Ukrainian forces used drones to attack two oil tankers in the Black Sea, alleged to be part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ used to evade sanctions. The Gambia-flagged ships, named Kairos and Virat, were said to be empty and are now out of service.
Published On 30 Nov 202530 Nov 2025
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Russian “shadow vessels” are using false flags to skirt sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine, according to a new report.
A total of 113 Russian vessels have flown a false flag in the first nine months of this year, transporting some 11 million tonnes of oil valued at 4.7 billion euros ($5.4bn), according to the report published on Thursday by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank.
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“The number of Russian ʻshadowʼ tankers sailing under false flags is now increasing at an alarming rate,” said report co-author Luke Wickenden.
“False-flagged vessels carried 1.4 billion euros ($1.6bn) worth of Russian crude oil and oil products through the Danish Straits in September alone.”
Russia’s clandestine shadow fleet transports sanctioned commodities, especially oil, under non-Russian flags to evade scrutiny.
Every vessel sailing on the open seas is required to fly a flag that provides it with legal jurisdiction for its operations in international waters.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows countries to grant their nationality to ships and fly their flag.
Some countries provide open registries that allow foreign-owned or controlled vessels to use their flag, a practice favoured by some shippers due to lower regulatory burdens and registration costs.
In its report, CREA said that 96 sanctioned vessels had flown a false flag at least once this year as of the end of September.
A total of 85 vessels registered at least two flag changes six months after being sanctioned by the European Union, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or the United Kingdom, according to the think tank.
Six flag registries that had not flagged a Russian ship before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had at least 10 such vessels each in their fleet in September 2025, according to CREA, for a total of 162 shadow vessels.
“In addition to the risks of false flagging, we also see that ʻshadowʼ vessel operators are taking advantage of capacity limitations of economically weak nations to exploit their flags and existing regulations to gain passage rights to deliver blood oil,” said co-author Vaibhav Raghunandan, calling on the EU and the UK to reform their flagging regulations and practices.
CREA said it based its report on vessel ownership and flag registry records obtained from maritime safety platform Equasis.
It said it cross-referenced the data with the IMO Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GSIS), a global shipping industry database.
Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, said the CREA’s findings aligned with previous reports on Russia’s shadow fleet.
Ziemba said Moscow had resorted to “more evasive techniques” on the back of increased pressure from the EU, as well as moves by China to block so-called “zombie vessels”, which use the registration numbers of retired vessels.
While the US and the EU have continued to roll out new sanctions on Russian oil, “there is an open question about enforcement”, Ziemba said.
With sanctions enforcement becoming more difficult due to the growing illicit trade, countries would need to target vessels, intermediaries and buyers to significantly reduce Russia’s oil sales, she said.
“But that comes with costs,” Ziemba said, suggesting that China, a major buyer of Russian oil, could retaliate against countries that tightened sanctions.
“Plus, actual enforcement might mean more quasi-military stoppages of vessels to check papers, something that these countries might be wary of doing,” she added.
When we talk about conflict in a country, we usually think of war, crisis, violence, and so on. Of course, these conflicts are crucial phenomena and need to be discussed. The civil war in Sudan is no exception. Sudan has been a country experiencing a humanitarian crisis since the military clashes in 2023. There are strong allegations of foreign interference through illicit funding, which has exacerbated this crisis. This issue is important to address because it shows that transnational societies are not always glorified as positive entities and that globalization can be an instrument contributing to the suffering of the Sudanese people.
The crisis in Sudan was sparked by a power struggle between the government military, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Initially, the two military groups were allied to overthrow the regime of President Omar Al-Bashir, but disagreements arose over how to integrate their respective forces. Suspicion arose on both sides, leading to fierce fighting on April 15, 2023. The capital, Khartoum, suffered extensive damage, and the fighting spread, displacing more than 3 million people across the country and abroad. (Prayuda, Syafrana, Sundari, Shiddiqy, & Riau, 2024)
Given the complexity of the Sudanese conflict, the author views the Sudanese conflict as a concrete illustration of how transnational society and globalization can give rise to new contradictions: promising interconnectedness and collaboration across borders, while simultaneously giving rise to networks that exacerbate humanitarian crises. The author analyzes the Sudanese conflict based on the concepts of transnational networks and shadow globalization. This paper focuses not only on domestic phenomena but also involves various non-state actors. Thus, the author is guided by three arguments, namely: first, how the transnational network strengthens the conflict so that the conflict has been organized to the global level; second, how globalization becomes a tool for illegal flows, thus triggering ongoing violence; and third, how the presence of transnational networks and shadow globalization makes the Sudanese conflict not only related to domestic affairs but also a global responsibility due to complex interdependence.
