Get The Scoop On How Ancestor Jesse Jackson changed SE Queens With a Dream That Awakened the World!

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Rev. Jesse Jackson: The Campaign That Taught a Generation to Dream —
From Chicago to Southeast Queens and
the World

✊🏾 By Kamau Austin and the Southeast Queens Scoop Resource Team

The world lost a freedom fighter today, but in truth, Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson never belonged to one place. He moved through history like a drumbeat — from the cotton fields of South Carolina to the streets of Chicago, from the voting lines of the American South to the townships of Africa, from the global stage to the storefront churches and block associations of Southeast Queens.

Rev. Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84, closing a chapter in the modern Civil Rights Movement that stretched from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final days to the rise of a Black presidency.

But for those of us who came of political age in 1984 — this is not just an obituary.

This is a memory.

This is a movement.

This is personal.

The Man Who Carried King’s Mantle Into the Economic Battlefield

Jackson was not only a marcher. He was an architect of economic justice as civil rights.

Through Operation Breadbasket and later PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition, he forced corporations to hire Black workers, invest in Black communities, and open boardroom doors that had been sealed since slavery.

He understood something that Southeast Queens has always known:

Political power without economic power is a promise without a budget.

Long before “supplier diversity” became a corporate buzzword…

long before “DEI” became a national debate…

Jackson was negotiating billions in jobs, contracts, and investment for Black America.

He globalized the struggle — negotiating the release of prisoners in the Middle East and the Balkans, standing for democracy in Africa, and turning the Black freedom movement into an international human-rights language.

1984: When Hope Walked the Streets of Southeast Queens

For many of us in Southeast Queens, Jesse Jackson was not a distant figure on television.

He was the campaign.

In 1984, in what was then the 65% Black 6th Congressional District — represented by a white congressman and structurally disconnected from its demographic reality — Jackson’s presidential run did something the traditional political establishment could not:

It unified the un-unifiable.

• The Nation of Islam.
• The Five Percenters.
• The National Black United Front.
• Rev. Herbert Daughtry’s African People’s Christian Organization.
• Allen AME in South Jamaica.

Street organizations. Church people. Nationalists. Integrationists. Young militants. First-time voters.

All moving in the same direction.

Not because they agreed on everything —

but because Jesse Jackson made them believe they were part of the same future.

Get The Scoop On How The Black Health & Wealth Virtual Summit 2.0 Showcases A Dream Team Of Medical and Business Moguls

Help Us To continue to inform and empower our community please Donate. Get The Scoop Weekly On the Global Black Community and Southeast Queens, NY. Subscribe to Our Mailing List. Receive the Latest Events, News, Jobs, and Top Community Economic Development Stories Like this one Click Here | Reach up to 1.3 million people Promote

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The Black Health & Wealth
Virtual Summit 2.0 Showcases a
Dream Team of Medical and
Entrepreneurial Powerhouses

Feb. 25th and Feb. 26th
7 pm - 9 pm ET

Free Reservation For 1st 50 - Attendees using Zoom Link  Tap Here

Or...

RSVP with Eventbrite Below for
Feb. 25th and Feb. 26th
7pm - 9pm ET

The Black Health & Wealth Virtual Summit 2.0 isn’t just another online event — it’s a strategic gathering of culture, capital, and community.  Curator Kamau Austin shares his overview "this year’s summit is already bringing together a Dream Team of medical innovators, wealth builders, business architects, and movement leaders who are flipping the script on what health and economic empowerment looks like in Black America."

"In a period when over 1.1 million Black people have lost their jobs and Black unemployment hit over 7.2 percent, since the last election cycle, the Black Health and Wealth Virtual Summit 2.0 is a timely and relevant event to jump start an economic reset in our community," adds Austin.   This year's line up of presenters for the virtual summit are impressive to say the least and state the obvious. 

On the wealth side, financier and investor Gary Smith will break down how he has helped Black communities move from being shoppers in the mall to owners of the mall — making major corporations cut the rent check to us.  Gary also has extensive experience in helping Blacks and other entrepreneurs buy and sell viable businesses.

Financier, Business & Commercial Real Estate
Investor and business broker Gary Smith 

Tech titan and multimillionaire Chuck Starks, author of Get Rich While Black!, will share how he scaled an Inc. 500 company and turned distressed properties in our communities into high-value community assets.

Self-Made Millionaire Chuck Starks

The health and innovation lane is just as powerful. Medical researcher Renee Williams is using AI to help Black women achieve better health outcomes, proving that technology can be both culturally competent, enhancing health, and life-saving.

Medical Researcher and
AI and App Innovator Renee Williams 

Afi S. Okon, MPA, founder of the American Obesity Foundation, continues to push solutions and policy conversations around one of the most urgent health crises impacting our community.  Ms. Okon is a Solutions provider with focus on wellness and community empowerment.

Afi is the Creator of Let’s Make Healthy Our New Happy, a nationwide campaign designed to reframe health as joyful, doable and family-centered journey that meet families where they are – at home, school, places of worship and in their neighborhoods. With over a decade of expertise in nonprofit leadership and deep-rooted passion for community well-being, Ms. Okon has dedicated her career to addressing health disparities through education, advocacy and empowerment.

Pierre Clark is a Harvard-trained entrepreneur and will deliver high-level strategies on creative business development and smart investments.  He is the Founder-Editor of The Entrepreneur’s Corner™, Homefree, NuFutures Development Ventures LLC, and NuMillennium Opportunity Capital Ltd.

Pierre is also a well respected writer and publisher on entrepreneurial and business operations.

From Kitchen Tables to
State Contracts:
Dr. Jamila Simon’s Blueprint for
Community-Driven Wealth

Dr. Jamila Simon, PhD, is a visionary entrepreneur, researcher, and systems strategist who operates four purpose-driven enterprises across housing education, business consulting, food innovation, and community development. As the SHEO of Radical Mama Housing, Conscious Connections Consulting, Health is Wealth Housing, and Groton Ghost Kitchen, she is building models that turn relationships into revenue and community knowledge into scalable economic power.

A Cornell University PhD in Global Development, Dr. Simon specializes in community-driven translation research — transforming kitchen-table conversations into funded programs, state contracts, and measurable impact. Her work amplifies youth voice, strengthens Black agricultural networks, and expands access to urban agriculture through her leadership as Principal Investigator for the national 4-H CYFAR LEGACY initiative.

At the Black Health & Wealth Virtual Summit 2.0, Dr. Simon will reveal how entrepreneurs and community leaders can enter new business markets using relational capital, strategic partnerships, and government contracting — creating sustainable pathways to generational wealth and community ownership.

AI Film Superstar Eric Hamilton: Directing the Future

"The Architect of AI Hollywood Joins the

Black Health & Wealth Virtual Summit 2.0 to

Break Down the Next Era of Tech, Media & Ownership"

Eric Hamilton is an award-winning AI filmmaker, technology leader, and President & Executive Producer of EHAMX Studios, a next-generation AI film company pioneering cinematic storytelling through generative artificial intelligence. With over 30 years of experience across Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, and Dow Jones, he blends executive leadership with creative innovation to redefine how stories are made and distributed.

His feature film EHAM Classified won Best Sci-Fi Film at the New York International Film Festival, and his AI-generated music work has been featured on CBS News. Through his signature “Machine-Perspective Cinema” style, Hamilton explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, culture, and human instinct—shaping the future of film in the AI era.

Checkout Eric Hamilton's Electrifying
Movie Trailer Below