Obama "Organization For Action" Staffer Gregory Jackson Jr. Shot In D.C. (PHOTOS)

Gregory Jackson Jr. and four of his friends were leaving a cousin’s bachelor party on April 21 in Washington D.C. when something went awry.

The 28-year-old Southern region director for Organizing for Action, the post-election form of President Barack Obama’s grassroots campaign organization, Obama for America, noticed a group of men arguing on the street. Jackson and his friends walked in the opposite direction to avoid the confrontation. But it didn’t matter, someone began shooting and Jackson was right in the line of fire.

“Like anybody, we ran. But as we ran, I caught one of the stray bullets into my right calf,” Jackson explained by phone from his hospital bed in Virginia on Thursday. “So after the bullet hit, I tried to hide until the whole situation was over and then a couple of my cousins came back for me and helped me up, and we called an ambulance.”

Ironically, it is Jackson’s job to build up community support for gun violence prevention legislation. He was shot only days after the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey amendment, which would have strengthened and expanded background checks for gun sales, failed in the Senate.

When President Obama heard about the shooting, he decided to call up Jackson himself.

“He gave me a call just to let me know that he was thinking about me,” Jackson recalled. “And he just stated that he’s pretty sad I had to learn first hand how and why this fight is so important.”

He’s set to undergo another surgery, adding to the four he’s already had, and is battling two blood clots that formed in his leg after the gunshot wound. And he still plans to fight for tougher gun violence legislation.

Read the rest of his amazing…and ironic – story here.

SOURCE: HuffPost