The Sudanese conflict has involved transnational actors who play a role as suppliers of weapons and illegal funding for the warring factions. A report from Amnesty (2024) asserts that “the conflict in Sudan is being fueled by a constant flow of weapons into the country,” originating from China, the UAE, and Turkey. Anti-material rifles, jammer drones, and mortars made in China; armored personnel carriers (APTs) from the UAE; hundreds of thousands of blank firearms from Turkey; and variants of civilian light weapons from Russia have provided external support for both parties in the conflict. All this data clearly shows that national borders are no barrier to the export of violence. Brokers, military contractors, and sponsoring states continue to supply weapons, ultimately providing them with ammunition for war. In other words, the Sudanese conflict could transform into a global war, with transnational communities acting as intermediaries in supplying weapons and interests across borders.
The role of transnational networks is the reason why the Sudanese conflict is difficult to stop. When supply A is blocked, another supply emerges. In the concept of transnational networks, “Transnational networks are webs of interactions that connect actors across national borders for the exchange of resources, information, or influence” (Keck & Sikkink, 1999), so these cross-border non-state actors are independent and not controlled by national governments. Reporting from France 24, according to Sudanese officials themselves, there are sources of mining industry and Swissaid research; almost all of Sudan’s gold flows to the UAE through official trade routes, smuggling, and direct Emirati ownership. This certainly provides funding for the warring armies to purchase new weapons.
Amidst the rapid flow of globalization, we cannot ignore shadow globalization. This concept describes how aspects of the illicit economy are transforming from the domestic sphere into transnational networks operating under official auspices, thus giving rise to mutually beneficial relationships between markets and criminal groups. According to Peter Lock (2005), when countries reduce regulations and begin to open their economies as part of neoliberal globalization, this actually allows criminal agents and groups to move freely in the global sphere, for example, through money laundering or illicit trade. There is a strong suspicion of the misuse of legal economic activities, ultimately leading to illegal objectives that violate international law. Thus, shadow globalization is the dark side of globalization because it operates in accordance with legitimate global flows.
Sudan possesses abundant natural resources, including oil, gas, and gold reserves, but these resources are diverted through illegal cross-border channels. A report from Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) indicates that the country lost approximately US$5.7 billion between 2012 and 2018 due to illicit activities, particularly in the gold and oil resources sectors. (Integrity, 2024). There are strong indications that funds intended for the benefit of the Sudanese people are instead being diverted to fund armed groups. More broadly, a 2020 UNCTAD report also stated that Africa loses approximately US$50 billion annually to illicit financial flows. This aligns with other reports that define illicit financial flows as funds whose origin, transfer, or use are illegal (In, 2020). Comprehensively, globalization can be an instrument of the shadow economy to support the ongoing violence in Sudan.
The situation in Sudan demonstrates that global structures are interdependent. Connectedness through technology, economics, politics, and security forces has erased national borders. Consequently, the decisions of actors, both formal and informal, influence other countries. Transnational networks and shadow globalization have transcended national borders through financial flows, arms trade, and gold, which have entered global markets and indirectly implicated external actors. Consequently, dependencies created by globalization impact economic stability, security, and humanitarianism.
Global responsibility is questionable, as the assumption that the conflict in Sudan is solely domestic is a misleading narrative. Every actor involved behind the scenes must recognize their moral responsibility for the profits derived from this conflict, for example, through the trade in gold, oil, and arms. According to a report by Chatham House (2023), the Sudanese conflict has a strong transnational dimension due to the involvement of Gulf states and global markets in the war economy. Furthermore, UNCTAD (2020) has confirmed that illicit financial flows in Africa have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars that could have been used for development and stability. Therefore, if globalization is understood as a global realm connecting all actors, the authors strongly argue that stability must be seen as a shared responsibility.
