Are our Leaders too Afraid to Lead?

There was some true mountain climbing on moving mountain Mondays on the Jesse Jackson, Jr. Show, with our fave millennial, and now First, our weekly guest host, teacher, and historian, Ernest Crim III, followed by weekly host of “The Faith Not To Fall,” Rev. Teresa Hord Owens. Ernest made clear what millennials are thinking about the current state of our government, and those who represent us, based on their historical observation applied to the present. Are today’s leaders too afraid to really make some noise? The conversation took a turn as Rev. Owens and Jesse Jr engaged certain perspectives of how the Bible, as a moral compass, has been interpreted with different ears and eyes throughout history and how that “difference” is impacting the civil code today. The conclusion? We must all stand up where we can’t to move these mountains and call our leaders to indeed, lead the way or get out of the way.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome for to the Jesse Jackson
Junior or ABLA Talk fifteen eighty. Today, the President of
the United States essentially announced the takeover of Washington, d C.
Secretary heads Heseth and Pam Bonnis flanked the President of
the United States as he indicated that he was taking

(00:23):
over the DC Police Department, some of the critical functions
of government, having not notified the DC Police or notifying
the mayor and the elected officials, sending a scramble through
local city government. In nineteen ninety one or so, my
father ran for shadow senator from the District of Columbia

(00:47):
to raise a simple point about democracy. That there were
eight states in the United States that had fewer people
in those states than lived in the District of Columbia.
The district is not a city, It is not a state,
It is a district. He argued that democracy was to

(01:07):
be apportioned on the basis of people, not on the
basis of land and territory. There are more people in Washington,
d C. Than live in the state of Vermont, and
yet Vermont has two United States senators. There are more
people who live in the District of Columbia than live
in New Hampshire, but New Hampshire has two United States Senators.

(01:29):
Reverend Jackson made the argument that the more than six
hundred thousand people who live in the District of Columbia
were entitled to at least one congress person that would
have been Eleanor Holmes Norton, who would have the power
and the right to vote in the United States House
of Representatives, but that the District of Columbia was also

(01:51):
entitled to two United States Senators, provided that by a
simple vote of the House of Representatives, the District of
Columbia could be welcomed into the Union as the fifty
first state, almost guaranteeing two progressive United States Senators. Giving
the overwhelming African American population in the District of Columbia

(02:15):
outed as potential candidates at that time, the Reverend Jesse Jackson,
the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, the late head of
the National Urban League Vernon Jordan, as well as others
were seriously considered as potential candidates for the United States Senate,

(02:35):
and even though Democrats maintained control of the Congress of
the United States and at times the Senate of the
United States, as well as well as having democratic presidents
of the United States. The same people who are crying
and hollering about the absence of democracy right now ignored
their plea by simple majority in the Congress of the

(02:56):
United States and simple majority in the Senate of the
United States and the president's signature, the fifty first state
could have been welcomed in our country, adding another star
to the American flag, but certainly strengthening in the United
States Senate progressive majority, a majority the Democrats needed then

(03:17):
and the same majority that Democrats need now. And instead
of that, today we have a federal takeover of the
District of Columbia, with Donald Trump promising more takeovers California.
Los Angeles already has a National Guard presence, but today
in the press conference, the President indicated that he wasn't

(03:40):
very happy with what's going on in Oakland, California, or
in Baltimore, Maryland. He just went down a litany of
cities where he said, very specifically at the press conference,
we will go further now. Call that a diversion from
the Epstein files. Call that a diversion from whatever it

(04:02):
is that may be mentally ailing the President of the
United States at this hour. The reality is these are
cities where we live, and coming to a city near you.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Is a.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Federal presence unprecedented in the United States since the American
Civil War. He's looking for reasons to bring the federal
government into our local municipalities. While MARYO. Bauser's administration in Washington,
d C. Is touting its numbers that we are at

(04:41):
a thirty year low in the District of Columbia with
respect to crime and by definition violent crime. Donald Trump
uses the excuse that this is the most crime filled
city in the nation without any facts or any substantive justification.
Interestingly enough, I've already heard from several black businessmen in

(05:04):
the District of Columbia who see what they call the opportunity.
What the hell is that the opportunity, Well, the opportunity
is to restructure business in the District of Columbia. And
so they don't see that everything Donald Trump doing is
doing isn't necessarily in their own interests. We can expect

(05:26):
that in many cities across the country, should Donald Trump
decide to expand federal authority, look for the business community
to say, this may not be a bad thing. We'd
like to find a way to relate to the anti
democratic forces that have seized our federal government today is
Moving Mountain Mondays with Ernest Krim and a doctor Teresa Hordorns.

(05:49):
When we come forward on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show,
We're going to talk about the federal takeover of the
District of Columbia and much more. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior
on KBA They Talk fifteen to eighty Talk fifteen eighty.
District of Columbia, commonly known as Washington d C, was
established as the capital of the United States in seventeen
ninety following the US Constitution's authorization for a federal district.

(06:11):
The area was chosen to be independent from state control
and was formed by land ceded from Maryland and Virginia.
The district was named in honor of Christopher Columbus or
New Columbia, and President George Washington. Over time, it became
known as Chocolate City because of the number of African

(06:33):
Americans that subsequently ended up working in the District of Columbia.
Our guest in this hour is Ernest Krem, the Third,
an Emmy nominated producer, public teacher, anti racist educator, and
hate crime victor who uses black historical narratives to empower
and educate through a culturally equitable lens. Mister Kreme, a
South Side of Chicago native and University of Illinois Urbana

(06:56):
Champaigne graduate, is a former high school teacher educator for
twelve years who now advocates for social justice issues and
teaches black history to the world through the social media
and with platforms that reach roughly four million people each month.
He's created content for companies such as HBO, Hulu, Disney, Paramount,

(07:16):
and The History Channel. Ernest Krim Welcome forward to the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Hey, what's up brother. It's good to be in community
with you again.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Man, It's always good to be in community with you. Well,
looks like black history is being made again today with
the federal takeover of Washington.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
D C.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Your thoughts, Yeah, I think there's no shock that it
is a town, like you said, that is known as
Chocolate City. There's no shock to me that we've experienced
in DC a thirty year low on violent crime and
yet this is happening. It for me reminds me of
growing up in Chicago in the nineties and having had

(07:55):
no idea that crime at that time, violent crime which
sometimes reaches media's eight nine hundred murders a year. Yet
through the twenty and tens we were overloaded with propaganda.
It seemed at the end of every weekend about how
many shootings there were, as if there was some type
of race to reach a certain mark. And because of

(08:16):
that misinformation being proliferated, it made people feel uneasy about
moving around the city, even though it was lower into
twenty and tens than it was twenty years prior. Oftentimes,
it's not about what the truth is, it's about how
politicians in the media is able to make us feel.
And I think when I come across news like this,
what I get from that is not only the misinformation

(08:39):
that is allowed to spread, but just how we have
always been viewed historically, particularly post emancipation, when our very
existence was viewed as a crime. Us just standing still.
Vagrancy laws were a crime. If you can imagine our
ancestors having worked for hundreds of years without pay, having
to survive, and now you have our freedom in eighteen

(09:01):
sixty five. For many of us, you don't know what
to do next, right, so maybe you are homeless, or
maybe you even want to just take some time to
do something you could not have done before. That's rest
and your very existence in that moment is viewed as criminal.
In a system of capitalism where the top priority is
to make money by any means, we have to be

(09:23):
very concerned about not just the people in our community,
but those of us in our community that are in
the lower economic classes. I'm very concerned about what the
overall objective of this is for because at the same
time this is happening, we're seeing record numbers of unemployment
within black women in our community. We're seeing jobs being
replaced time and time again, day in and day out

(09:46):
with artificial intelligence or automation self checkouts for example. To me,
this seems like a way for us to be funneled
into the prison system. And we know, based on the
thirteenth Amendber, what the prison system functions as in this country.
It is another method of enslavement. I believe that it

(10:06):
is of the utmost importance during this time that we
have people in office who are doing their jobs the
appropriate way to challenge this. We know there's a lot
going on, Like we we were just talking about what
was happening in Texas, right the last week or so,
and at the same time that's going on, when we
had Texas politicians having to flee to come to Illinois.

