Wealthy Wednesdays on The Jesse Jackson Jr Show w/ Atiba

Wealthy Wednesdays on The Jesse Jackson Jr Show features Conversations with Atiba on 2nd & 4th Wednesday, and host of the weekly series, “The Politics of Our Faith,” Rev. Dr. Todd Yeary, Esq., in a 1st hour powerhouse discussion on our responsibility to make demands of the government by voting in, and out, leaders, especially the President, but across the gambit, when the interests of the people are ignored or neglected. The narrative is being controlled, in order to “wag the dog.” Then, Rev. Dr. Yeary puts some reality on our “truth” when we say we are “free.” Who controls the narrative? We have to tell our own.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson

(00:02):
Junior Show. Today is Wealthy Wednesdays, where S. Todd Yeery
is our very special guest in the second hour, but
in this hour, our very special guest is at Tiba Madgin.
I'll come forward in just a moment with his introduction.
I want to begin with two personal stories about a
concept that I want you to understand for today's show.

(00:24):
I was very young. My brother Jonathan was very young.
My brother Yusuf was very young. I was attending high
school in Washington, d C. And I would come home
for some weekends, some spring breaks, some periods of time.

(00:47):
But at high school in Washington.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
D C.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
I really began to figure out who I was as
a person and as an individual. When I came home
one Thanksgiving, my brothers and I got into a little
skirmish and a little fight which happens amongst brothers. My
mother came back in the room after she heard us fighting,

(01:12):
and she knows that she did not tolerate any such fights.
She then asked my brother Yusef to tell the truth.
How did this begin? Yosef turned to my mother and said, hmm,
It's Jesse's fault, I said, Mama, yusef is lying on me.

(01:35):
That didn't happen. It isn't my fault, it's his fault.
It's Jonathan's fault. So Mama punished me for it. My
father came in later and said, what happened? He said,
in that moment, I thought, Jesse's going back to Washington
in a couple of days. But I have to live

(01:55):
with Jonathan. So let him going back to Washington. But
I have to live with Jonathan. This dude, right, here's
go beat me up later. It's called deflection. On another occasion,
I must admit, my mother called me fella. My father
called me fella. Everybody called me fella when I was

(02:17):
growing up. I was a bad fella. I can't remember
what it was that I did, but I'm sure it
was something that was off the charts, off the cuff, whatever.
But on this particular occasion, my mother's turned to me
and my father turned to me, realizing that I had

(02:38):
done wrong, and I sought to deflect it by coming
up with another story that simply was not true. Deflection
is a part of who we are as human beings.
When we don't want to own our behavior when we're
looking for someone to blame, and with blame, whenever blame

(03:00):
is present, there's always shame. There's always guilt that a
companies blame. Jame, blame and guilt are part of the
cycle of life, and so are resentments and regrets. That's
what it means to be human. It separates us in
the human space. But when the President of the United
States engages in deflection, it becomes all to a parent

(03:25):
with huge consequences, quinces for the spirit energy of the
republic huge. And so while Washington, DC is now royal
ing in the release of the Epstein files and its
consequences for the President of the United States and the
Justice Department, the Department of Justice, the court system, and

(03:52):
the truth. Most importantly, the president is now engaging in deflection.
This kind of deflection undermines the faith that the people
have in the government, in its processes, in its systems

(04:13):
of operation. So, rather than owning his behavior, President Trump
is now pointing fingers at different issues. They call it
presidential triangulation. It's another way of saying, wag the dog.
That is, if the media is focusing its attention on

(04:33):
a particular subject matter, of inquiry, like the Epstein Files.
If I can create a distraction so large, so great,
so grand, that the media turns its attention away from
the Epstein Files to other issues, then I will have

(04:54):
accomplished my goal of deflection. The tragic cont quinces of
presidential deflection can, as the movie depicted, can lead to
bombings of foreign countries, can lead to wars, can lead
to assassinations, can lead to turning the attention of the

(05:16):
people away from issues that are at hand. We saw
some of it when Prime Minister not in Yahoo in Israel,
for example, had been convicted and alleged of committed crimes
on the ground and his overwhelming response in some parts
of the Middle East deflection. Will presidents of the United
States engage in similar deflection. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. When

(05:38):
we come forward, We're going to talk about the AI
video posted by President Donald Trump showing the arrest of
Barack Obama as a major distraction. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior
on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. When we come forward, jack
Jesse Jackson, Hinish grow kid Ad. My very special guest
in this hour is a Teba Madion, a Teba is

(05:58):
a former deputy executive director for the National Black Caucus
of State Legislators. He is a Strategic Alliance consultant and
president of Party Politics USA or US. He's worked as
a TV political contributor for BNC News, The Heat in
the Know with Moe, The Leslie Marshall Show, iHeartRadio, Gov
Exec ninety six point three, whu R, and The One

(06:19):
American News Network. He most recently was a guest host
on Rising, an American daily news and opinion web series
produced by Washington DC political newspaper The Hill. Tiber released
his first novel, Saving Grace, a political thriller a Tiva
welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Thanks Jesse, It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Presidential triangulation. I have another very very small for you,
wagging the dog presidential triangulation to deflect at a cousin
one time. I still have a cousin. His name is
Rashan and Lavelle and Mama had given us a good
whooping on this day. Boy, I can remember the dates
of whoopings, and after I got whooped and Jonathan got whooped,

(07:02):
and Yusef got whooped, and boy, she put it on
the veil. I mean, she put a whooping on him.
And after Rashaan saw everyone's whooping, he was she was
just about to turn her attention to him, and Lashan said,
Aunt Jackie and Jackie, wait just a minute, Wait a minute,
Aunt Jackie, wait a minute, And she said, what is it? Rashon,
He said, Mama, Aunt Jackie, I got something in my eye.

(07:24):
I heard. Can can you look at this thing in
my eye? I heard? Mama said, when I get finish
whooping you, all of the tears are going to wash
that little dust out your eyes. Rashaan was trying to
deflect from the issue at hand. Atiba, the president of
the United States is embroiled in a major controversy regarding
the Epstein files, and he's turning now to Obama and

(07:45):
Hillary Clinton. Your thoughts.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
Well, before I answered the not so serious question, I'm
going to triangulate and ask was it a switch or
was it a belt?

Speaker 1 (07:58):
A belt, I mean the one with the little oh
or the let.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
You know.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
On the other hand, you know, with your story brought
back some memories of my brother and Demani when my
when we were gonna gonna get a beating, he would
yell before the belt was in the air, and you
would think that he was dying. And that's what I
think is where you see happening right now with this president.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
This president last screams, hollers.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
It reminds me that it goes back to the the hearings.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
And I can't remember Kavanaugh hearings.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
When we heard the senator from South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham,
he looked like he was going to cry, you know,
at one point when he was defending Kavanaugh. So you know,
you talk about and you mentioned this as triangulation. I
keep looking at this like the story from the Bible,

(08:58):
from the story from script of Pharaoh and Pharaoh's magicians sorcerers,
you know, and we think about it from magic. But
the magic is the distraction, and that's what we see
happening today. We see I keep I've been doing this
since twenty sixteen, and continue to look at the president
as Pharaoh, and that we're living in very scripture. The

(09:21):
time of scripture, the time of religion, and all these
things that we've been learning about in scripture is all
playing out right now. We just have to know how
to put it together, how not to look at it.
So much from a literal meaning, but from a figurative meaning.
So these distractions and the magic or whatever that's going on.
Whenever he says something, I honestly say to myself, think

(09:41):
the opposite.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
And that's what you know.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
So if he's saying or trying to cast into a thing,
saying that the former president did something, you might want
to start looking and wondering what did he actually do?