The three arguments above demonstrate that the Sudanese conflict can no longer be viewed as a domestic issue. The role of transnational networks and shadow globalization clearly illustrates how globalization fosters openness to cross-border cooperation but also opens up illicit flows of funds, weapons, and resources that exacerbate conflict. Furthermore, the concept of complex interdependence explains how the actions of one actor impact others. Therefore, the Sudanese conflict is a moral and political responsibility of the international community. Globalization has bound countries in interdependent relationships, so achieving stability must be seen as a shared project of the entire global community. With this awareness, the world is expected to view conflicts like Sudan as a real test of global solidarity and humanity.
Therefore, any findings regarding foreign funding and the involvement of global actors in the Sudanese conflict require further reporting. This article is not intended to marginalize any particular party but rather to open up space for reflection on the fact that amidst globalization, the boundaries between local and global interests are increasingly blurred. This relevance reminds us that the Sudanese conflict is not merely a spectacle but rather a mirror for shared humanitarian responsibility.
These days, when politicians toss around the word “peace” like it’s going out of style, its real meaning has gotten pretty murky. Sometimes, peace isn’t about freeing people—it’s more like slapping a new kind of control on societies that are already hurting. Take the latest U.S. draft resolution to send an international stabilization force into Gaza, which they pitched to the UN Security Council. It sounds all nice with talk of stability, rebuilding, and keeping civilians safe, but if you dig a little deeper, you see the sneaky play of power and the drive to stay in charge. After all these years of fighting, blockades, and total destruction, the same folks who helped cause the mess are now stepping up like they’re the heroes here to fix it and watch over the peace. So, the big question pops up: Can a peace that’s forced by those in power really count as peace, or is it just a fancy label for keeping things the way they’ve always been—a calm on the outside, but underneath, it’s all about hanging onto inequality and the rules of who dominates whom?
The U.S. draft seems like it’s trying to fill the security hole after a ceasefire and deal with the broken-down government setups in Gaza. But right from the start, in its opening parts, it’s obvious that the whole thing leans more on outside management of the crisis than on actual justice or letting Palestinians decide their own fate. Suggesting a two-year “International Stabilization Force” basically sets up something that feels a lot like an occupation, where the key choices get yanked away from the people on the ground. This kind of top-down approach, what experts in international relations call “peace from above,” has bombed time and again because it doesn’t build up the local ability to bounce back—instead, it locks in a reliance on foreign powers for politics and security.
Another big problem is how this force is set up to be more about taking charge than just keeping an eye on things. Regular UN peacekeeping gigs are all about staying neutral and observing, but this U.S. version gives the green light to use force to “get the job done.” That change in wording—from peacekeeping to straight-up enforcement—shows how Washington wants to bend international groups to fit its own foreign policy goals. When a force like that can throw its weight around with coercion, it stops being about mediating and starts turning into
actual governing, making peace more about who has the muscle than about talking things out.
The third sticking point is around political legitimacy and who gets to represent folks. Sure, the draft throws in mentions of a “transitional authority” or “peace council” to run Gaza for a bit, but it doesn’t lay out any real democratic way to pick who’s on it. In reality, this group would just be the paperwork side for the international troops, and at most, it’d represent Palestinians in name only. Looking at it through the lens of international law, this setup is dicey because it could stomp all over the idea of people ruling themselves, swapping it out for some kind of condescending oversight—kind of like what happened with those international setups in Kosovo and Bosnia after their wars.
On the economic side, the rebuilding plan tucked into this thing doesn’t have much of a focus on fairness. The resolution hammers home how urgent it is to rebuild, but the ways to hand out the money and resources stay firmly in the grip of international committees that are tied financially and politically to Western governments. Instead of giving power back to Palestinian communities, this could just repeat the old “strings-attached aid” routine, where fixing things up becomes a way to pull political strings. In that setup, help with the economy isn’t really about growing or developing—it’s more like a tool for keeping society in line, turning the whole recovery process into something that controls people rather than mending what’s broken.
