DIGITAL DIVIDE
Preaching Inclusion
Jesse Jackson takes stock of diversity in Silicon Valley
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
SF Chronicle
Tuesday, March 2, 1999



The Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday that he plans to buy a stake in
Silicon Valley as the first step in helping minorities and women
bridge the region's Digital Divide.

In a rousing barnstorming tour that placed him before groups of
politicians, students and high-tech workers, Jackson said his
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition plans to spend about $100,000 to buy stock in
the valley's 50 biggest publicly traded companies by the end of this
week.

Assuming an average price of $50 per share, that means Jackson could
buy 40 shares of stock in each of the 50 companies -- a stake that is
largely symbolic but enough to get an invitation to each company's
annual meeting.

The stock purchase is an extension of the strategy that the civil
rights leader already has brought to Wall Street -- buying stock as
leverage to get corporate executives and boards of directors to
embrace diversity.

``We want to be shareholders, not sharecroppers,'' Jackson told an
enthusiastic crowd of about 450 students during a noon rally at San
Jose State University.

The former presidential candidate preached his theme of equality
through economic inclusion during speeches at a breakfast for about 60
newly elected South Bay public officials and labor leaders, at a
midmorning gathering of about 70 high-tech industry representatives at
the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and at the noontime rally
at San Jose State.

Jackson breezed into town to launch the Silicon Valley version of
Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition's year-old Wall Street Project, which already
has purchased stock in about 100 Fortune 500 companies. Jackson has
estimated that 68 percent of those companies' boards have no minority
members.

The Wall Street Project has persuaded corporations like SBC
Communications and Bell Atlantic Corp. to look for minority-owned
firms to manage pieces of their pension fund assets.

The Wall Street project is now expanding its focus to Silicon Valley,
where a series of stories last year in The Chronicle highlighted the
fact that the black and Latino communities were not getting a
proportionate share of jobs in the area's booming technology
industries.

The project will draw on donations and investments from a network of
sup-

porters to buy stock in companies like Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp.,
Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple Computer, Applied Materials and Oracle
Corp.

Next, Jackson wants to convene a meeting of top Silicon Valley chief
executives to ``build bridges'' and suggest ways to increase diversity
in their business practices.

``We want to establish a trading relationship with them,'' Jackson
said.

He criticized the ``apartheid boards'' of companies but added that his
goal goes beyond the racial makeup of boards and workforces.

He said the next civil rights battle includes making sure that
minority- and women-owned businesses get a shot at contracts and
access to investment capital, training youth to move into technology,
and ensuring that tech companies stop ``boycotting'' minority and
female consumers.

``Inclusion is the key to economic growth,'' he said. ``We've won
everything we asked for, but we don't have what we need. We have not
won the battle for access to capital because we have not fought that
fight.''

During the midmorning meeting with technology-industry workers --
mainly representatives of minority employee associations and
recruitment agencies -- Jackson was preaching to a receptive choir.

The audience also included officials from the Department of Labor and
companies like Intel who also were quick to agree with Jackson.

``We want to do our part to close the Digital Divide,'' said Richard
Draper, Intel's public affairs director.

Other audience members noted that Jackson's star power might have more
impact than any outside demonstrations demanding change.

John Templeton, founder of the Coalition for Fair Employment in
Silicon Valley, noted that his group had to go through bureaucratic
hoops and fly to Los Angeles to meet with Intel's Draper to voice
concerns raised by The Chronicle's Digital Divide series.

But Templeton said Intel was well represented at Jackson's meeting,
which was arranged in less than a week.

At San Jose State, Jackson told the students that he had not decided
whether to run for president again in 2000, but he also asked students
who were not registered to vote to sign registration cards.

The only discordant note all day came when Jackson told the students
they should focus on courses that would result in high- paying jobs.

``You can't fly an airplane on cultural music,'' Jackson said,
eliciting a low murmur of discontent from the crowd.

Gerson Castro, a junior political science major, said he was
enthusiastic about Jackson's speech but noted that the remark slighted
students who were taking arts or other nonbusiness courses.

``Not everybody's going to be engineers,'' Castro said.