Speaker 2 (09:53):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I was talking with some friends of mine in the
Middle Eastern community, some of the my Jewish friends, whom
I've always maintained the security of Israel is particularly important
to all of us as Americans, but also a homeland
for the Palestinians, and there's a triangulation taking place there.

(10:15):
There's a triangulation taking place in that the distraction is
that we're no longer talking about peace and a two
state solution. We are responding to what happened on October seventh,
understandably one of the great tragedies of the modern twenty
first century. But at the same time the deflection is,

(10:39):
however tragic that was, there's another tragedy, the loss of
innocent life, women, children, humanitarian aid, and hunger and starvation
in the Gaza. That's the same thing, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
I think overall, and I agree with you, Jesse, I
think overall too, we're now looking at the human aspect
of this, and the human aspect of this is that
right now, one hundred years ago, there were very much
many of the same things that were going on, just
different conflicts going on all over the world, and America
was pulled into World War One. Right now, I've heard

(11:19):
a lot of people say, oh, this is the beginning
of World War three, and I actually think that it's
already been going on. And I say that when I
look at not just Israel and Palestine, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India,
and Pakistan, but we're not paying attention much to Russia
and Ukraine. And when you look at what's going on

(11:40):
in Russia and where the president talked about, oh, well,
this was President Obama's attempt to steal an election, it
really keeps getting me back to what was going on
in twenty sixteen, where a lot of people thought that
that election was stolen, but there was not as much talk,
you know, that went over There was some people who

(12:01):
ask for recounts. With Hillary, she lost states like Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ohio by Razor thin Margins.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
But look at what.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
Happened in twenty twenty when the president lost Georgia and
when he made phone calls asking the Attorney general to
find some votes.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Eight hundred of them if I remember correctly.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
So I think a lot of what we need to
see is right there out in plane view. The problem
is that we keep getting distracted, so we don't focus
enough or long enough. We have a short term of
tension span. But everything that we need is right there
for us to look at. So the triangulation we tend
to create our next to look at the car wreck,

(12:45):
and we have to stop looking at the car wreck
and keep our eyes on the road.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
You know, Ati, But you touch upon an interesting point.
There was a president who had a sign on his
desk that said the book stops here. In other words,
that president in that era was saying that I own
the behavior of this country. I own the behavior of
this government, both domestically and internationally, and I assume the

(13:11):
responsibility for everything that is happening right, and I also
assume the responsibility for things that aren't going so well.
But when we have an administration and or a leader
who fails to accept responsibility for health care for the
least of these, or for housing, or for education, or

(13:33):
for the state of current affairs. Who owns no behavior
for nothing, I think that the spirit energy of the
entire nation is profoundly impacted, whether it's at the presidential level,
the mayoral level, of the gubernatorial level, or any elected
official who simply is unwilling to own the behavior and

(13:55):
allow the buck to stop with them since we the
people have elected them to represent us.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
Yeah, you know, and a lot of it is that
we're not thinking so much as we're reacting because everything
is coming at us so fast. But I kind of
want to go back to something. You know, First off,
I enjoyed being on your show, and I look forward
to coming on, and you know, in the two weeks
in between every two weeks, I'm constantly like listening to

(14:23):
the show and I'm putting down my own notes. And
one of the things that I've thought about is, for one,
we don't talk enough about numbers.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Data.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
So if we just look at Republican and Democrat presidents
over the last twenty five years, and I'm going to
even take it back a little bit further to nineteen eighty.
So if you're looking at the last forty five years
under President Reagan, there were sixteen million jobs at it
under President Bush. The first it was two point six

(14:58):
million President Bush. The second there was a net loss
of twenty thousand, twenty thousand jobs from the time he
came into the time he left under President Trump in
his first term minus two million, seven hundred thousand. That's
a combined net of fifteen million, eight hundred and eighty thousand,
and that basically Reagan's carrying that.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
If you go to Democrats.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Back to Clinton twenty two million jobs, Obama eleven point
three million jobs, Biden sixteen point six million jobs, which
is a combined net of almost fifty million, forty nine million,
nine hundred thousand. We've got to go back, I think,
and really start looking at and asking our elected officials
who are saying that they're for us to just tell
the truth and just give us these numbers. And it's

(15:46):
up to us also for us to go back and look.
Now in terms of some people will say, well, within
the black community, there weren't jobs, they weren't this. Well,
we've also got to start asking the question, what is
it that we need to do in order to create
those jobs. And so there's a whole lot of other
conversations or whatever, I think they go along with this.
But when you talk about triangulation and you look at

(16:06):
what's going on, a lot of the reason why we
get distracted is because we don't have the facts.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
So I think when you raised this question about and
you made a clear line of distinction between what happened
under Republican presidents and what happened under democratic presidents, one
could also argue that that line follows Knesyan economics. That is,
Democrats have historically believed that the federal government and the
government itself should intervene in the economy in order to

(16:36):
create growth and expand employment opportunities, create job security, and
move the nation forward. And something very different happens as
Republicans around nineteen thirty five, as Democrats around nineteen thirty
five begin, particularly conservative Democrats begin to move to the
Republican Party and they adopt this concept of fiscal conservativesm conservatism,

(16:59):
that is, the economics fiscal conservatism. The fiscal conservatives argue
that the federal government and that the government itself should
have less to do in the marketplace than we have
historically seen. As a result, you don't get the kind
of job growth without government investment, investment of the American
people in infrastructure, in new technologies, in new directions. And

(17:21):
though therefore beyond the party labels, the Kynes, the ends
in this environment are losing and the fiscal conservatives are
actually winning, and it's going to be a painful haul.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
I would say, where are they winning?

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, because you can't define the economy, well I can't.
I won't say you can't because it is being defined.
The economy is constantly being defined by how strong the
Wall Street is, not how weak Main Street is. So
so you know, we've got to take control of the narrative.

(17:57):
I agree, And we keep allowing the narrative to go
on way. And where they win is that we start
repeating their talking points instead of creating our own and
elevating that in creating our own echo chamber.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's one of the things. One of the reasons I
think you're one of our most enlightened guests because you
sharpened my middle on this. Some of us are living
on the side streets. We're not on Wall Street, we're
not on Main Street, but we're on the side streets,
and we are gullible to bill whistles from Democrats and
Republicans that tell us the real problems are not on

(18:32):
Wall Street. Less of our problems are on Main Street.
The reality is the problems are on all of our
side streets and in our front yards. And yet many
of us at the same time are saying we don't
see the government working in our neighborhoods, we don't see
it working in our streets. Helped me with that at TIVA.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Listen, when I was a kid, I remember going in Washington, DC.
If you went into a corner store, guess who owns
most of the corner stores. Someone from the Asian community.
Because they recognized that there was a demand. So we
were going in there buying a you know, twenty five
cent cookies, fifty cent cookies or what you and that
was they were going somewhere like a Costco whatever that

(19:15):
was then to buy these things in bulk and come
in and sell it. And it was none of the
stuff was healthy, but it was cheap. But they were
identifying a need. Same thing as happening with liquor stores
within our community. So when people say, oh, well, they're
the jobs people create jobs. People create demand, people provide

