted in empathy. Famously, he cried when Barack Obama was elected president. He prayed with striking workers and linked arms with immigrants, laborers, civil rights marchers, and LGBTQ+ Americans, long before it was politically safe.

Trump’s brand of strength is transactional, not transformative. He uses ferocity as proof of toughness, a barrage of insults to telegraph a dark vision.

To Jackson, the marginalized were people. Trump calls them threats.

In the measure that matters, character, Jackson towered. Trump stands diminished by the smallness of the ideals he champions. Trump is unforgiving. He is beyond imperfect — lecherous, unrepentant, remorseless.

This is not to canonize Jackson. He was flawed. He fathered a child out of wedlock, made antisemitic remarks, could be vindictive. But when he was wrong, he apologized.

When last week Trump posted a grotesque video depicting the Obamas as apes, he refused to say “I’m sorry,” one of countless wrongs left unacknowledged.

On Tuesday, Trump used his tribute to Jackson to aggrandize himself and take a pointless swipe at Obama.

The timing of Jackson’s death is more than tragic. It is darkly ironic. He leaves as the “Rainbow Coalition” he painstakingly built, synonymous with the Beloved Community, is being dismantled, color by color, by an administration that treats civil rights not as a moral imperative but as “woke,” discrimination against white men.

Consider the blatant assault on civil rights enforcement. Jackson spent his career forcing corporate America to reflect the nation’s diversity. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an order effectively criminalizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government. This administration has deployed the Justice Department against institutions that prioritize diversity.

Trump’s siege extends to the ballot box. Jackson’s life was defined by voter registration drives and barrier-breaking campaigns. Now we witness the most aggressive rollback of voting access since Jim Crow.

By championing restrictive voter ID laws, gutting the Voting Rights Act, and redistricting Black seats, the Trump administration is ensuring the Rainbow Jackson envisioned is systematically clouded over, voting turned into a laborious chore for the marginalized.

Perhaps most heartbreaking is the calculated dismantling of the social safety net and Jackson’s dream of economic justice. He understood that freedom is hollow if the poor go hungry. That belief is being trampled by Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” that slashed Medicaid and SNAP benefits for the most vulnerable.

While Jackson fought for health-care access and student debt relief, the Trump administration moves to cut aid and strip protections.

Trump tells the poor poverty is their own fault.

Even the basic protections for the “outsiders” Jackson embraced are being incinerated. ICE deportations tear families and communities apart, the antithesis of Jackson’s call for a path to citizenship. The reinstatement of bans on transgender service members and the removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people are not mere policy shifts. They reject the inclusive rainbow humanity Jackson preached from every pulpit.

It is no coincidence the LGBTQ+ flag is a rainbow too.

The tragedy of Jackson’s death in the Trump era is that the Rainbow is being bleached white. The man who told us to “Keep Hope Alive” is gone. The man in the Oval Office demands surrender to despair.

There will never be another Jesse Jackson. If there is justice in history, there will never be another Donald Trump.

• John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”