(10:27):
Now we have this going on. We have to make
sure all hands on are on deck. Democratic politicians have
to challenge this. We know it's illegal, we know he
cannot do this, but who's going to step up and
say that you can't get away with it? And for
those of us who are not directly in office, on
the grassroots level, what can we do to protect people?

(10:47):
What can we do to communicate this because I've seen
footage already in the middle of the night before the
official announcement even happened, people being confronted at bus stops,
people who look like us. This and again, this is
not new. We've seen it in Chicago, We've seen it
in New York stoping first. We've seen it time and
time again. But to have it approved on a federal

(11:09):
level is especially dangerous, and we all have to be
a proactive moving forward.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
To my opinion, I appreciate that, and I think that's
a very insightful analysis of what's going on the ground
in Washington. I want to add to that that the
people of the District of Columbia pay more taxes per
capita than like six, seven or eight states that the
people of the District of Columbia have fought in every

(11:36):
major American war since the Revolutionary War itself. That the
people of the District of Columbia, while they are not
part of the state of Maryland or the State of Virginia,
which in seventeen ninety seeded essentially ten square miles to
create the District of Columbia for the purposes of housing

(11:58):
the federal government. There is a delineation between the federal
territories where the capital is and the Archives are, and
the White House and the Washington Monument and the Lincoln
Memorial and those federal territories within Washington, But the rest
of Washington, d C. Where the residents live Rock Creek Park,

(12:21):
belongs to the people of the District of Columbia. It
does not belong to the federal government. And so Donald
Trump's extremely broad overreach into an area that of middle
class Americans largely middle class Americans just outside of one

(12:41):
of the wealthiest African American per capita income districts in
the United States, Prince George's County, Maryland and Old Dominion
in Virginia. This is not like one big, second class
urban ghetto. This is a very well planned city that

(13:07):
has functioned. It's had its struggles like every municipality does.
But it just doesn't seem right that Donald Trump would
authorize the National Guard on this occasion. But he did
not authorize the National Guard on January sixth.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Ernest powerful powerful expose a right there, and I think
what we have to remember and hopefully this remains to
be a wake up call. Everything that we've seen roll
out since he took office in January impacts all of us.
Everything he's done with ice being rolled out on the

(13:46):
streets in California, the deportations, disregarding the Constitution with this,
the goal and the effort of detaining three thousand immigrants today,
this is something that impacts all of us constantly. This
is not just something that's impacting the Latino community. This
is not just something that's impacting even us. We have

(14:09):
to all be aware of this because I believe what
has happened right before our eyes is this is just
a way for him to practice what you've already mentioned,
where he intends to roll out across the country and
in fact, he's already mentioned places that he's targeting. We
have seen what it looks like for a fascist dictator
to come to rise, and we're witnessing this in real time.

(14:30):
And the question that I constantly have for people is
what will we do? Are we going to be prisoners
of the moment as we scroll through social media? Are
we going to react in all? Are we going to
send smmh and angry reactions on Facebook? Or are we
going to commit to doing something moving forward? It feels

(14:53):
as though we're in something that's too deep right now,
but there has to be aware. There must be a
way for us to mobilize in a progressive manner moving forward,
because we have to remember that this is not something
that this is something that was handed to him essentially,
And I think that's what's truly when I think about it, Brother,

(15:14):
it's so upsetting because you know, people like yourself, people
like me, have talked about this and we saw what
we saw a glimpse of what it was like for
four years, for twenty sixteen to twenty twenty. So when
we think about the way that works, I think we
have to then recognize that collectively, we then have the
power to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And

(15:38):
I think that's what we have to be focusing on
moving forward. What can we do in this moment to
mobilize and what can we do to ensure that we
have some form, some remnant of a democracy moving forward.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
You know, there's a part of me that says that
that's the question of the hour, the one that you've
raised about what can we do, how can we do it?
And what makes the most sense? Now if I told
everybody to make sure that their neighbor were registered to
vote and to drag someone to the polls, they would say, well,

(16:14):
we've already heard that, we've already done that. Well, there's
nothing else short of that. And how powerful that moment
actually is if, in fact it happens on the scale
of recognition of the problem that the only nonviolent approach
to what is taking place in our country is the vote.

(16:36):
It is the Christian, the Jewish, the Islamic response in
the truest sense of our religions to the moment. It
is the only system in human history where we have,
within our individual and ultimately our collective power to do

(16:58):
something about it that is is acceptable in the sight
of the people. What I am concerned about is in
all of the recent polling, forty three percent of voters
in the United States are still undecided about who to support.

(17:20):
In twenty twenty eight undecided at forty three percent, even
on the South side of Chicago undecided forty seven percent.
And when we begin to peel back the onion earnest
of the undecided in the United States, there we find

(17:42):
poor whites and poor blacks, and the LGBTQ, and those
who are struggling to live on Medicare and Medicaid, and
those who are working hard every day and at the
end of a hard day's work, they cannot buy bread cheaper,
they cannot pay rent cheaper, they can't even get a
bacon an egg sandwich cheaper. But they deserve fairness from

(18:04):
a government of for and by the people. I don't
have the answer to that arnest, other than I wish
I could vote ten times. I wish I could vote
more than once.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
And I think what's interesting about that is I think
we can because when you think about the fact that
we have so many people who have not been exercising
that right, that's essentially what it would. It boils down
to when I think about the county I live in
in Illinois, where in local elections, for example, we have
sometimes a ten percent of registered voters, which means that

(18:37):
ten percent of people are picking who will rule over
the one hundred percent right. And when I really as
you speak, and I think about all the different ways
this can go based on what he's doing, because the
more you criminalize people, the less likely they are to
have the opportunity to exercise that right to vote. I
think there's a method to this madness in so many

(18:59):
ways and so many fastest that we have not yet
begun to impact. Because the goal has to be daily
for this administration to sow confusion and chaos, because if
we are confused in this, we can't even think about
the importance of making sure our neighbors are registered, but
then also too, making sure that our neighbors are okay,

(19:20):
because when you are in community with folks and you're
checking on them and you're making sure that they can
vote for the betterment of their livelihoods, you're also checking
on their livelihood in that moment. We have to know
our neighbors literally the ones next door to us and beyond,
and we have to make sure that they are in
some type of communication with people that can respond to

(19:41):
this proactively if they are placed in harm's way with
what's happening in DC.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
I am I am particularly moved by your understanding of
the issue and just how deep profound it truly is.
I do want to add that when we think about
this fledgling of an experiment, the democratic experiment, that African
Americans have been so central to its development, As Ernest