(19:37):
whatever that demand is. And so I think that we
have to get out of our way in terms of
continue to talk about what isn't there and start looking
at why do people from other countries come here and
identify a need and then they meet that need and
they make money Because those folks who had those stores
weren't living.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
In our communities.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
They were taking their money and doing what taking it
out of the community.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
So this is the point that Carter Woodson makes in
the Miseducation of the Negro about Koreans coming to the
United States and setting up cleaning clothing cleaning facilities and
dry cleaning facilities, laundry mats. But African Americans find themselves
not in a entrepreneurial spirit or even having necessarily at

(20:19):
that time, the education necessarily to benefit from the demand
within our own communities. If I had to push back
a little bit, I would, especially in Washington, d C.
Where you are, where you live. What happens when the
federal government, through DOGE, fires thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds

(20:40):
of thousands, hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are
largely US who live in Washington, d C. And the
surrounding Coller counties and communities in Virginia and Maryland are
without something as basic as a job, let alone an
entrepreneurial spirit.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Three hundred thousand jobs lost. I have my own company.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
One of the accounts one of the projects that I
was working on was with the Department of Labor, and
I lost that contract because of what's going on in DC.
All of us are affected. The problem right now is
I think the Democrats aren't talking enough about how this
is going to impact the whole country because people were

(21:22):
paying attention more so to what's going on in DC.
All of this is a ripple effect and the tsunami
is coming.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
In this hour, my very special guest is a Tiba
Madien and this is KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm Jesse
Jackson Junior. When we come forward more with the TIBA.
He the executive director for the National Black Caucus of
State Legislators. He's the Strategic a Strategic Alliance consultant and
president of Party Politics US. A TIBA, Welcome forward to

(21:52):
the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Hey, Jesse, it's great to be here a Tiba.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Just before the break, I certainly got the impression that
this idea of self help, which is not new in
our history either, that there's this sense and I've heard
it many many times over the since Donald Trump's reelection,
that there is more we should be doing in our

(22:16):
own communities to survive. And I certainly heard you hint
at that helped me here at Tiba.

Speaker 4 (22:23):
You know, And you know, before we came on, Jesse,
I was talking telling you about a book that I'm
reading first class by Alison Stewart, which is about the
high school that I graduated from, Dunbar High School, and
Dunbar was always known as being putting out the best
of the best, and it was the first high school

(22:44):
after slavery for African Americans. And there's a story that
in the beginning where Allison's telling the story of a
woman who said, I have all these children, but I
only got this one that we need to be able

(23:05):
to go to send to school. There used to be
a time when that was the case for the African
American family, where because we needed to be working on
the farms, we needed to be helping the family but
just send one because that one then had the responsibility
of coming back to help pull up the rest.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
We live in a very eye world and we've lost
touch with we.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
And I go back to President Rake and his presidency,
and I mentioned sixteen million jobs. But during that administration,
we were moving away from the whole there was a whole.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Whole family.

Speaker 4 (23:45):
Thing was when we started seeing less families where one
person could work outside the home and we needed to.
So when we started seeing the crack epidemic and it
was breaking apart our families.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
We saw so many.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
Things happened in the eighties that I think that from
a civic sent point, we should go back and look
at But regardless of that, there are things that were
going on one hundred years ago where there was a
certain sense of pride and excellence. And this book is
called first Class. And I may upset some people by
saying this, but the reality is we're no.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Longer first class.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
We are accepting mediocrity in so many ways that it
is altered in our minds, in our hearts, and it's
affecting our soul. And so that makes it difficult for
us to try to get out of the way and
get out of the problems that are going on because
instead of looking at ourselves and saying, how can we
do something, we want to blame somebody else. And that's
the trickle down effect. I'm using them as a raven

(24:41):
trickle down. The trickle down is what happens at the
top will trickle down to the masses. And the trickle
down right now is that we see a cry baby.
We see someone who throws these tips and points to fingers,
as you said, in triangulation, to everyone else except for themselves.
The buck does no longer stops at that oval office desk,

(25:04):
at that resolute desk. And so it's not going to
change if we keep waiting for someone up top. It's
not going to change if we keep waiting for an Obama.
It's only going to change when we accept the responsibility
and start looking at each other and saying we can
be better. We talked about Obama, we kept hearing change
we can believe in. The change has to come within us.

(25:27):
Our condition and our situation will not change first until
we change what's in our hearts. And there's so much
hate and even self hate that we've got to really
figure out how we pull that apart. How we take
that apart and we start looking at the country, not
just my Black community, not just my Hispanical Latino community,
but my American community, my human community, in order to

(25:49):
change the condition, and where we really should be looking
at how we change in the human condition from where
we are right now.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
I agree with that. I don't think i've heard it
stated better. In fact, trick down economics, I argued in
the eighties, did not work because our communities were not
the beneficiaries of trickle economics. But I just think I
heard you say something about trickle up values. And the
first person I ever saw with a tongue hanging out

(26:15):
their mouth was not Michael Jordan. It was my Grandma
Tibby with a switch, And I mean she was coming
for you when you did wrong, and she had her
tongue hanging out her mouth. In fact, we didn't even
know how old Grandma Tibby was. She was our great grandmother.
She was my father's mother's mother. Grandma Matilda Burns is

(26:38):
buried in Greenville, South Carolina, next to Grandma Helen and
Grandpa Charles Henry and along with my father's biological father,
Noah Robinson right next door to them. And I find
it interesting, however, that your point about trickle up trickle
up values is something where the buck may not stop
at the White House, but it certainly stops at my
mama's door to this day. Tavis Smiley once asked me.

(27:03):
He said, we were on a commercial break when I
was in Los Angeles, and he said, Jesse, what does
your mother call you? And I said, Tavis, my mother
calls me mm hmm. She calls me. She called me
the head every day. And Tavis almost fell out of
his seat. Because my mother controlled the system of values

(27:25):
in our household, and that did matter. She didn't care
who the president was. There was going to be order.
It was going to reflect up. And these values largely
reflected her Christian values and her own upbringing and rearing,
and also some things that she experienced in her life
that she did not want us to experience. And so
she beat us for something called the old and the new.

(27:46):
I'm gonna beat you for something you did three weeks ago,
and I'm gonna beat you for something because I see
a pattern that I think you about to.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Do that makes sense, Yeah, it does.

Speaker 4 (27:56):
I mean, you know, my siblings and II to use
family events to talk about my father and when he
would beat us, and you know, my father would say
something like, you know, this is gonna hurt me more
than it hurts you, And of course you're thinking, like,
no way, it's gonna hurt you more than me. As
you get it, become an adult, you start understanding that.

(28:19):
And you know, whenever I'm hearing you say my bio
and my background, and having worked at the National Black
Call because of state legislators, one of the most amazing
and beautiful things that to have elected officials tell your
parents is you did really well with him.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
He's so respectful.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
He tells us things that you know, gets us in
the meetings, gets us here, but he says it in
such a respectful way, but it's still.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
He's telling us we need to be here, we need
to and that happens in the home.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
I think also, you know, we think about, for instance,
the word woman and man, and there's so much now
where people are talking about being non binary.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
You get in trouble from politically incorrect for us.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
But I think we really have to go back to
really thinking about what the meanings of these words. To me,
I always taught that woman is representative of the womb
of the mind, and man, not to say just the man,
but man in terms of the context represents mind. The
woman is cultivating, the woman is nurturing, the woman is

(29:28):
helping to develop the mind. And it's then, you know,
when we look at the context of how they keep
trying to break down these different things and talking about
gender roles, it shouldn't be so much about us breaking
about gender roles as much as we're looking at how
we being responsible citizens.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
So if you're when.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
You're born, whether you're a girl or a boy, and
you developed in a woman for nine months, you come
out and now you're in the womb of the family,
and if something is defence, is not nurture or not
correct in either one of those two stages, when you
get into the womb of the community, it can be dysfunctional.

