Civil rights activist from US to visit Kolkata

KOLKATA: Prominent US civil rights activist and politician reverend Jesse Louis Jackson will arrive on his maiden visit to Kolkata on Sunday evening. Rev. Jackson, a two-time US Presidential candidtate and former Senator, has a host of engagements in the city before he departs for Delhi on Wednesday evening.

Reverend Jackson will be hosted during his four-day visit by Young Horizons which runs educational institutions, including free schools for children from economically weaker families, in Kolkata and South 24-Parganas. Monday morning will see Rev Jackson open a festival for children of four free schools of South 24-Parganas run by Young Horizons and inaugurate the annexe building on one such school at Bhagabatipur near Lakshmikantapur. He will speak on 'Mission of the Church in the 21{+s}{+t} century' at St Paul's Cathedral at 3.30 pm that day and then address a trans-national conclave on 'Education Liberates' at Kala Mandir at 5.30pm. His last engagement for Monday will be an address to Bengal Club members at 7.45 pm.

Reverend Jackson is the founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a prominent body in America working for economic empowerment and expanding educational, business and employment opportunities for disadvantaged and coloured people. Rev. Jackson, who worked with Martin Luther King, is also an ardent advocate of political empowerment, national healthcare and changing public policy. Known as the 'conscience of the nation' and 'the great unifier', Rev. Jackson was awarded the presidential medal of freedom in 2000 and focus on youth forms the cornerstone of his work.

Reverend Jackson will open a new community school started by Young Horizons at Sonarpur for children whose parents work in the fire-cracker industry at 9.30am on Tuesday. He will visit Mother House at 4pm that day. A visit to an anti-child trafficking project run by 'New Light' at Kalighat will be his first public engagement on Wednesday morning and he will address students and faculty of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, on 'Management for a more humane future' at the Institute's Joka campus that afternoon. Later the same afternoon, he will visit a Missionaries of Charity project in the slums of Kidderpore that was inaugurated by former US Defence Secretary Robert Mcnamara while he was President of the World Bank. Rev. Jackson will interact with young people living in the slum. At 5pm Wednesday, he will address 700 students from different colleges on 'Keep Hope Alive' at Kala Mandir. He will fly to Delhi later that evening.

Rev. Jackson contested the US Presidential elections in 1984 and 1988 and served as Senator from Washington DC in 1991. He was appointed special envoy of the US President for promotion of democracy in South Africa and has been a successful hostage negotiator freeing many US citizens and soldiers from conflict zones like Iraq, Liberia, Syria and Kosovo. He is a strong supporter of the labour movement in the USA and around the world.