(20:08):
said earlier, from thirteen fourteen and fifteenth Amendment to the
nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing the women the right to vote, the
twenty sixth Amendment guaranteeing eighteen year olds the right to vote,
it seems to me that our democracy has never been
in more peril than it is at this hour. And
I can't figure out completely for the life of me,

(20:30):
why forty seven percent of the people who are not
voting in are in effect voting for what is taking place.
In other words, you have no choice but to be
conscious in this process. An unconscious and an ignorant voter
is the worst thing on earth. I've bumped into some
elected officials the other day, and I told them we
need to start doing voter registration. They said no, no, no, no, no, no,

(20:53):
don't do no voter regstation in my area. I got
all my voters. No, no, don't do no voter registration.
I'm not discussed sing about the voters that the three
people that vote for you. I'm discussing about the ninety
seven percent or the ninety seven people who aren't voting
for anybody beyond you. But they're so afraid of the
ninety seven that they are happy with the three people

(21:16):
who vote for them. That's an example. That's a stretch
on Jesse Jackson Junior. This is kbly Top fifteen eighty.
When we come forward more with Ernest grim the thirty
Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. My very
special guest in this hour is none other than our
regular contributor Ernest Krim. Ernest, welcome forward to the Jesse
Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Thanks for having me back. We're having a very important
time to conversation and discussion now.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Ernest is my favorite millennial, a young man whom I
have great expectations for to lead our people one day
out of the wilderness that we find ourselves in. President
Donald Trump called out five cities across the United States
as he discussed his decision to formally declare public safety
emergency in Washington, d C. Triggering a federal take over

(22:00):
of the city's police department. Trump's remarks insinuated that Baltimore, Chicago,
Los Angeles, New York, and Oakland could face similar efforts
from his administration, with the President saying the effort to
address crime and homelessness in the US would go further
as he specifically named the cities why the Blue Cities,

(22:23):
ernest Why is every time he tries to distract from
personal problem, does it feel like it hits us harder
than it hits anyone else? And I specifically mean us
as African Americans. It just looks like, as soon as
the Liberals come after Donald Trump for his personal behaviors

(22:45):
from Jis laying maxwell to the Epstein files, he just
finds a group of negroes somewhere to beat the hell
out of. Why does that way?

Speaker 3 (22:56):
You know, It's like, oh, don't it's not me, I
didn't do anything. Look at the black person. They're the problem.
They're the problem. No, no, no, no, not me, the white guy.
It's them. It's them. It's seriously fit as a history
like a history teacher, I just see the same playbook
US over and over, and it's mind bigler, because that's

(23:18):
essentially what has been done since the colonial period. If
there's class solidarity amongst different groups of people, those who
have the wealth, and we're talking primarily it's been white
men in this country, they will throw that in there
to distract people. Oh no, it's not me that's disenfranchising you.
It's the black person who has not been able to

(23:39):
gain any wealth in this country. That's the issue. They're
the problem. Look at them. We're talking about the fouls.
We're talking about this fascion state that we see unfolding.
And he keeps pointing at these blue cities not just
because they're blue, but many of them are led by
black men. There's black leadership, and a lot of these
cities are doing doing things that are in direct opposition

(24:02):
to him. First, but then also too, they're finding success
with violent crime being down in many of these cities,
from Baltimore to Chicago and so on and so forth.
And these are sanctuary cities too, These are cities that
are welcoming migrants in this area, regardless of all the
flac they may have caught locally, they welcome the people in,

(24:25):
which seems to be the antithesis of what he wants.
And isn't it funny that the party that is so
called for personal rights and personal liberties and in states
rights would exercise this type of federal overreach. It's the
same party that wants your kids to think in school
that the Civil War was about states rights. But it's
only about states rights when it's about disenfranchising people especially.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yes, that's that's the history. I mean, that's why Ernest
Krim the third is my favorite millennial. All right, that's
not an oration from notes that that's what he knows.
It's what he studies. It's what he takes with him
into the classroom every day. It's what he takes with
him when he arrives at the voting booth. All of
that information matters when you make a decision about who

(25:10):
to vote for and who not to vote for. Those
are the facts. That's the culmination of a free mind,
of a free black man's mind. Who can think that's
what it sounds like now, Ernest. I do have this question, however,
because our liberal friends right now, from my perspective, are
unusually quiet about the federal takeover of the district of Columbia.

(25:35):
We don't hear much from really, in my opinion, maybe
I've not heard it yet from Democrats in the Senate.
I've not heard much from our liberal friends in the
House of Representatives. Several governors want to be president of
the United States, but I don't hear them pushing back
against this federal takeover. We've got other governors who, as

(25:55):
a result of Governor Abbott and Texas's move against the
voting right tech the nineteen sixty five, are now threatening
their own version of it, without mentioning that they would
have to unpack minority districts to create more conservative Democrats.
That's the reality. So you know, right down the middle
of this history is this black line that is our history,

(26:19):
and we get to observe it, right, but we also,
at the appropriate time get to intervene in it and
hold the line on what constitutes justice because neither side
I feel like the avatar, I see you, I see you.
It's like neither side can see us.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah. It to me, it feels as though, from especially
those who are in power, there's a certain level of
comfort ability that they have that doesn't seem to make
these issues as urgent of a matter to them as
they are to the people on the grassroots level. We
are talking about issues now that are between life and death.

(26:58):
Of this is our life because these are people hopping
out of SUVs, unmarked cars, who are disappearing people. Again,
what we have seen happen to migrants to Latino on
black and otherwise is now happening to us, or it
was already happening so as I should say, it's the
cycle of it all, but under this administration, it's now

(27:21):
happening to us. The target of DC that's against us
right now. And I think that when we consider, you
know why some may be still would support him, and
I know some people who look like me and otherwise
who supported him prior to the election and said they
were going to vote for him. In all those type
of nonsense. I think that there's so much pride that

(27:43):
people have and making their decision and pride and not
wanting to admit that they were wrong, And there's so
much grandstanding that I don't understand not being able to
call out something regardless of your party affiliation, when somebody
does something wrong. This is not a representation of what
anybody who claims to be for America and a democracy

(28:06):
should be for. But you see so many people making
excuses for it, and it just rings of this allegiance,
this unmitigated allegiance to what we refer to as white supremacy.
But what often comes across, like my good friend John
Graham says, is white insecurity. There has to be I

(28:27):
understand there are a lot of things going on right now,
but for the congressional members on the Democratic side who
have not yet decided to speak up, everybody has a
role to play. And what I hate to see though
so often it seems as though those of us black folks,
especially who are the minority in Congress, are often the
ones who are put on the front lines of these

(28:48):
issues without any type of support. Who's going to take
this on. Everybody has a role to play, and they
have to be front and center on this. On the
political end, we have to exercise every avenue we can
legally to confront this and contest this, and the community

(29:09):
on the grassroots level has to do the same. But
it doesn't feel like it's validated unless we have that
voice speaking out. And I think that's what we're missing
right now. I would like to be optimistic, brother Jesse
and say, well, maybe because you know, it's still very early,
that maybe because it's just it just happened. People are
trying to, you know, put things, put pieces together. But

(29:31):
the time is now some type of statement must be
made for us.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
I am well, I'm somewhat bewildered by what is taking place,
the absence of certain voices, and I even woke up
this morning saying to myself that was taking place in
tex Texas.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Uh, maybe maybe we're taking the wrong tact. And I know,
I just have a minute, So let me say this
me things. Democrats should not react to Abbot's mid decential
jail remandering scheme by opening up their state plans to
comply that do comply with the Voting Rights Act. Methinks
states should enter into a lawsuit together against the state