(30:07):
And so I think that when we look at what's
going on within our society, there's so many things that
keep trying to tear away at making sure that instead
of empowering and protecting, it's really destroying the womb context,
so that the mind is distracted and doesn't know what
to represent, what to look at, because maybe because it
wasn't beat, and not necessarily beat always from a belt,

(30:31):
but beat in terms of discipline to be able to
understand how to be a productive citizen.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. This is KBLA Talk fifteen eighty.
You're listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
When we come.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Forward more with the de Bamadion de Bamadion at Tiba
is a former Deputy executive Director for the National Black
Caucus of State Legislators, Strategic Alliance consultant and President of
Party Politics US. He worked as a TV political contributor
for B and C News, The Heat in the Know
with Mo, The Leslie Marshall Show, iHeartRadio, GOV Execy six
point three, Whure, and The One America News Network. He

(31:04):
is an author, having released in twenty twenty his first novel,
Saving Grace, a political thriller. Atiba, Welcome forward to the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Always good to be here. Let's go so.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Let me throw this out at you. There's no doubt
in the African American community, fatherless ness is an epidemic.
We've talked about it all of our lives. In a
real sense. However, we do project Fatherhood on on the
Bill Cosby's of life during that era where The Cosby

(31:36):
Show and the late Malcolm Jamal Warner is being celebrated
as our brother that we lost recently in Costa Rica
because we grew up with him. He grew up with us.
He was the cousin, the brother that we've always wanted.
With the sisters that he had, we were part of
that family. But in a real sense. But the first

(32:00):
black president of the United States is also now this
is going to be hard for some people to accept.
He's also a spiritual father to black people in an
era when fatherlessness left us in a position where we
longed for a desire and we had a national example.

(32:24):
And recently, the President of the United States, Donald Trump,
posted an AI video of the arrest of Barack Obama
in the White House over nonsense tied to Barack Obama
in twenty sixteen, the Russian hoax that really really goes
at the heart, in my opinion, of the expectations of

(32:45):
how we see ourselves. And it's kind of an abomination
if you will on behalf of the Trump administration in
my opinion, your.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
Thoughts, remember in twenty sixteen, we kept hearing cham to
lock her up. Yes, they control the narrative. They create
an echo chamber.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Where's ours.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Because that's what he's doing and he's and I said
in the last segment, trickle down, So what he says.
You know, these people have issues in their tissues. When
you think about slavery and it's impact on us, you
also have to look at its.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Impact on them.

Speaker 4 (33:31):
And many of them were always told if you work hard,
if you do this, you two can have what we have.
Oh but wait, you can't. But you can't have their
jobs because they work for free. So then they created
that they that's when they were pitting us against them.
It's the same thing right now with immigration. So when

(33:52):
we're looking at what is happening in Washington and what's
being said and what the media continues to report, the
media will report what they hear, what they think is
going to get us to watch, And what gets us
to watch is the drama. That's why I watched, and
that's why many people watch the movie Wag the Dog,
you know, So it's the drama, and we are a

(34:13):
victim of the drama. We were looking for the car wreck.
I mean, you think about there can be a car
wreck on one side of the road, and the traffic
can be backed up on the other, not because there's
an accident on the other because everybody wants to know
what happened. So what we want to do or can
be doing, is we can change the narrative. You know,

(34:34):
I'm wearing a shirt right now that says midterms effing matters.
I've been wearing these shirts for since twenty twenty eighteen
because voting matters. Congressman John Lewis taught me. He put
into me the importance of voting. And how many of
us do we hear every election cycle. I'm not going

(34:54):
to vote because nobody is on a ballot that excites me,
going to vote because it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
My vote doesn't count.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
And that's been the trickle down, that's what people have
been telling us. So we've got to figure out how
we re educate ourselves and retrain ourselves to stop accepting
to find that we come to our house and there's
not a back door. So we cut it there for ourselves.
Because we keep carrying other people's water, we keep cutting
the door for ourselves, and we keep walking in the

(35:23):
back door. When the President Obama showed us we can
walk through the front door, We can walk through the
front door of the president's house, we can be the president.
But the problem is we also didn't control the narrative
after he became president, and we lost the hope and
that that was their goal. When Mitch McConnell said, our
number one responsibility right now is to make sure that

(35:47):
this president is not re elected, what he was saying
is that our number one issue translation is that we
don't give them any more hope.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
So then it became fear.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
That's part of what happened, right. But I was very
close to Tavis Smiley and Cornell West and others who
are encouraging Barack Obama to speak to the legitimate interests
and needs of African Americans as the first black president.
And the president decided, even in his final term, with

(36:21):
nothing to lose, that he wanted to be this person
for everybody.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
But Donald Trump is showing us that you can deliver
for your base. You can deliver for your base in
six months, yeah, the first six months of a second term,
and we've never seen that from a Democrat before. It's
going to be impossible, in my opinion, given our expectations
right now that we can elect somebody in light of
this who doesn't offer us the antithesis and promise us

(36:50):
a six months of progress in our direction that we've
seen against us in the last six months and likely
in the next four years.

Speaker 4 (36:59):
I agree with your high percent that we didn't see it,
and I applaud and happy that you and Tavis were
talking to President Obama about that. But I'm going to
go a step further and say it has to be
the people that forces the president to say those things. See,
that's where that's where this Maga Tea Party thing. People
act as if MAGA is new. Maga is the outgrowth
of the Tea Party. The Tea Party is something else.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
We're going.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
We want to keep going back historically, but we the
people have to create the echo chamber. We the people
have to stop looking for someone else to do what
we can do. And I'm saying this from this standpoint.
President Obama won in two thousand and eight, and it
was a resounding victory, so resounding that John McCann came

(37:43):
out early and said, hey, we lost twenty ten people
didn't come back and vote for in the midterms twenty twelve,
Obama wins wasn't a bit closer against Mitt Romney twenty fourteen.
He lost more seats. Why because people didn't come out
and vote in the midterms. So the thing is is
that we were there and people kept looking for the

(38:05):
president to speak to our issues when it was up
to us to force him. And I'll say this, Franklin
Roosevelt comes president, group of labor people come in to
talk to him, say this and this and this and this,
We want you to do this and this. President Roosevelt
looks at them and says, hey, I like it, but
now go out there and make me do it.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (38:24):
Because you've got to get the popularity of the people
to force him to be able to do that. The
president can do but so much you were in the
Congress you could do, but so much it has to
be the will of the people. I think that really
is the foundation of what this country and why it
has been a beacon of light for the world, because
it starts off with three words, we the people.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Now I we the people, And.