Politically speaking, sidelining the nearby countries is another major flaw. Arab nations, who are right there geographically and share a lot culturally with the Gaza situation, only get a nod as backup players. This built-in shutout creates a bigger divide between what’s actually happening on the ground and where the decisions are being made, which hurts both how legitimate the mission looks and how well it might work. We’ve seen from history that when international efforts don’t have buy-in from the region, they usually flop because they miss the local nuances and push cookie-cutter policies instead of real back-and-forth conversations.
From a humanitarian angle, the draft has drawn a ton of heat. Groups that watch out for human rights are sounding alarms that putting a force with wide military reach into such a shaky spot could ramp up the chances of abuses against regular people. The plan doesn’t spell out any solid way for independent checks or holding folks accountable if things go wrong. We’ve got examples from past UN operations in Africa and the Balkans showing that without those protections, you can end up with some serious ethical and human disasters. So, ironically, a plan that’s supposed to shield civilians might wind up putting them in more danger.
In terms of how it’s worded, the U.S. draft keeps pushing this old-school idea of “security as something good for the whole world,” where the big powers paint themselves as the keepers of order and peace. In this way of talking, peace isn’t born from fair deals—it’s the result of managing everything from the top and wiping out any say from the locals. The draft’s full of gentle phrases like “stability,” “reconstruction,” and “humanitarian aid,” but they hide a whole web of uneven relationships and power structures. Even though it’s smoothed out for diplomacy, the text is a classic case of what critical thinkers in international relations dub “interventionist neoliberalism”: keeping domination going while pretending it’s all about a stable global setup.
On a symbolic level, the draft says a lot too. By floating this plan, the United States is trying to come off as the fair broker for peace, despite everyone knowing its track record of backing the occupation and keeping inequalities alive in Palestinian areas. This split personality chips away at the plan’s credibility right from the heart. When the folks writing the resolution are also key players in the conflict, any talk of being neutral just doesn’t hold water. A peace that comes from that kind of mess isn’t built on trust—it’s hanging on a shaky power balance that’s way too fragile to last.
We shouldn’t just see the recent U.S. draft resolution on Gaza as some routine diplomatic paper. It points to a bigger pattern in world politics: using peace as a way to control things. On the face of it, it stresses security, rebuilding, and keeping things steady, but underneath, it’s based on this unequal split between the “bosses” and the “ones being bossed.” Rather than handing back control to the people in Gaza, it keeps them stuck in the loop of outsiders calling the shots and trades away their local say-so for the sake of some international system. From that angle, the peace they’re proposing isn’t stopping the violence—it’s just reshaping it.
The way the plan structures politics and security is more about enforcing rules and holding things in than about delivering justice or letting people stand on their own. No real ways to check accountability, wiping out Palestinian input, the heavy-handed military vibe in the writing, and leaning so much on institutions run by the West—all of that screams that this resolution isn’t fixing anything; it’s adding to the mess. Even if it dials down the fighting for a while, it could spawn a fresh kind of reliance that links Gaza’s comeback to giving in politically.
In our world right now, you can’t have lasting peace without justice at its core. When you ditch justice for meddling politics, peace turns into just a break before the next round of fighting. What Gaza really needs isn’t some bossy international force—it’s a real promise to respect their right to decide their own path. Any idea that skips over that basic truth, no matter how nicely it’s dressed up in caring words, is bound to keep the violence spinning. The U.S. draft, with its fake peaceful front, definitely walks right into that pitfall: a peace lurking in the shadow of power, not shining with justice.
LONDON — President Trump’s threat to bring a billion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC has cast a shadow over the British broadcaster’s future, but it could also be a bluff with little legal merit.
The president’s lawyer sent the threat to the BBC over the way a documentary edited his Jan. 6, 2021, speech before a mob of his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s history of suing news media companies — sometimes winning multimillion-dollar settlements — is part of a long-running grievance against the industry he describes as “fake news” that has often focused a critical eye on his actions.
But Trump faces fundamental challenges to getting a case to court, never mind taking it to trial. He would also have to deal with the harsh glare of publicity around his provocative pep talk the day Congress was voting to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
“If he sues, he opens a Pandora’s box and inside is every damning quote he’s ever uttered about the ‘steal,’” said attorney Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer who practices in the U.S. and U.K.
