Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mayor Johnson launch 'Volunteer Sacramento'

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of America's leading civil rights icons, today helped Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson launch "Volunteer Sacramento" - a campaign to recruit 350,000 to 500,000 volunteers to each give at least 10 hours of their time this year.
Jackson - a two-time candidate for president - captivated several hundred people at the downtown Boys & Girls Club with his trade-mark maxims and rhymes :
He got the crowd to "Repeat after me: Children remember more where you took them than what you bought them"
"The best of us who help the rest of us are the most blessed of us," Jackson declared. "We can't all be well-known but we can all be great because we can serve..,you never know when the seeds you plant are going to germinate."
Jackson, a community organizer in Chicago for 40 years who was at the Rev. Martin Luther King's side when he was assassinated in Memphis, called volunteering "the divine rule of reciprocity... you cannot give without receiving, you cannot take without losing."
Volunteerism can take many forms, Jackson said, mentoring, organizing, rebuilding, teaching and giving hope to those coming out of prison, those struggling with gangs and drugs, those who can't read and write.
One of those was Jackson's own grandmother, who was not going to vote for him for president "because she could neither read nor write. To go mark an X was embarrassing to her. She had so much wisdom and advice and she was not going to give it. And somebody volunteered to help mark that X."
Jackson noted that Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez were both volunteers, along with the freedom riders who helped desegregate voting in the American south.
Johnson said he learned volunteerism from his grandfather, who would always stop to help drivers whose cars had flat tires or ran out of gas.
Two days before Christmas one year, Johnson remembers his grandather dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night, drving from Oak Park to the projects on Broadway and 5th Street, and telling him to ring a particular doorbell and give them $20, "which seemed like to $200" back then.
"A lady opened the door and I handed her the $20 and she starts crying," he said.
It wasn't until a few days later that Johnson's grandfather told him that the mother of eight had had all their Christmas presents stolen, Johnson said. "It's not a bout what you say, it's about what you do."
Joining Jackson and Johnson was state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento who remembered there were always coaches, drama teachers, parents and other adults helping out in his San Francisco neighborhood.
"In these difficult times we must make sure that everything that's good in our communities continues," Steinberg said. "The greatest joy in life is volunteering, doing something, anything to help others. The beauty of volunteerism is that nobody tells you what you have to do - you choose what to do. "
Volunteers can sign up at www.handsonsacramento.org, or by calling 916/447-7063.