Speaker 4 (38:49):
I think that we've got to figure out how we
go back to that. And looking at that from an
American standpoint, one.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Of the I'm going to give you an opportunity for
a word of hope. One of the great challenges and
the reality of the Obama administration was this. He did
challenge from the White House, his own friends. He did
create an environment where it was difficult to speak with

(39:16):
him and share things from the base that I believe
to be true. But I know we'll cover this again
in future episodes. Atiba a word of hope, we have
about a minute in forty five seconds.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
Well, I think hope for me is, you know, every
American family, regardless of ethnicity, finding ways to look for
leadership that not only talks about making their lives better,
but talks about and delivers in terms of how to
put more money in their pockets. That's right, And you know,

(39:48):
I think that really has to be the overarching message
because of hope. The real hope is about hopeful, being
hopeful that our next generation is going to do better
than our and we did, and right now we're on
a pathway where the next generations are not on a
pathway to do better. So my hope is that we
find that we stop looking just in terms of political

(40:10):
parties or just in terms of ethnicity, but we look
at the country as a whole and we start looking
at how are we going to build relationships that go
outside of our comfort zone and bring more people to
a collective table like the one that doctor King envisioned,
that Doctor King spoke about in his dream, and that
we make that dream the reality, and that we recognize

(40:30):
that we are the hope that we want. We are
the hope that we believe in. We are the hope
that we deserve. But we have to find that hope.
We have to find that also within us and not
just keep looking for someone else to give it to us.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
My dad said, stop complaining about what you don't have,
start using what you got. A Tea Bamadion has been
our very special guest in this hour of Jesse Jackson
Junior on Kivid That Talk fifteen eighty. You're listening to
the Jesse Jackson Junior Show teen eighty. A Tea Bamadion
has me thinking and I keep hearing from a lot

(41:02):
of people that self help in the Trump era. By
the way, self help is an African American economic program
where we do more for ourselves with less reliance upon
the government, outside forces, outside community. I think doctor King
might argue that there is an interconnectedness to our reality.

(41:25):
We like certain gym shoes, but they are made in China.
We like certain shirts, but they're made in foreign lands.
So much of our textiles are made overseas. So much
of our cotton is no longer grown in the United States,
but in other parts of the world. Don't nobody want
to pick no more cotton? There's an interconnectedness here that

(41:47):
some of us likes certain kinds of glasses and shades.
They usually come from Italy or France. We like the
way they fit on our heads, the way they wrap
around our eyes. We like the frames. We spend lots
of times in stores, and so there is an interconnectedness
to even this idea of self help. And doctor King
argue that we rely every day in so many ways
upon every single person on the planet. I want to

(42:10):
talk about some of that in this hour with our
very special contributor, Doctor s. Todd Yery, who is the
principal of the UI Firm, a Maryland based litigation and
government relations firm, and also serves as the senior pastor
of the Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, and affiliates
Doctor Yuriy is also a former Chief executive officer of
the Rainbow Push Coalition, an international organization founded by my father,

(42:32):
Doctor Erie. Social justice work includes having served on national
boards from the National Action Network, past Action Chair of
the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP, Churches for Community Development,
and just on and on and on. Doctor uy Welcome
forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Good to be with you.

Speaker 5 (42:48):
As always on Wednesday, I'm hanging out at the Progressive
National Baptist Convention and so they are convening and chatting
all around us.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
But always good to be with you to see what
we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Doctor, I want to address this issue of triangulation and
what the President did when he posted Barack Obama being
arrested in the White House using an AI video. But
before we get to that, let's hang around this idea
of self help for a minute. The Tiba Mandion's got
me thinking what else can we be doing for ourselves

(43:21):
that in this economic environment where it's not just self reliance.
I mean, we're not just living on a plantation borrowing
from the next shotgun house some corn meal, but so
much of this world is interconnected, that yes, I can
love my brother next door, but so much of us

(43:41):
are part of so much of everything that's going on
in the world. Tariffs are affecting the black community, whether
we want to isolate ourselves into a little corner or not.
That's just a fact.

Speaker 5 (43:54):
Yeah, there's when we consider the context of what self
help means, it's agents right, being able to make legitimate
decisions that affect your core concerns because you have recognized
authentic power, legitimate power. It is this important discussion that

(44:21):
says there are always things that we can do, but
we also have to put it in a historical context.
This notion that we should be somehow more self reliant,
I think, defies what we.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Know to be the history of our people.

Speaker 5 (44:35):
The truth of the matter is is that every government
aid program that has ever been devised benefited other communities
more than it did ours, right, and so while it
spoke to some of the need, we didn't get.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
The proportional value of the impact.

Speaker 5 (44:52):
And so even when we think about tax cuts, or
if we think about who do these tariffs actually been,
those who are actually in production, we ran production. They
stressed us out of production, right, because the competitive nature
of our ability to be actually relevant in the space

(45:13):
has always been prominent and prevalent.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
And so when we start.

Speaker 5 (45:16):
This conversation about agency, let me give you just a contrast,
because they come up at about the same time the
Emancipation Proclamation goes in January one.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Eighteen sixty three.

Speaker 5 (45:26):
Before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, the Homestead Act was
actually implemented. So even while we're trying to get to
what was going to be an executive order of forty
eight percent a mule, the program for one hundred and
sixty acres for others to benefit was already well under way.
And so when we talk about agency, we cannot just

(45:47):
say that somehow other we're looking for the government to
do for us as opposed to with us. We got
to look at the real history and talk about this
wealth gap that exists because the government has leaned in.
And this administration is probably case study number one of
what happens when self interest finds government.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Hay in real time.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
I believe they're going to give the South Africans that
are coming to the United States land. I think they're
going to give them homes. They're already giving them benefits,
and they're not even American citizens. The very complaints that
they're making against our brown brothers and sisters, whom they are.
You have come here illegally, and some have and some
are criminal and very dangerous people, but not the vast

(46:26):
majority of them. They're escaping certain kinds of economic conditions,
no different than the Europeans escaped when they came to
the United States. When they migrated to the United States.
You really can't just cross the border. You've got to
cross an ocean. So there is a process to get
here from that perspective, but the reality at least settles
with me that when it comes to brown people and

(46:47):
people of color coming to the United States, this question
of agency remains. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to KBLA
Talk fifteen to eighty the Jesse Jackson Junior Show, and
in this hour Doctor s Todd Yery Politics of Our
Faith with Reverend Doctor s Todd Yuri esquire. He has
one foot in the pool put Pitt and one foot
in the courtroom. He is borth both a practicing pastor

(47:10):
and a practicing lawyer. Doctor Ery, welcome forward to the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show.

Speaker 5 (47:15):
He was out in the Street's practice and what can
I tell you.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Before the break? Doctor Yuriy raised the question of agency.
When someone has agency, it means they have the capacity
to make choices and act in a way that influences
their own life and potentially the world around them. It
involves a sense of control, the ability to set goals,
and the confidence to take action towards achieving them. Essentially,

(47:43):
it's about feeling like an active agent in one's own
life rather than a passive recipient of others events. In slavery,
we had no agency, nowhere to go, no names other
than the ones that around us, are children taken from us,

(48:06):
limited options for relationships, and the way in which those
relationships manifested themselves included human degradation, and more often than not,
lots of violations. With that said, doctor Earie, are we
too free? Are we so free that we can't even
see ourselves and help ourselves?

Speaker 2 (48:29):
The question is are we free? Period? Right?

Speaker 5 (48:33):
Are we just less property less chattel than we were before?
And so the question of agency when we consider how
it plays out in a number of venues. If we
look at how the courts function, if we look at
how the courts respond, that's I think something or to

(48:54):
do with personal recognition of having been able to see
the system from a perspective that most people don't. And
so when we consider how even the distinctions that we
know of at a personal level, I don't know that
it is a matter of being too free. Have we

(49:16):
become too satisfied with being not yet free but just
not so much property as we used to be?

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Okay, you know, I need you to work with me
on that, because yes, I've seen both sides of what
it means to have agency, that is my complete freedom.
I now know in more ways than I could have
ever conceived, what it means to experience confinement, to lose agency.
And yet in the post incarceration environment, there are seventy

(49:48):
million of us, which includes me, whereas felons we consider
ourselves unfree, that we know more years in unfreedom than
we even know in incarceration. Work with me here, doctor Eurie.