The BBC’s “Panorama” series aired the hourlong documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the misleading edit that he said gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing.
A lawsuit in England is unlikely because the one-year deadline to bring one expired two weeks ago, experts said. If successful in overcoming that barrier, libel awards in the High Court rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000), experts said.
Trump could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC.
Filing a lawsuit and demanding money is one thing, but prevailing in court is much different. To succeed, Trump would have to clear many hurdles to get a case before a jury.
Before any of that could happen, Trump faces a more fundamental challenge: The BBC program was not aired in the U.S., and the BBC’s streaming service is also not available there. Americans could not have thought less of him because of a program they could not watch, Stephens said.
“The other ticklish problem for Trump’s lawyer was that Trump’s reputation was already pretty battered after Jan. 6,” he said. “Alleging ‘Panorama’ caused additional harm when your reputation is already in tatters … is a tough sell.”
Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by some of his supporters, though he was acquitted by the Senate.
Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito threatened the BBC with a defamation lawsuit for “no less than” $1 billion. The letter spelled out the figure and used all nine zeros in numeric form.
The letter demanded an apology to the president and a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary along with other “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.
It also said the president should be “appropriately” compensated for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
The letter cites Florida’s defamation statute that requires a letter be sent to news organizations five days before any lawsuit can be filed.
If the BBC does not comply with the demands by 5 p.m. EST Friday, then Trump will enforce his legal rights, the letter said.
“The BBC is on notice,” it said.
While many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little chance of success, he has won some lucrative settlements against U.S. media companies.
In July, Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “ 60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview was edited to enhance how Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, sounded.
That settlement came as the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation that threatened to complicate Paramount’s need for administration approval to merge with Skydance Media.
Last year, ABC News said it would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos ’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found that he was liable for sexually abusing her. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to throw out that jury’s finding.
London lawyer David Allen Green dismissed the litigation letter for failing to spell out any actual harm Trump suffered. But he said Trump’s willingness to use lawsuits as a form of deal making could leverage a payout because the edit was indefensible.
“Putting aside the theatrics of a bombastic letter with its senseless $1 billion claim, there is a power play here which Trump has done many times before,” Green said on the Law and Policy Blog. “The real mistake of the BBC (and the production company) was opening itself up to such a play of power.”
Stephens said if Trump were somehow to win billions from the BBC, it could crush the news organization that is mostly funded through a fee charged to all television owners in the U.K.
But he said that outcome was unlikely and the broadcaster should stand its ground. He recommended Trump take the public relations win and avoid the damage from revisiting the Jan. 6 events that would be dredged up at trial.
He said Trump was due an apology, which Shah offered, for the BBC not upholding high journalistic standards.
“The question is, ‘Did it cause harm in people’s minds?’” he said. “Because he was elected afterwards, it doesn’t appear it did.”
Melley writes for the Associated Press.
Officially, Jacqueline Jackson, wife of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, was not among the 69 passengers aboard a Midway Airlines 737 that made a one-engine landing in Pittsburgh on the way from Washington to Chicago recently.
“Our passenger name list did not include anyone by the name of Jackson,” Midway Airlines said after the emergency.
But she was, said Mark Horrell, a fellow passenger and former neighbor of the Jacksons’, adding, “I saw more of the Jacksons on that plane than I saw of them in two years living across the street from them.”
A couple of days later, Jesse Jackson quietly confirmed his wife and one son had been on the plane. By then, however, the news value had faded.
That’s probably the way Jacqueline Jackson wanted it.
Though the incident faded with hardly a notice, it spoke volumes about Jacqueline Jackson–elusive, private and largely unknown to the public, including fellow travelers on an airplane in trouble.
While Jesse has spent the last 20 years thrusting himself into the limelight, Jacqueline has been almost as successful at avoiding it.
When she doesn’t feel like talking, requests for an interview, directed to her personal secretary, to her home, to the Jackson campaign might just as well be made to dial-a-joke. Calls weren’t taken seriously.
When she does decide to talk, pausing to accommodate an interviewer during the events surrounding the college graduation of her 61-year-old mother, she is articulate, charming, charismatic even.