(30:10):
of Texas defending the Voting Rights Act. Let that be
the issue. If the Supremes see the Democrats willing to
join Republicans mid decinil Jerrymander, the Supremes will strike down
the Voting Rights Act and blame the Democrats. We need
to be plaintiffs in Texas against what Texas is doing,
not adjusting or conceding the Voting Rights Act in our states,

(30:34):
playing a game that could undermine our representation. I'm Jesse
Jackson Jr. Women Come Forward More with Ernest Krim on
KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty on KBLA fifteen eighty Ernest
to welcome forward on to the show.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Thanks again for having me. Brother.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Ernest Krim the third has created content for companies such
as HBO, Hulu, Disney, Paramount, and The History Channel. Additionally,
he is the CEO of Krim's Call Cultural Consulting LLC
and international speaker who's spoken at Harvard University, the University
of Chicago, Microsoft, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and
audiences in the United Kingdom and Canada. The author of

(31:13):
two books and a passionate progressive education activist who's worked
closely with organizations to advocate for educational and political equity, reparations,
mental health awareness, and food justice. Ernest, We're really glad
to have you on our program today. You know what
is the what is the millennial thinking on this question

(31:36):
of the overreach of federal power and the unwillingness of
the other branches of government to hold the President of
the United States accountable.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
I would say, you know, just of seeing this for
half a day or so, in going based on my
own feelings as well, I think that millennial Again going
back to some of our previous conversations too, we have
a distrust for those in power. We understand that there's
a need to participate, but we have a genuine distrust already.

(32:15):
So we already in a sense are wondering if they,
if they could have done something to prevent it, more,
what they have done something more So, from what I'm
seeing now, just the conversations I've scroll pass, there seems
to be this feeling of we have to do our best,
ourselves as best we can to mobilize our efforts. But then,

(32:36):
of course you always you also have folks who in
any generation, any group, that are apathetic to this and
probably won't be as concerned until it literally is knocking
down or coming down their block, knocking on their door,
which we see now is the intention, right. But I
think that there's already a distrust we have seen on

(32:57):
the grassroots level Jesse politicians who speak a certain way,
who appear to be grassroots, who appear to be you know,
for the for the people when they're coming up the ranks,
and then when they get elected, it seems as if
they changed completely or decided not to speak out on
the same issues that got them to that point. So

(33:17):
it's really like, well, what can we do ourselves because
we don't think they'll do anything anyway. And but on
that same token, when those politicians do speak up, I
don't feel as though we often give them the credit
they deserve, because unfortunately, those who are both enough to
do such a thing are often by themselves on an island,
you know what I think that.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Let me tell you what I observed. I watched outside
of government a bartender become a member of Congress, And
I mean she came in there with all of the vivaciousness,
all of the energy, all of the excitement, all of
the all of the right stuff on healthcare, housing and

(33:58):
education and tip and everything else. And now she's becoming
increasingly a part of the establishment. I think she still
maintains some of her flare for what is right, her
youthful idealism, but that operating and working the institution itself
changes you, right, the institution itself. Now I see a

(34:23):
lot of millennials with a lot of energy. They're very excited.
They want to do right. They've heard the call, but
they don't necessarily go there with you a history, an
understanding of the nuances of all that it took to
get to that moment that they are there, and therefore

(34:45):
shortly thereafter getting there, rather than advocating for the idealism
that you suggest got them there, they end up regurgitating
the Democratic Party's talking points, which are given to them
the first thing in the morning from people who've been
writing them all night long, and then they hand them

(35:05):
to all of the Democrats, and they expect those Democrats
to tow what we call toe the party line. That is,
all of the things they saw that needed to be
fixed when they were running for office. When they got there,
they became institutionalized to get to where they ultimately want
to go, and suddenly the things that they remembered from

(35:27):
where they were mean less. Does that kind of make
sense to your.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Brother, definitely? And as you were speaking, I thought of
a sister named Corey Bush I believe it's her name,
and she was someone and again I don't know every
single thing she's voted on, but on the outside looking
in being outside her district. It seemed a zif coming
from that Ferguson struggle. She was saying true to a
lot of the things that she ran on, and they

(35:53):
decided the establishment ran somebody against her. And that's where
we have to come in as people and say that
we can't be fooled by them trying to have somebody
come in who's not going to actually speak up for
us in a manner that we want. Times are too
trying right now for us to have somebody that's gonna

(36:13):
play the minim or the status quote. You know, like
it's almost like this quote and I'm probably gonna mess
it up a little bit, but like, there's no such
thing as neutral teaching. You know, as an educator, I
am not a giver of neutrality. I am choosing the
side of justice on everything. And when I was on
the in that classroom for twelve years, that is exactly

(36:35):
what it was. You can label me whatever party you
want to, but the fact of the matter is I'm
on the side of the people. I'm on the side
of justice and what benefits us as folks in our
community and the broader humanity as a whole. And until
we have people in power who are willing to commit
to that, then we're gonna see people do that. It's
like that. It's like, you know, the interview phase. These
politicians often times will impress us as people during the

(36:58):
interview and then they get the job in for got
everything that they said. It's not just us who are
whose livelihood is at stake because of this presidency. It
is them too, and they have to realize that.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I think I think no truer words have have been spoken.
We only have about a minute and a half left
before the before the heart stop at the top of
the hour, your thoughts, A word of hope from Ernest
Krim the third.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Oh Man, you put me on a spot with that
when I knew you were gonna give it to me.
But asking for a word of hope, I would just
tell people, you know, when I speak to audiences, my
main goal to at all times is to say that
our people, especially during the period of enslavement. Sisters like
Harriet tell me, brothers like Richard Allen, they did not

(37:48):
care who the president was. They did what was necessary
in that moment, and I want us to sometimes we
have to take the time to breathe in deeply and
not look at the bigger picture. Let's focus in on
this moment and think about what we can do that
is most necessary. I recall being so discombobulated when George

(38:08):
Floyd was murdered in twenty twenty, and the thing that
got me moving forward though, was to say, what's happening
right here that I need to do to help my
community out.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Ernest Krim is an Emmy nominated producer, public school teacher,
anti racist educator. He's always asking the question, what's love
got to do with it? Common unity, community, common unity?
What are we going to be and what are we
going to accomplish together? I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. This has
been another great hour on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty When

(38:38):
We Come Forward. It is Moving Mountain Mondays with doctor
Teresa lord Owens, author of Staying at the Table. When
We Come Forward on the Jesse Jackson Junior showing the
show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty, Moving Mountain Mondays The
Faith Not to Fall with Reverend Terry hoard Owens on

(38:59):
the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Reverend Terry Hoard Owens is
the President and General Minister of the Disciples of Christ
in Canada and the US. Reverendary Hort Owens joins me
to dive into the role of faith community and stepping
up to the challenges of being not only what we
say we are, but who we are ultimately within the

(39:20):
very fiber of who we are as a people. Doctor
Owens's new book, Staying at the Table, scheduled for release
just this past July twelfth, which serves as a push
for all believers to shun the hypocrisy that critics may
assign to the church in exchange for a unity born
from love, a vision to talk, to serve, to work together,

(39:40):
to fight for the cause of Jesus. Doctor Owens, welcome
forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 5 (39:46):
Thank you, Congressman.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
As always, I've enjoyed listening into the previous conversation and
look forward to deeper conversation.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Doctor Owens. The idea that the President of the United
States not only is not expanding democracy by supporting statehood
for the citizens of the District of Columbia, where they
would have one voting representative Eleanor Holmes Norton in the
Congress and two United States Senators. I think the same

(40:17):
thing can be said of Puerto Rico. They could have
one United States congressman and two United States senators based
on the distribution of population in the last ten censuses
of the that's one hundred years. So this idea of
expanding democracy is absolutely on on the retreat, doctor Orwoods.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
It really is, and it's happening without a lot of
pushback and with a great deal of capitulation. I think
that's perhaps been the most disturbing thing. It's not even
so much the actions that Trump has undertaken in this
second term, but there is even less resistance and even

(41:04):
more capitulation from those in his party and even those,
as you've been mentioning, in the Democratic Party and in
the general public at large. It's almost as though, well,
he's the president, he gets to do that, and or
elections matter. What's falling apart is our understanding of the

(41:24):
actual rule of law.