Speaker 6 (50:05):
Well, the very nature of what it means to have
been incarcerated means that, for the Thirteenth Amendment, you.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Have actually been enslaved.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
That's the definition of the thirteenth Amendment that slavery shall
be illegal except in instances of punishment.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
For crime and so upon conviction, whether it's.

Speaker 5 (50:33):
By jury or by plea, which is a whole different
conversation because many times the plea system is stacked against
the interest of already vulnerable communities. Sometimes taking a plea
where it may not have incarcerable time, it still leaves
a permanent stain.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
And so when your classification.

Speaker 5 (50:54):
Changes, your ability to move changes, your agency, changes your options,
and not because of anything that was negotiated by you.
It was imposed on you. And because we don't yet yet,
we don't yet have a framework of what we would
call justice that deals with redemption as a core principle,

(51:16):
we now have a lot of scarlet letter like realities
where folks don't necessarily have to cry like the leper
does in scripture. Unclean, unclean, But the effect is still
the same. You've done your you've done your time, you've
paid your debt, and yet you still have this remarkable

(51:40):
stain that just does not go away. And so you're
constantly reminded of your previous state of servitude to the
system that has now said you're a slave. But there
is no Freedman's Bureau going to be established for the
seventy million of those who are in similar circumstance, and

(52:02):
if there were, you would probably see the same kind
of attack and assault on that system as we saw
on the Freedmen's Bureau itself, which we talked about last week.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
You know, I think I think about, you know, agency
for those who are able to leave the community and
move into Manhattan, or into downtown Chicago, or into Beverly
Hills or into the Bulkhead areas of Atlanta. But the
vast majority of African Americans, even those who have never offended,

(52:35):
know a handful of zip coats in their cities. Were
all there, most of whom are not offenders, but they
know no agency beyond their neighborhood. When I remember growing up,
one of my dear mothers, if you will, Floren Malone,
was from Markom, Illinois, and Missus Malone used to come

(52:59):
from Markham, Illinois every day when my parents weren't available,
not only to provide for my brothers and sisters, and
obviously she took care of some basic chores around our home.
We decided one day, when Missus Malone was sixty six
years old, to take her to downtown Chicago. Missus Malone said,

(53:21):
when she got there, she thought she was in Wisconsin
because her reality was never from sixty eighth in Constance
north to downtown Chicago. It was from Markham, Illinois to
sixty eighth Street and back for sixty six years. That's
the only reality that she knew. She hadn't been anywhere.

(53:46):
And the vast majority of our people never live or
move five miles past their home. That's hard to imagine
in a transient society. But Black people today, wherever they are,
still find themselves in grossly segregated communities. In fact, most
congressional districts, consistent with the Voting Rights Act of nineteen
sixty five, these districts are easy to draw by and

(54:09):
large because African Americans are essentrally concentrated in certain sides
of town in every community in the United States. That's
a different kind of agency, isn't it?

Speaker 5 (54:20):
Or lack thereof, Well, the latter right, Here's the reality.
And I think you look at how urban and municipal
policy is done, how we make it hard for folks
to be able to have freedom of movement beyond certain constraints.

(54:42):
How bus routes are intentionally designed to go through some
neighborhoods and around others.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
How the stops are spaced.

Speaker 5 (54:53):
Intentionally when we consider that a carryover from the plantation
reality was that you had to make sure that you
were in certain places at certain times with permission, and
if you were not there, you had to have a pass.
You actually had to have a document kind of like

(55:14):
a visa that said that you were authorized to be
in a place where otherwise you should not be. And
so we've learned what it's like to have to have
your papers, and even if you had papers, they could
just deport you. And many times that deportation would be
by way of a transaction where you were physically sold

(55:36):
to another plantation owner somewhere else because you ad violated
immigration policy. And so what we see is variations when
we talk about this issue about place and presence and person.
These are all realities that are inter linked. And so
this notion that somehow or other we are too free,

(55:59):
we ain't free.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yet. If I take off my ties, you can see
I'm dressed more like lawyer. Right.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
I'm trying to make sure that I represent my mama's
sacrifice and investment so that folks might be more inclined
to give deference to the fact that I might actually
be an educated Negro. But if I take this off
and I happen to even with it on, if I
happen to walk in the wrong neighborhood at the right time,
it doesn't matter what's on my resume. It matters whether

(56:28):
or not I have a pass to be able to
be in a place where society is not giving me
sanctioned to be, and my agency be damned if I
just happen to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time. That's the reality that we continue to face,
and that's the one that we continue to for whatever reason,
avoid having substantive conversations in our political discourse that the

(56:49):
notion of a happenstance election of a black president does
not in and of itself resolve and eradicate all of
the harm arms and ongoing issues around race and racial
exclusion that's showing up in this administration's policies in real time,
and when the biggest violation of immigration law is not

(57:11):
folks who are trying to quote invade the country, it's
visa overstays from countries like those where customs and Border
Patrol isn't.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Really doing that much checking.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
And to your point, about the South African guests who
are about to get not only potentially land, but a
pathway that is much different than what anybody else has
to go through.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Two citizenship, a shortcut, if you will.

Speaker 5 (57:36):
And so the arbitrariness that continues to exist around who
can be a citizen and who can be a person
is still one that plagues us, and we continue to
see the lingering effects the residue of that unresolved issue
not only in our politics but in our day to
day lived experience.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I also heard something else, doctor Yuri from a Teaba Madien,
where he spoke about our responsibilities to regain excellence. I
almost want to say in spite of or in light of,
but that that responsibility becomes becomes immensely personal under any circumstances.

(58:20):
And more specifically, he pointed to what I believe to
be the economics of the Reagan era. We talked about
trickle down economics, which you and I know the supply
siders did not equal the demand siders, and that was
deeply troubling. We just did not benefit from the Reagan
tax cuts in the way they were articulated. But it's

(58:40):
hard for me to reconcile that in an era where
we two have died, where we two have contributed to
the very fabric of what it means to be an American.
That when I see Jim Clyburn in committee hearing, I think,
most recently, arguing that to scrub medgear Vers's name as

(59:04):
a war hero from the website of the military, as
if we've made no contribution, or the contribution that we
made is irrelevant. It suggests an even deeper crisis if
regaining excellence in light of or in spite of can

(59:25):
also be dismissed.

Speaker 5 (59:28):
Yeah, there's a lot in that, and sometimes we have
to pause and unpack who's controlling the narrative. So when
I hear regaining excellence, it not that it was intended,
but it sounds like there is an abandonment of a

(59:49):
certain standard.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
That's not what's going on.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yeah, I'm not. I'm not so sure he was there,
But I hear what you're saying in terms of just
the structure.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Of the language.

Speaker 5 (59:59):
Yeah, I mean, so I would need some clarity on
regaining excellence. I think what we in order to regain it,
we have to do a better job of telling it,
because there are all kinds of excellent stories of success
and overcoming in our communities each and every day. But instead,
what we get in terms of the format of profit

(01:00:19):
driven media is that when the news gets told, the
first thing you got to do is you got to
deal with ten minutes of trauma, and then you got
to feel feel your way through maybe some weather forecast
that may or may not work. Then you got to
get your sports in, and then you got to get
your commercial time in. But in terms of telling the story,

(01:00:41):
you know that's that's a hymn in our church tradition.
I love to tell. The story will be my theme
in glory. We've got to be able to tell. The
telling of our history is first oral right, the oral tradition,
the giving life through the speaking of the word. In
the beginning was the word. Our words matter because somebody

(01:01:03):
else is controlling the words. Even in the course of
when when we find our ways back into making sure
we continue to contribute right whether whether or not we've
we've stuck to the script or we deviated from the script.
Who's telling the story? Because the story is or the
story or the narrative that gets lifted up is that

(01:01:25):
somehow there's something dysfunctional or defective that's coming out of
our community. It is deeply embedded, and therefore it is problematic.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Is a fiction, And the.