Yet Jacqueline can be intimidating and combative when discussion drifts into areas she decides are off limits. Once she has made a statement, follow-up questions bounce off an invisible barrier defined by riveting eye contact and pointed repetition.
For instance, does she get a fee for her public speaking?
“Often I do.”
“Now, on the campaign. . . . ?”
“Often I do.”
“Before. . . ?”
“Often I do.”
“But. . . .”
“ Often . . . I . . . do .”
Jackson has little patience for reporters who would pry into her life.
“My friends do not discuss me with the media,” she says flatly.
And she has even less patience with the suggestion that, for an aspiring First Lady, she is elusive if not evasive.
“I would be willing to say to you that my family has been scrutinized far more than any family that’s in this public situation that we’re in today. . . ,” she says, sitting in her hotel suite in Hampton, Va., last weekend. She has granted interviews to a few news organizations lately, and she and her husband are completing a book about themselves. So she sees no reason to talk to everyone who asks.
“I am not private or protective. But there’s a point that you can’t give any more. I can’t permit you to move into my home with me. I must have my family.”
Jacqueline Lavinia Davis Brown Jackson was born 43 years ago, in Ft. Pierce, Fla. Like the man she would eventually marry, she was born out of wedlock. Her mother was Gertrude Davis, a teen-age migrant worker who earned 15 cents an hour picking beans.
Of those early years in Florida, Jacqueline remembers only talking and laughing a lot, and listening to her “little red radio.”
Her mother eventually married Julius Brown, a civilian employee of the Navy who would later work for the post office. Brown soon moved his family to Newport News, Va., where he bought a two-story, clapboard-and-shingle home in the quiet neighborhood in which Jacqueline and her four siblings were raised.
Lined with green lawns and tall crepe myrtles filled with chirping birds, it’s the kind of street where sticky spring afternoons lure folks to the front porch to chat and watch the baby carriages passing on the sidewalks.
The street hasn’t changed much since the days when the Brown children would press their noses up against his window to hear his jazz band rehearse, says De Witt Cooke, 72, who has lived his whole life across the street from the home Julius Brown still owns.
Cooke remembers the Browns as a friendly but very private family, not adverse to visiting, but not much for socializing either. “There was a togetherness in the family,” he says.
Gertrude Brown raised the children while working full time at the local Veterans Administration Hospital.
“When Gertrude spoke, that was it,” says Cooke. Jacqueline remembers that her mother was strict–too strict she thought then–but loving. She taught her daughter how to crochet and do needlework, and Jacqueline made all her own clothes. “I was very fashionable in church,” she says.
Dinner–”simple food: pork chops, corn, green beans”–was served around a big table. Everyone said grace. And the children were in bed by 8:30, Jacqueline says.
Besides church and Sunday school and Baptist Youth Training, the Brown children didn’t get out much. “I didn’t date really,” Jacqueline says. But Julius Brown was the leader of the local Boy Scout Troop, and Jacqueline remembers going to the prom “with my father’s Eagle Scout, some young man he liked.”
Sara Green, who lived next door to the Browns, recalls that Jacqueline “was different. She was the kind of person who would always talk to older people. And she always could talk. . . . She was always a girl who was going to get ahead. She had that drive.”
After graduating from the all-black Huntington High, Jacqueline went on to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.
Because blacks and whites worked together in the shipyards, segregation in Newport News was not as dramatically defined as in some parts of the South. But the local stores did not serve blacks in their cafeterias, and in clothing stores, Cooke says, “if a black tried something on, it was his, whether it fit him or not.”
Jacqueline says that as a girl she never really had cause to confront the injustice of what Jesse Jackson now calls American apartheid. In college, however, she quickly became active in the civil rights movement. And, she has said, it was political discussion that attracted her to Jackson, a top athlete and campus hotshot.
Jackson, she says, was “my first courting boyfriend.”
When she was 18, they were married. He received his degree and went on to the Chicago Theological Seminary. She began her career as a mother.
“During my day, you either came home with a degree or a husband and you were considered successful . . . I got a husband,” she says.
Jackie is certain she will get her degree some day. “But that will be after my 12-year-old gets hers,” she says.