Speaker 5 (41:27):
I grew up you.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
We grew up in a generation where civil rights were
secured through legal means. Right we were in the courts.
No people in the United States has ever taken the
Constitution as seriously as black people. We were using every
john and tittle and claiming our rights. There so Jeneral

(41:50):
Truth said, you know, I love this Constitution, but it's
got a little weasel in it, and we've got to
we've got to to get that out. But we're watching
federal courts, federal appeals courts, Supreme Court all rule in
ways that are affirming this huge expansion of executive power

(42:14):
and are diminishing and disrupting civil and human rights that
our generation grew up believing had been hard fought and
hard won by our ancestors. And so now I'm in
the position of, you know, I've got a two and
a half year old grandson. I'm in the position of

(42:36):
fighting and working so that these rights are not beyond
his grasp.

Speaker 5 (42:41):
I mean, it's just a serious.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Upheaval, a shift, a clawing back, and then an environment
of a lack of resistance and over capitulation by people
who are literally putting themselves in their own financial gain
above what's good for the country. The only reason to

(43:04):
capitulate to Trump if you're afraid as a person who
is in the Republican Party and you're in a red district,
et cetera. The only way that you're capitulating is because
you care more about being wrecked reelected than you do
about what's right. You care more about the game that

(43:25):
you are experiencing than you do about the justice that
you came or that you said you came to advocate.
It's it's it's disturbing on so many levels.

Speaker 5 (43:37):
It's it's evil.

Speaker 4 (43:38):
I've quit trying to be nice about it and trying
to find other euphemistic things to label it, you know,
im moral, Yes, it's all of that. But sometimes you
just have to get kind of black and white and
name a thing a thing.

Speaker 5 (43:53):
It's it's it's evil. It's just evil.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
I think we got that from Hendrick last week.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
Yes, yes, yes, I was. I was shouting in my
seat when we said.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
That, given the demon a name. Let me ask you
a question. I know we're going to come forward in
the next segment talk about it. You brought this idea
that black people love the Constitution. No people have worked
the Constitution more. You know, it's so ironic that on
September seventeenth, seventeen eighty seven, a group of men in Philadelphia,
all white men, no white women, would sit around and

(44:24):
debate the structure of the government of the United States.
And yes, they did put something in the Constitution called
the Finger of God. There is no doubt about them.
I'm convinced of that. It's a literary word there, but
throughout the history it is the very people who are
not allowed in the room who've been fighting for the document,
it's amendments and its changes. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. I

(44:46):
want to explore with Reverend doctor Teresa Lord Owens the
deeper meaning the faith that underlies the Constitution and why
we turned to it and others have turned their back
on it. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior the Jesse Jackson Junior
Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. Back from Junior Show
on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. In this hour, my very

(45:07):
special guest is none other than Teresa Ford Owen. She
is a doctor and a minister and the President and
General Minister of the Disciples of Christ Church both here
in the United States and Canada. Reverend Owens, welcome forward
to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
Thanks, as always, it's always a treat to be private
conversation on Mondays.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Reverends, I want to go a little deeper on this
question of our faith. Now on September seventeen, seventeen eighty seven.
It's a group of white men in Philadelphia Liberty Hall, arguing, fighting,
debating back and forth the structure of the government of
the United States, which would become the federal government, recognizing

(45:48):
that there were states and territories who all had representatives
there battling over their respective interests. Yeah, now we weren't
allowed at that meeting. White women weren't allowed that meeting.
A black woman who's the president of major denomination in
the United States, wouldn't have been alloted of that meeting.
Probably nowhere near the meeting. In fact, you've better not
be in that meeting. And how two hundred and fifty

(46:10):
years later, the very rules that crushed us, either through
the federal government or the state government through the federalism system,
How we find ourselves decades later, two and a half
centuries later, defending the document and the rules, demanding that
white men.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
Follow the rules.

Speaker 6 (46:34):
That white men put together, that we amended the processes
that allowed us to participate in the structure of the
government itself and in the country as a whole.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
In the nation, they don't want to follow the very
rules that we've all been following since the inception of
the Republic, and it ain't like we can make them.

Speaker 5 (46:53):
Either right right right, right right right.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
We're part of it. Remindans we have faith in a
in a flawed document, and yet we still.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Endure your thoughts.

Speaker 4 (47:04):
Yeah, and it's always been flawed, right, It's never really
fully been all that it needs to be, even with
the very the Voting Rights Amendment, the Civil Rights Act
that are, you know, sixty four and sixty five respectively,
or the other way around. I think Civil Rights ACS
Sixty four, Voting Rights Act sixty five, those things have

(47:28):
been torn apart by what I'll call the discretionary authority
of the Supreme Court. And I lay these failures squarely
at their feet and fully at their feet by number
one removing the requirement for federal oversight. And I think

(47:53):
we didn't understand fully at the time how important that was,
because you were talking with Ernest earlier about states rights
and how we always turn to states rights.

Speaker 5 (48:04):
When we're trying to.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Avert compliance with something that people feel safe and just
if it doesn't align either with your higher values or
with your economic interests, we christ states' rights. But if
the federal government does not have the ability to oversee
and ensure that the states were actively enforcing those.

Speaker 5 (48:29):
Voted rights laws and those civil rights laws.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
The whole thing falls apart because you know, as doctor
King said, I can't legislate your heart. All I can
do is give you or insist that you behave in
a way, and behave in accordance with the rules that
will affirm my own dignity and my humanity. And even
though we say, and your reference to there being a

(48:54):
finger of God and there being this almost you know,
expectation that the people who served in government, the white
men who served in government, would be those of high
moral character. I've heard some analysts say, well, there hasn't
been enough. There wasn't enough in the constitution to put
more of a check on the president's power, because the

(49:16):
idea that somebody's so fundamentally immoral and flawed as Donald
Trump would ever be in the office.

