A Los Angeles-based civil-rights advocate is filing a lawsuit against Jesse Jackson, his son and a noted television judge for allegedly assaulting him at an L.A. civic event last month.
The Rev. Jesse Peterson, founder of chairman of The Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny, told WorldNetDaily that the noted Rainbow/PUSH Coalition leader, his son Jonathan, and TV Judge Greg Mathis confronted him and an assistant last month at a Trade Bureau Forum Meeting held by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
Peterson said he was shoved by Jackson’s son during a confrontation at the meeting, in which Mathis and others allegedly raised their voices to Peterson and threatened him.
Peterson said Mathis was “screaming and yelling at me too, saying I needed to leave ‘before you get your ass kicked.'” And he said Jonathan “shoved me as he brushed past me” in an effort to surround the activist as he tried to exit the building. He also said Rev. Jackson could be heard telling other men to “get his ass out of here.”
“The lawsuit alleges the defendants, during a Dec. 10, 2001. public meeting to discuss the awarding of minority-oriented contracts by Toyota, surrounded and assaulted Rev. Peterson – calling him ‘nigger’ as they taunted and harmed him,” said a statement by Judicial Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm that has a reputation for taking cases dealing with government waste, fraud and abuse.
“Jesse Jackson and his collaborators must be held accountable under the rule of law,” said Larry Klayman, the group’s chairman and general counsel.
The civil rights suit, to be filed Thursday in California, names Jesse Jackson, his son Jonathan, Mathis and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition as defendants. Judicial Watch will make the announcement at noon tomorrow at the National Press Club.
Officials with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told WorldNetDaily he had not heard from Jackson. He also said the suit seeks unspecified “but significant” damages.
According to his website, Mathis was “a national assistant and Detroit campaign manager for Jesse Jackson’s historic Michigan presidential campaign victory in 1988.” Also, Mathis has been an “activist” for Jackson’s PUSH coalition since 1983.
“Greg is a lifetime member of the NAACP, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and is a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” said the site.
Messages left for Mathis via his Warner Brothers television show were not answered.
BOND is scheduled to hold its Third Annual National Day of Repudiation of Jesse Jackson in Los Angeles on Monday. Peterson has said he will stage the events every year “until Jesse Jackson repents of his wrongs.”
Peterson is also a member of WorldNetDaily’s Speakers Bureau, as is Judicial Watch’s Klayman.
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