The Jacksons, who live in a two-story, 15-room house in Chicago’s South Side, have three sons and two daughters in their 25-year marriage. The oldest is daughter Santita, 25, a senior at Washington’s Howard University. Jesse Jr., 23, and Jonathan, 22, are graduates of their father’s college, North Carolina A&T.; A third son, 17-year-old Yusef, recently was graduated from a private school in Washington, D.C. The youngest, 12-year-old Jacqueline, goes to a school in Massachusetts.
Over the years the children have traveled with Jesse. And when Jacqueline headed off to march or boycott or pass out flyers, they often went with her. “They are extremely political because they were never separated from what we thought, or from our conversations,” Jacqueline says. “When we had parties that were political parties, they were at liberty to mingle with the guests. . . . So their conversations became political conversations, they (became) interested in issues.”
It was Jacqueline’s job to hold things together, everyone involved agreed.
“She’s what we call the backbone,” says Yusef. “She’s really there to keep the family together.”
“She stayed out of the way and Jesse kept her out of the way but she gradually has moved forward,” says Edwina Moss, the wife of Rev. Otis Moss who is chairman of Operation PUSH, a Chicago-based civil rights organization founded by Jesse Jackson. Moss went on to say that Jacqueline has somehow found a balance between maintaining her own identity and being overshadowed by her husband. She remembered once telling Jacqueline that she felt at loose ends because her husband was away a lot, just like Jesse. Jacqueline responded, she recalled, “Why don’t you just throw yourself into good books?”
The nature of the marriage is hard to discern. The topic and most personal questions are basically off-limits with both Jacksons. Reporters traveling with the presidential candidate contend that the marriage seems to be showing stress during the few appearances the two make together. Friends, however, disagree.
“She has great influence on him. I think she has a great influence on anyone she’s around,” says John J. Hooker, a Nashville politician who has spent a lot of time with Jacqueline during the campaign. “She once said to me (and she says often), ‘He is, after all, my hero, my political hero.’ I think she has this real feeling for him, and I think she communicates with him on all different levels, as wife, in conjunction with fact that they’re parents, about children, also on political basis.”
“She is able to stand in the background, yet stay on the same level intellectually,” says Moss, who calls herself a longtime friend.
The Jacksons also share the financial burden. According to their latest tax returns, the couple had income of almost $210,000 in 1987, $159,000 of which came from Personalities International Inc., the public-speaking management firm Jacqueline heads, and through which both Jacksons book their appearances.
Widely traveled, Jacqueline is a forceful speaker on issues. At the same time, though, her mission is by its nature linked to her husband and his mission.
In December, 1983, Jacqueline, former Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) and a dozen or so other women went to Central America as part of a self-appointed “alternative Kissinger commission,” to further explore the information that had been compiled in that bipartisan commission’s controversial report, which recommended increased military aid to El Salvador and implicitly backed the Nicaraguan Contras.
International Tensions
The trip was difficult and sometimes frightening, with guerrilla wars raging and international tensions at a peak, others in the delegation said.
Especially in Nicaragua, many people saw Jesse Jackson as a hero and extended their enthusiasm to Jacqueline, swarming around her, shouting out affectionately and wanting to touch her each time the entourage went into the streets, the others recalled.
Likewise, the Central American press tended to focus its cameras and attention on Jacqueline, says Sonja Johnson, the 1984 presidential candidate on the Citizen’s Party ticket. A continuing and sometimes heated feud developed over Jackson’s open endorsements of her husband’s candidacy. Supporters of then-Vice President Walter Mondale, including Abzug and former Assemblywoman-now-Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina “tried to get Jackie not to promote her husband’s candidacy down there . . . They were quite certain he couldn’t get nominated and saw it as divisive.”
“She said, ‘That’s nonsense,’ ” Johnson recalled. “ ‘Obviously I want my husband to win. What a silly thing to ask me not to talk about him . . . . You can tell them we’re not all for Jesse, but I’m always for Jesse.’ ”
“I hadn’t been around many women who were so strong and self-assured, but who didn’t attribute anything to the women’s movement,” says Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, an anthropology instructor at Cal State Hayward who was Jackson’s roommate and frequent companion on the Central American trip. In late-night talks and on long bus rides, however, Jackson told Ortiz that she had been affected by her childhood experiences in the South, and the hardships of the the civil rights movement, rather than organized feminism, sharing a view among some black women that feminism is “a white woman’s thing–feeling sorry for ourselves,” Ortiz says.