Speaker 5 (49:23):
So then I think we have.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
To ask ourselves questions about what does it mean to
vote in our interests? You know, posters will say, well,
people were voting because of prices and economic issues and sensitivity.
We can't just be one issue voters. We have to
be thinking citizens. We have to be people who engage

(49:45):
with news and information, and we have to be people
who speak up and demand from our elected officials those
things that are necessary. So I think it's we've gone
from a certain kind of inequitable society where we grounded
the injustice in our view of God, a very colonial

(50:05):
view of God that God had established, you know, the
western white man. On a higher level, the whole doctrine
of discovery, that we have the right to take lands
where the name of Gospel of Jesus needs to be proclaimed.
And now we're operating in a place where we're not
even pretending that faith is at the heart of this.
Now that slow dog whistle that I'm always talking about

(50:29):
of racism, that that Trump extends really to lower income
lights who really have more in common with people of
color than they're willing to admit. We've kind of let
morality go by the wayside, and we've allowed somebody to
talk us into a very narrow understanding of what our
self interests are. And there's so there's so many layers

(50:52):
to it. It's hard to name a single cause for
what's happening. But we have to be vigilant as even
as in the midst to the chaos they're trying to create.
We have to be vigilant about understanding how those layers
go together and really trying to get at the root
of some of this, Madam.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
President, The church itself, and no one knows it better
than you, is divided, divided largely upon an inability to
agree on the Word itself, on the Bible itself. Obra Hendrix,
Walter Flucker, Howard Thurman, yourself, Bob Franklin, Michael Dyson, Cornell West, myself.

(51:36):
We all agree on one interpretation, Doctor King's interpretation by
and large, William Barber's interpretation by and large.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
But when we.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Get to when we hand our same Bible to Billy
Graham and look at the same words, it becomes a
different Bible to the evangel Now, I'm not hanging around
the church as much as I'm trying to say that theoretically,

(52:08):
we bought into this idea that there is an agreement
by all of us upon the power of the Constitution
of the United States. Now, if we can look at
the Constitution of the United States and both sides see
two different things, yeah, then there's no basis. There can
never be a basis for agreement. Except I'm reminded, as

(52:32):
our ancestors spoke to this issue so clearly when they
read the book, everybody talking about Heaven ain't going there.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
Yeah, how do we.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Take half of the country that looks at the Constitution
of the United States and does not see your freedom
or even your right to.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Be Madam President?

Speaker 4 (52:55):
And I think this is where the church really has
to stand up and as a mind saying, actually be
the church that we say we are, and not just
mottos and platitudes. And we want to get our numbers
back up. We want people to come to be in
the building on Sunday morning, and we're concerned about participation

(53:17):
in worship club basically on Sunday without preparing ourselves to
leave and do the work that the Gospel demands. It's
going to take I think a faithful few who will
take this work seriously, who will really understand that the
commandment to love one's neighbor has to be taken out

(53:39):
to its farthest logical conclusion. And that means that what
I want for myself I want for you, and I'm
willing to work to make that world a reality, a
world where you and I both get everything that we need.
I'm here in Calgary at the United Church, which of

(54:00):
Canada's General Conference, it is there by any triennial decision
making conference. Uh. And they are a full communion partner
with my denomination, the Disciple of Christ.

Speaker 5 (54:10):
And in Canada they're probably their number one.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
Justice issue is justice for indigenous peoples. And were they
create a time when the elders from their indigenous nations
can speak to the Church. And one of them said,
I look at a country like Denmark.

Speaker 5 (54:29):
You know, she's a Canada and North America people claim to.

Speaker 4 (54:32):
Have these these values of equal citizenship and equity. And
she said in Denmark, and I have a fact checked this,
but she said, you know, on one hand, in one
house you might have somebody who's a janitor or a teacher.
The next house you may have somebody who's a doctor,
and the disparity between those two.

Speaker 5 (54:53):
People will not be that vast.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
And there is this value of being able to be
safe at home.

Speaker 5 (55:00):
And what she said is.

Speaker 4 (55:02):
She quoted a book called the Blue Zones and she
said Denmark was kind of lifted up as this place
where she saw Native values, Indigenous values of community and
caring and sharing, and they're not being in equity among
what you have, or how you operate being operated. So

(55:23):
there are some values that so many of our societies
have clung to that we have allowed colonialism, capitalism, and
if there's anything wrong with capitalism, I'm more probably more
concerned about colonialism and the state of racism that it's
left around the world, and the state of inequity. And
it's all been done in the name of Jesus, and

(55:44):
so we have to we have to uproot that and
really reclaim Jesus in terms of who Jesus really is
and what Jesus really meant. Jesus was a radical. He
was not intending to lift up those who already had
wealth and power. He cared about the who the least,
people who were marginalized and not recognized in society. That's

(56:06):
the Jesus and the Church has an opportunity to speak
in this moment. But we have to quit being so
concerned about our own institutions and be more concerned about
the impact we can have on the society in which
we live, because that's the real value that we bring,
not how wonderful worship is on Sunday morning, but the
witness and the work that we can do. Aligning ourselves

(56:27):
with community leaders, aligning ourselves with politicians, not to endorse politicians,
but to align ourselves a common cause, as I say,
not common belief. You don't have to believe as I
do theologically for us to agree that people need to eat,
that people need to have a decent education, that people
need to have full access to the vote. We don't

(56:49):
need to have theological arguments in order to agree on
what's good for humanity.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
You know, I want to go in this moment to
Fanny lou Hamer when she said that we can we
can pray until we faint. Yeah, but if we don't
work and do something right, it ain't.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Gonna do nothing.

Speaker 5 (57:14):
Ye pray with your feet.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Marcus Garvey said, we must give up on the silly
idea that to ask God to do everything while we
do nothing is not is not faith, but it's ludicrous.
Doctor King says, of course that to uh ask God
to do everything while we do nothing is not faith
but superstition. I have to come to that in this

(57:39):
moment because it seems to me that somehow the action
that we take. Let me try and say it another way,
the rules are changing, and I thought with everything that
we've been through in the last two hundred days of
the Donald Trump administration, maybe we would win the House

(57:59):
m BE. Maybe Jesus would intervene in this process through
the people in the form of we've had enough.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
So why am I.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Engaging this voting rights struggle at this hour? Because the
rules are changing m H. And the Jesus that I serve.
If these rules change in the middle of the decinial period,
the middle of a decade, something we've never done before,
I'm afraid Jesus may lose. That the intervention I've been

(58:32):
waiting for could be undermined by the rules changes of men. Yes,
and so when you say step up, I mean we
have to give our faith a little bit of a
boost in this period with some righteous indignation, with some protests,
with some hell no, we won't go right, and any

(58:54):
of us.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Are are showing up in lots of places in DC.
If you looked at my expense reports since the inauguration,
you will see I've clocked a whole lot of time
in DC. Even then the press conference this morning about
the quote unquote federal takeover. You know I pay attention
to that stuff because I'm likely to be there, you know,

(59:16):
in the next week or so. But stepping up is
you know, we've prayed on the steps of Capital right
with senators, and we had them read scripture, and we
did prayer vigils all through Lent in front of the
White House and in the little side lawn next to
the Capitol that's right there near the Methodist building.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
Lots of us have been in and out.

Speaker 4 (59:41):
But the real thing if people don't show up to
vote and actually make this change, and I think that's
at the heart of some of this apathy. Do we
have to have a black man on the ballot to
get black people out to the ballot? Nine I'm part
of the ninety two percent right of black women who
voted for Kamala But what's the full percentage of black

(01:00:02):
women who voted. The elector at this time was seventy
one percent white, And of that seventy one percent of
white women voted voted for Trump, voted against their own interests. Theoretically,
poor people who.

Speaker 5 (01:00:22):
Are considered.

Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
Low wealth and low income were among those who did
not vote. William Barber always makes the argument that if
those people, if we can reach the poor to let
them know that they're vote, their franchise matters, and we
can get them to really understand and they're actually more
poor white people in terms of numbers than there are
poor people of color. And that's where that dog whistle

(01:00:49):
of racism and that dog whistle that says they're stepping
on your back on their way up, and so you've
got to take your country back. They don't understand that
they have common cause us with us and need to
get out and vote. There is a campaign called Faiths
United to Save Democracy that comes out of the Skinner Institute,

(01:01:10):
led by Reverend doctor Barbara william Skinner, trying to get chaplains,
clergy and people to not only get out and register,
but to prepare to be a presence at the polls
to ensure there aren't voter id issues, there aren't voter
suppression issues. So there are some moves that I see
the organized church taking in order to really do some

(01:01:32):
concrete things to boost the whole issue of voting and
getting people to the polls.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Barbara Williams Skinner boy that's a blast from the past,
and her husband what a ministry together in retreat helping
ministers think through liberation theology and path for action. I'm
Jesse Jackson Junior. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior
Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty are very special guest
in this hour is none other than Reverend doctor Teresa

(01:02:03):
hort Owens. When we come forward on KBLA, I'm Jesse
Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Moving Mountain Mondays with Teresa hort Owens the Faith not
to fall on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Pastor Owens, Reverend, Doctor, General,
Minister and President, welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
Oh thanks for having me. These Mondays are good for
my soul.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
I tell you, Madam President, I do have some soul
wrenching questions here, and one of them is about a
constitution itself. It seems to me that we keep hearing
in the news, and I think you've talked about it
in previous programs, that we are either in or heading
to a constitutional crisis and towards that end. I would

(01:02:48):
have more faith in the Constitution if it could deliver
from my children a better public school, public school of
equal high quality, Olympic sized swimming pools, tennis courts, all
of their after school activities right there at the school.
Whatever my son wants to do or wanted to do.
My daughter wanted to do ballet, fencing, whatever, the best

(01:03:10):
of math, the best of Latin, French, English, whatever courses
she wanted to take. I really wish that were the
definition of a public school. I wouldn't have to spend
money on a private education because the public school would
have all of these things. And if I could go
to the Constitution and force my state's legislature to build
that for me right here in my neighborhood, I would

(01:03:32):
have faith in the Constitution as an individual. And that's
true of my healthcare.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
By the way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
If I could turn to my Constitution and say, you
know what, I've got the rickets, I got this, I
got that, I got the rheumatism, I got the rheumatoid
something wrong with me. But I got this thing called
the right to healthcare of equal, high quality. And wherever
I go in America, this right follows me. And I
can get sick in Chicago, sick in Los Angeles, sick

(01:03:58):
in Baltimore, sick in a plant, sick anywhere, and I'm
good to go because the best nurses, the best doctors
are going to be there doing this thing, providing me
with the best possible care on earth under a single standard,
I would have faith in the Constitution. It seems to
me that both sides liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican have

(01:04:20):
lost faith in something that we agreed on. Help me here, Reverend,
help me restore my faith in something.

Speaker 5 (01:04:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
I have a little thing around my neck, a little
silver bar that has Philippians one in six. You talk
about confidence, this is I'm confident in this that the
one who began a good work in you will complete
it by the day of Jesus Christ. My confidence is
not in a whole lot other than God right now.
But that said, I think these undergrad you know, I

(01:04:55):
was a government political science major in college and America
Studies minor, and my dad, as I've mentioned many times,
as a black studies professor. And the founding of our nation,
as you know, was really the only people who were included,
and we the people at the beginning, were property owners,

(01:05:16):
white male property owners. And it's it's that understanding of
property that has grounded so much of we of what
we take for granted. It's that it's why we value it.
It's it's the secret to to climbing the latter, owning things,
being able to amass things and property in real estate

(01:05:40):
and money and investments. Black people were chattel, that we
were property, and we had to break the definition of
property around that in order to vote for constitutional amendments
that both destroyed slavery but even declared in the fourteenth
of a mind meant that black people were citizens and

(01:06:02):
that anybody born in the US is a citizen to
amend it with voting rights acts and amendments that should
have been really not just a voting rights access legislations,
but they gave us the vote but didn't guarantee.

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
The protection of the vote in the constitution.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
And I think your point about some of these things
really needing to be codified are really important. We now
tie everything, both healthcare and education to how much property
you have. Right are in most states the quality of
the education is based on the value of your property.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
I have a friend black family that live in Northbrook.
The wife is from Texas. They had previously had their
child in a very conservative Christian school in Northfield. I
used to work out in that area when I was
with IBM, and when they move their child to public school,

(01:07:06):
child gets issued a chromebook every semester, like you say,
Olympic sized pool, all kinds of programs, math science, chess club,
band orchestra, choir. And she said, Wow, public schools are
just really great.

Speaker 5 (01:07:22):
This is awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Public schools are doing more than the private Christian school
I was paying for. I said, no, your property tax
base here in Northbrook is providing this particular public school.

Speaker 5 (01:07:35):
If you go down south.

Speaker 4 (01:07:37):
And look at Harper High School or other high schools
in Englewood and other parts of the South Side where
the property tax values are not as great. You know,
our friend and pastor, Reverend James Meeks, when he was
in the State Senate, helped students at New Trier right
come and visit Harper High School. The kids themselves saw

(01:07:59):
the huge arities between what one had and the other
did not have. And it's because we have not let
go of that of that idea that property is what
determines value, and property is what determines access. And we
talk about public education, you know, with white flight from

(01:08:20):
the cities, that's why we want charter schools because we've
left our property interests, and those who are left with
least resources are at the mercy of what local school
boards and local cities and even states want to do.
So I think that property issue is still insidious in
our system.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Madam President, I want to share with you that Reverend
Meeks's experiment between Harper and Nutrier in this moment was
as profound as the Clerk studies and the Doll test. Yes, yes,
I will really need our ministers and our churches to
find the full high quality school and take a bus,

(01:09:03):
not this and not vitriolically, take a bus load of
the students in the school where the least of these
are on their best behavior, and take them to the
school for a tour where other students are enjoying in
a public school. All of these.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
Things right in a public school.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
And then we need to take the children in this
school and as we bring them south or east or
west or where we live, they need to be on
their best behavior. So when they come and see what
we don't have, not only can they better understand, but
maybe we take both groups of students to dinner and
have a conversation about the structural inadequies inadequacies in schooling

(01:09:50):
alone just in schools alone.

Speaker 4 (01:09:52):
In schooling alone, because if that, if that aspect of
our children's lives is not equitable you were talking about,
you know.

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
And I joked, I was like, if I have.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
To mop floors, Our son, Mitchell was going to be
in a private school because that was the best way
that we could assure his access to certain things that
we wanted him to have. Walter and I who both
went to public schools. And you know, I say this
to people all the time. Our ancestors, my grandparents, fought

(01:10:23):
for things. They thought we would be the children of
the promise, right, and here we are still fighting for
our kids and grandkids. But that inequity if it starts
in education and what you're exposed to and what resources
you have. You know, I've mentored kids who have and
taken them downtown. They've never been downtown, never seen what

(01:10:43):
downtown looks like, never experienced the whole city, don't even
know what the resources are like. Exposure and access to
options and opportunity. If that doesn't start to happen in
public schools, then our society is immediately inequitable and the
kids can never really catch up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
You know, I went to a private school that my
parents suggestion in Washington, D C. When my dad was
running for president, he was in Washington more than he
was in Chicago.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
And then when I had.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
My own children and got elected to Congress in this moment,
I went to six different public schools in Washington, D C.
And my wife and I at that time made the
judgment that our children belonged in a decent private school
because of the facilities. Yes, yes, and then well paying
for their private tuition. The rest for me was history

(01:11:32):
just for the times what it was. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. When we
come forward more with Reverend Doctor Terry bard Owens. Esse
Jackson Junior, Welcome forward to the Chilsey Jackson Junior Day
and KBLA Top fifteen eighty. Our very special guest in
this hour is none other than the President and General

(01:11:53):
Minister of the Disciples of Christ in Canada and the
United States, Reverend Theresa hort Owens, Madam President, Welcome forward
to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 5 (01:12:03):
Thank you so much, my friend. Always good to be here,
Madam President.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Before we get to our word of hope, but you
know is pretty much the last three minutes of the program.
We have about seven minutes. Can you share with us
some of the challenges that a multi racial congregation like
the one that you lead are confronting at this hour?