Speaker 5 (01:01:36):
Way you know it's a fiction is because all of
some of the ways that we've told story, when we've
gotten them recorded, or when we've used our creativity to
be able to imagine a reality beyond the one that's confined.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
What do they do? They take them off the shelves,
They take them out of libraries. Remember we first we
had had to protest to get in the library. How
we got a protest to get our books back in
the library.

Speaker 5 (01:02:02):
So either they don't want our presence and they don't
want our genius at the same time. And so part
of I think maybe the regaining of excellence is a
regaining of a commitment and a passion that says we
dare not be satisfied until we get free, because we
were not free. We are less, less in bondage, but

(01:02:26):
not yet fully liberated.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
And there's much much more work to do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Doctr Eurie. There's a lot going on in the courtrooms
around America. Breonna Taylor, the Utah murders, Donald Trump, congressional action,
the presidency. When we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen
eighty m Jesse Jackson Junior, the Jesse Jackson Junior Show,
Doctor s Tuddy Ery is going to take us through
the courtroom of America and we're going to find out
what's going on. Looking forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior

(01:02:51):
Show on k BLA Talk fifteen to eighty. A very
special guest in this hour has one foot in the
bullpit and one foot in the courtroom, Doctor Eury. What's
going on in the courtrooms of our country?

Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
Well, drama right, every day is another day unto itself,
kind of like as the world terms.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
But what we do know.

Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
Is this week there was a lot of concern leading
up to the sentencing of former LMPD officer Brett Hankerson,
who is the officer who, on the night that the
stale search warrant was served on Breonna Taylor's home, was
standing outside the apartment and fired blindly through the patio

(01:03:37):
glass door that was covered several times. And certainly it's
believed not only was that reckless. Though he was acquitted
on state charges, the Department of Justice under the prior
administration pursued violations of civil rights claims against former Officer Hankerson,
and he was convicted, and so the sentencing was supposed

(01:04:00):
to be a while ago, it was delayed, and then
the current DOJ under the current administration recommended that there
would be a one day sentence imposed, and that day
had already been served when he mister Hankinson was taken
into custody, so he would have done no time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
And so there was a lot of concern that this
Justice Department.

Speaker 5 (01:04:23):
Was going to lean on the scale and this trial judge,
who was actually appointed by the current president in his
last administration, might be somehow swayed to do what it
is that her nominator had asked that the Justice Department do.

(01:04:43):
She sentenced mister Hankinson to thirty three months, So that's
two years and nine months of incarceration. Of course, not
all of that is going to be active time. There
will be some formula, but not having the pre sentenced
report and the investigation of his background, we don't know

(01:05:05):
what the guideline range would have been. But certainly I
think there's a bit of a sigh of relief that
it wasn't one day, but at the same time there's
still great concern. In thirty three months is not nearly
enough for what it is cost not only in the
loss in the taking of Breonna Taylor's life, but the
incurable pain that her mother, to Mika Palmer, still carries

(01:05:28):
around with her every day.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Reben, they stuck their finger in the eye of every
person who believes in justice one day, insulting. They meant
to send a signal to us that these are the
kinds of cases we are not going to enforce. Insulting
ms Palmer.

Speaker 5 (01:05:50):
While you're there on the insult remember now they had
already come with they poked. This is the second poking
the eye. The first poking the eye was when they
went back to the federal court that was going to
have oversight on the consent decree and said we.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Want to withdraw it.

Speaker 5 (01:06:10):
And the current administration in Louisville said, we agreed withdraw
the consent decree. That would be entered as an order
that would now say that the reforms necessary at the
Louisville Metro Police Department would not be enforced by federal judge.
It would be subject to kind of the good will,

(01:06:34):
if you will, of certain certain people in city government.
That's the problem that we have anytime there's been a
need to have enforcement, to be able to protect the
rights and interests of people who have been exploited by
the government. The government always does what we think the
government would never do, and then we find our issues

(01:06:55):
not only profoundly exacerbated, but our dreams sometimes irretrievably shattered.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
A counselor the defense represents the defendant in these cases.
In this case, the defendant was Hankerson. The prosecutor. The
prosecution represents the people. The prosecutors asked for a day,
the people said what he did is only worthy of

(01:07:25):
a day worth of time. Now, if that isn't placing
your thumb on the hands of justice, meaning that the
administration specifically instructed the prosecution, which miss Palmer said or
certainly suggests that the prosecution from the very inception of
the case was on the side of Hankerson.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Let's just be real clear.

Speaker 5 (01:07:51):
There is not a long track record of convictions of
police officers for violating the constitutional rights of people. Let's
just be very very clear. Just like we saw in
Minneapolis with the prosecution of the officer who killed George Floyd,
there had only been one conviction of a police officer

(01:08:14):
for violating the constitutional rights of a person in Minnesota. Ever,
and so when Attorney General Keith Ellison took the case,
and it was after your father actually flew up in
the middle of COVID, we went up to meet with him,
to have a meet with the Attorney General, met reverend there,
met with community, had a conversation, appealed to the Attorney

(01:08:34):
General that he ought to take an active role in
making sure that this kind of travesty, not just tragedy,
would be ever repeated. It required a different kind of persistence.
And the truth of the matter is is that the
system is always skewed in the interest of those who

(01:08:55):
you mentioned. The people, Well, the is a definite article.
People is subjective, and I don't know, and based on
what I've seen, I've got a number of civil rights
cases actively in litigation right now across the country.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
The people is not the people. The people is some people.

Speaker 5 (01:09:15):
And depending on how close or far away you are
from the definition of people, often has a feel about
what your access to justice might actually look like. That's
the dilemma that we continue to face in this country,
and it's going to get worse before it gets better,
because all you got to do is look at how
the courts are changing before our very eyes. Federal enforcement

(01:09:39):
of the protections of the interest of agency of our
community under outright attack. And this one's going to be unrelenting.
And we're just six months in to this next.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Fearstar speaking about Regis, we have about two minutes before
we come forward. I was watching and listening to the
news here on and I heard very specifically a viral
video that I saw myself of a police officer punching
a person in the face through his car window twice,

(01:10:11):
maybe three times. I saw a black superintendent of police
arguing on behalf of the officers that what we were
seeing with our own eyes did not happen. The young
man's demeanor was called non threatening. He kept his hands visible,
and the police officer punched through the car window and

(01:10:32):
punched him in his face twice. Did you see the
same viral video that I saw?

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
Oh, not only have I seen it, I've got a
case that's similar to it. M young brother coming out
of a grocery store where he's working, going to his car,
police eyeballing him. He already knows this is going to
be a thing. They approach him, he says whoever you're
looking for is not me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
They detain it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:58):
And while he's detained with up against the car, his
chest is up against the car, an officer comes up
from behind him and hits him with a closed fist
and he's already surrendered.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Let's just be real clear.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
A sucker punch.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
It's in federal court now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
There are instances every single day where the dignity in
personhood of certain people are violated on a whim, and
officers that often the violators, there is no punishment, and
they continue to have police powers. There are the cases
right now where we're looking at issues.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
Where a case where a school resource officer issues a ticket.
It's something as simple.