“I would say, ‘You had all these kids. They must have limited your involvement,’ ” Ortiz says. “But she said it didn’t at all. She said, ‘I raised these kids to have free minds to fight for themselves. My greatest contribution to the civil rights movement was how I raised my kids.’ Her greatest pride was in her role as mother.”
Her Views
“I am mainly concerned about children and women. Equal pay, comparable pay. I am concerned that women are shouldering the burden of poverty,” Jacqueline said last weekend, her arms slicing through the air. But, she added, “I think I approach the issues of women from a, let me say, a darker perspective.
”. . . Through the slave-ship experience women did the same work and provided the same services as men . . . rather than being protected and shielded and taken care of . . . . So we had a longer relationship with the work force and the economy and politics in this country.”
This heritage has led Jacqueline to a view she calls “progressively old-fashioned.” She embraces equal pay but also certain traditional religious values. She is, for instance, pro-choice on the issue of abortion but she doesn’t believe teen-agers should have that option. Nor does she believe birth control pills and condoms should be dispensed by churches and schools.
“I believe children should be taught abstention . . . They should be taught that there are some dos and don’ts . . . I believe, young people should be taught to keep their zippers up on their pants, and girls should be taught to keep their panties up.”
That she and her mother both became pregnant at an early age does not mean that she finds such behavior acceptable, she says. In overcoming the odds against teen-age mothers, she and her mother were “one out of a million,” she says.
“I’m not terribly liberal when it comes to raising a family,” she adds.
People also observe at deep empathy in Jacqueline when she travels, an empathy that apparently is working its way through the candidate’s wife into the process of American party politics. H. H. Brookins, a power broker in Los Angeles’ black community who calls himself a close friend of the Jackson family for 20 years and a bishop of the A.M.E. Church, recalls a policy discussion among a handful of advisers in the Jackson home a few months back. When talk turned to Nicaragua, Jacqueline made herself heard, he says.
Does the candidate listen?
“Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. He’s my husband . . .,” Jacqueline says. “I have never taken advantage of my relationship with my husband. If it is an important decision, I sit at the same table with everyone else. Sometimes I am defeated. And I love to tell them, ‘I told you so.’ ”
Many of her political opinions have been shaped by her extensive travels–to the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
A Different World
“The Third World is no longer as naive as it was 40 years ago,” she says, no longer willing to be pushed around. “America is extremely vulnerable to being perceived as a nation that has military might, and bully behavior. . . .
“In our country, we sing ‘God Bless America.’ We place our hand on the Bible when we go to court. We speak of another force that we suggest should protect us because we are good. And we disrespect it in the same breath when we place so much emphasis on war and building weapons that will destroy other human beings . . . What is it? Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. It’s a contradiction.”
Jackson calls herself a traditionally religious person. On the trip to Central America, Jackson got up each morning and said her prayers, Ortiz recalled. “I’d still be sleeping and overhear her. It was very much felt. Not just ritual.”
During the bitter New York primary election when Jesse Jackson was attacked by New York City Mayor Edward Koch, Robert T. Starks, who calls himself a personal and political friend of the Jacksons’, said the couple “relied a great deal on their religious beliefs and convictions to pull them through.”
What kind of First Lady would she be?
“She’d be the replacement of Jackie Kennedy . . . in terms of style and flair,” says Brookins.
Last Sunday in Hampton, that is just how she was introduced: America’s next First Lady. She stood up in the bleachers of the Hampton Virginia Coliseum, waving to the cheering graduates and alumni of this school that was founded in 1868 to educate newly freed slaves.
On the dais, Jesse Jackson raised Gertrude Brown’s hand, saluting his mother-in-law for overcoming great odds to achieve her dream. It was in an electrifying speech of hope through education and family.
Then the Jacksons went back to the hotel for a reunion party with family and friends. After an hour, Jesse Jackson said a quick goodby to his wife and, flanked by Secret Service men, headed off for more campaigning.
Jacqueline Jackson returned to her family.