Speaker 5 (01:12:21):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
You know, we are predominantly white denomination, eighty percent black,
I mean eighty percent white, ten percent black, about seven
percent Hispanic, and three percent Asian and Pacific Islander, and
the Asian Pacific Islander community is really the fastest growing
percentage wise. Within that community, there are nineteen different languages
that are spoken. So it's a fascinating church. But we

(01:12:45):
deal with the same kinds of polarization that you see
across the US, And at the heart of some of
the struggle is that people are still yielding the primacy
of their faith to political categories.

Speaker 5 (01:13:06):
The whole issue with Christian nationalism.

Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
Our church has spoken against it and opposed it, but
we still have people who simply think, well, I'm a
Christian and I love my country, so therefore, what's wrong
with being a Christian nationalist and don't even begin to
question issues of white supremacy, etc. So when you deal
in an organization that's still predominantly white. Part of the

(01:13:33):
challenge that we have is getting beyond our colonial view
right that says, oh, we're so excited, we're welcoming all
these people to the table, and still subliminally thinking this
is our table, right, Oh, we elected a black woman
to be our president, and then expecting that person to
simply be a colorized version of what has gone before

(01:13:56):
of inviting people to the table and not respect afecting
their culture, their worship style, or even the variations and
how they express their theology, deciding what's the norm and
what's not the norm. So multicultural denominations have to work
really hard to move past Western white culture being the norm.

Speaker 5 (01:14:18):
I've seen it in.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
Canada as i've been here this week. There are I
didn't realize that the Canadian population twenty percent of the
population are African immigrants percent, and yet many of these
people still feel unseen. There's great sensitivity to Indigenous culture
and indigenous presence in this church, but it's still white,

(01:14:42):
normative culture. So we've still got a lot of work
to do within churches like mine that are trying to
be multicultural, because we can't just determine that I'm I
have a friend Julia Middleton, who does a lot of
work around cultural intelligence in the UK, and she's done

(01:15:04):
some work in the US as well, and she says,
you are not the benchmark for all people. I love
that line. You the way you see the world, the
way you express yourself, the way you've dressed what you value.
You are not the benchmark for the whole world, the
benchmark by which others should be judged. And in the church,

(01:15:25):
we're still in the US a white normative church when
it comes to predominantly white churches, and we have to
get past that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
I think that's right. We have just a few minutes
before the end of our show. In fact, we have
about five Is there hope? In this hour, we see
the attacks on the Voting Rights Act. We see the
takeover by the federal government of the District of Columbia,
with the threats of moving those takeovers to the people
of Baltimore, to the people of Oakland, California, to other

(01:15:58):
cities within the United States. We see a political party
that many of us identify with polling around twenty six
percent favorability ratings. It's as if they're not putting up
the fight. And it's all occurring at a time, as
we've discussed in the last hour, that people are losing

(01:16:18):
are losing faith in our sense of common belief in
something in the church. We pick up the same Bible,
but we see two different stories in the body public,
in the body politic. In the public. We pick up
the Constitution and we see the first fifteen presidents weren't
very helpful. Then Abraham Lincoln, number sixteen, and so forth

(01:16:38):
and so on. The struggle continued. The basis for agreement,
And maybe I can put it for you this way,
why should we all stay at the table?

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
I think the Bible says, hope does not disappoint, and
for someone like me who is a faith leader, there
has to be this confidence in the in this higher
power that I believe will ultimately prevail. The Bible is
full of stories of people's throughout history who have dealt
with a great number of valleys uh and difficulties, and

(01:17:14):
yet have relied on the power of whoever they call
the Holy to bring them through. And I think that's
the role of faith leaders. John Lewis always said, don't
you know, don't get discouraged, don't get weary. I'm reminded
of the poem by Langston hughes the Negro Mother, and
it says, life for me ain't been no crystal stairs.

Speaker 5 (01:17:34):
So it's at tax in it.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
And boards place boards torn up, and places with no
carpet on the floor. So don't you get weary, don't
you quit climbing, because life for me ain't been no
crystal stare. And I think of the legacy of our
ancestors who fought against odds even greater, the terrors of slavery,

(01:18:00):
the terrors of the post reconstruction world, the KKK days
in the early twentieth century, even the Jews facing holocaust
and extinction, the people in Gaza, people in Ukraine who
are dealing with so much. We have to really hold
our heads eye and those of us who can claim

(01:18:20):
faith in a God that's bigger than all this have
to not only stand in that faith, but act in
that faith and really assume some agency. This is not
the time for people of faith to be apolitical. It's
the time for people of faith to mobilize their communities
and help make this society one that reflects the values

(01:18:42):
that we believe in. You could argue that those who
are Christian nationalists have tried to do that, but I'm
talking about values of equity and inclusive love. Anytime we're exclusive,
then I think we're violating.

Speaker 5 (01:18:54):
The very law of God.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
You know I must be candid. You give me hope
to be a faith leader of a multicultural environment, a
multi cultural congregation in two different countries, to hold people
together who have varying political views and probably politically don't

(01:19:22):
agree on very much, but come together around the concept
of the gospel, the concept of a sacrificial life of
a servant leader, someone that two thousand years ago, that
even to this day, is worth following. And to hold
all of that together in the present. To be a woman,

(01:19:45):
to be an African American woman and look out upon
from the mountaintop or even from the valley, view the
division that exists within the nation, and then to look
out upon a multicultural throng of people and say, I'm
going to preach a gospel that holds everyone together. Now,
it's easy in this environment to preach a gospel to

(01:20:08):
everybody who looks just like me, feels like me, talk
like me, like me. But setting up every Sunday then
Monday through Saturday, trying to figure out a new angle
on a new blister in the society has got to
be some kind of extraordinary. I just want to take
this opportunity to say that we're so proud of you

(01:20:29):
and so great your contributor to this program.

Speaker 5 (01:20:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:20:32):
It's a joy to be here every week. Thanks for
the confidence in me to have me here sharing with you.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
I can't wait until next week. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
This is the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. You've been listening
to Moving Mountain Moundays on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
We have a pretty amazing week scheduled for you. It's
Senacious Tuesdays with Barbara Arnwine, Wealthy Wednesdays with reverend S
Todd Yeeri, on Thursdays none other than Johnny Mack and

(01:21:03):
on thought Provoking Thursdays that is, and on Friday that
Meet Fridays with Gina Towns. That's what I line up
look like this week, and we're looking forward to having
a lot of fun, unless, of course, Donald Trump intervenes
with something crazy that changes the course of our week.
Jesse Hex when we come forward, You're on KVLA Talk

(01:21:23):
fifteen to eighty more tomorrow