Speaker 5 (01:11:42):
You're going to issue a ticket for theft for something
that you know is not a theft, and then have
the audacity for the officer to get on the stands
and when questioned, I questioned it that when you issue
this ticket, you had no proof of evidence that and
I'm gonna mention her name because it's been public that
amar Harris had not stolen anything. He said, nope, had

(01:12:04):
no proof, said the reason he issued the ticket is
he was mad because her mother did not come talk
to him to agree for him to put in some
substitute discipline that was still unjustified.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
That's the dynamic that we're dealing with.

Speaker 5 (01:12:17):
Whether it's a ticket, whether it's a punch, whether it's
the taking of someone's life, whether it's a beat down
on camera, whether it's a beat down to eight on camera,
that's the issue that we've got to confront and that's
the fight we have to keep up.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
From Jesse Jackson Jr. Listening to KBLA Talk fifty eight
and the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. When we come forward,
Reverend tid Yuriy will be with us, and so will
a Tiba Madien joining us for Our Clothes, Politics of
our Faith with Reverend Doctor s. Todd Yerie is our
special host in this final segment. A Tiba Atiba Madian,
former deputy executive director for the National Black Caucus of

(01:12:49):
State Legislature, is joining us in this final segment to
offer some clarity and to help close us out with
Reverend Doctor Yerie. A Tiba welcome forward again. I think
you might your mike might be muted. I still can't

(01:13:12):
hear a Tiba doctor YERI, welcome forward to the Jesse
Jackson Junior Show. We'll find out what the technical problem
is with a tiba's microphone in just a moment, and.

Speaker 5 (01:13:21):
Because I want to hear what he got to say.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
As we wait for a Tiba to join us, and
I'll get a signal from him momentarily, a Tiba, can
you hear us? He can't hear us, but I think
that he is still muted for some reason or another.
I can't hear I can't hear a tiba's microphone, doctor Ery.
While we wait for a Tiba, we were having a
conversation about about excellence and the scope of excellence in

(01:13:50):
spite of and in light of this issue was raised
by a Tiba, and I hope you'll come back just
momentarily and share with us in this final segment of
our show, your thoughts, doctor hearing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
The commitment to excellence, it's an important one. He raises.

Speaker 5 (01:14:10):
An important question. The regaining it? Is it regaining our awareness,
regaining our claiming it, our regaining of pushing it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
But I want to.

Speaker 5 (01:14:26):
Emphasize it's the excellence, and the excellence is not something
that's missing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
It's actually something that's not often enough lifted. And so
there's a.

Speaker 5 (01:14:35):
Counter narrative that is often imposed on us because it's
the dominant narrative in certain spaces that are viewed as credible,
that somehow assigns dysfunction to the lived reality of certain
groups of people. And so if you're from a certain
place or you look a certain way, then obviously you
have this stereotype that's attached to you, and therefore the

(01:14:58):
expectations of you are going to be defective and deficient.
They're not going to be tied to your genuine genius
and the excellence of the creator that made you who
you are.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
ATIPA, looking forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior show, I'm
glad we worked that out a tiba.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
Can you hear me?

Speaker 4 (01:15:12):
Yes, sir, we can, okay. And I would say this
because I want to be diplomatic and at the same time,
I want to be truthful, you know, in terms of excellence,
I just think that we just keep accepting mediocrity, and
I think that there are some things that we need

(01:15:33):
to go back to and lean on. And then some
of that is spiritual, some of that is what we
learned and what we were gathering in the church. There's
just so many things that I see that. I think
that other people want to hear us talk about and
can and not necessarily keep accepting and in uplifting. Part
of that, I think is we have to tell our story.

(01:15:55):
We have to tell our American story. Slavery is not
a black history, Martin Luther King is not Black history.
Frederick Douglass is not Black history. They all of this
is American history. It's human and we have to you
know too often, Reverend Uri, when you're representing someone like
you are. I know when I was working with the
Black News Channel, we kept talking about humanizing, and yeah,

(01:16:16):
it is humanizing, but we can't wait till something happens
to humanize.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
We have to tell our stories.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
And I think Felicia Rashad said it so eloquently and
so well in an interview a few years ago on
The Today Show when she said that she felt that
the thing about the Cosby Show was that other families
that didn't look like us got to see how much
more in common we had with them.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
That's why it's so important to tell our stories.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Doctor Eerie Well brother T was right right. We cannot
accept mediocrity.

Speaker 5 (01:16:49):
We also have to be very clear about in lifting
up that excellence. That's that's not an appearance necessarily, that's
an essay. Now give you a couple of contrasts. If
we think about the sitcoms and one that you know
I grew up on. We grew up on. We loved
the Cosmic show. Uh we we remember a different world.

(01:17:12):
It's a different world from where we come from. It's
a different generations experience and expectation. But then in a
prior generation, there was good times, right, good times tied
to Cabrini green On on the north side of Chicago
outside the monkey Montgomery Wards. We called it monkey Wards
back in the day. Uh you know, uh headquarters, ain't

(01:17:35):
we lucky?

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
We got them good times?

Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
And somehow other we uh we we are expected uh
to make uh economic injustice look like it's acceptable. Uh
And So if you escape it, then you have to
take on a different mindset and a different presentation.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
You can move move on.

Speaker 5 (01:17:54):
Up right right so uh and and and the way
to escape the white hostility of all in the family
and Archie bunker living next door is somehow you have
to present that you can assimilate and accommodate so that
you can move on up and then have a different
level of conversation that is detached from the reality of

(01:18:14):
ain't we lucky?

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
We got them good times?

Speaker 5 (01:18:16):
And so it is part of the truth of our
narrative that if we don't tell this, we got to
talk about the essence of it and not just the
appearance of it. Because at the core, the scene that
runs through all of it is the creative resilience of
what I will just go ahead and call on behalf
of James Baldwin, the unique genius of blackness, That the

(01:18:39):
essence of being able to overcome oppression and opposition in
ways that somehow other sometimes it makes it look a
little too easy, and so therefore we're made We're made
to handle it more.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
No, that's not it.

Speaker 5 (01:18:52):
There's something at our core that allows us to do it,
that exemplifies and examines and provides an example to others
that they too can rise above it, but they have
to be serious about it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:06):
Yeah, I think, Reverend Eyah, I feel like you were
sticking and moving on that one. I was very very good.
Now you just did that, you know. It makes me
think of Maya Angelou. She wrote, you write me down
in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trot
me down in the very dirt, but still I rise.

(01:19:26):
That's what I think that we have to get to.
We've got to keep telling our stories so that it
lifts us, and in lifting us, we lift everyone else.
We consistently have been the ones that have torn down
the barriers of.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
Inclusion in this country.

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
And so we have to recognize and embrace the fact that, yes,
it is a heavy burden that we carry. But why
do we carry this burden? Because they came and they
took the best of us from Africa and the worst
of them came from England. So you know, some people
don't want to necessarily look at that, but the way
you can define it is to say they came here
and look at what happened to the country. This country

(01:20:03):
has the best opportunities, It offers the best opportunities, but
yet it continues to create barriers of inclusion. Why because
people there are some that recognize when they have to
compete on a level playing field, they can't they can't win,
they lose their jobs. That's why they excluded us from baseball,
excluded us from sports. My mother and I were just

(01:20:24):
talking about this the other day. She said, just look
at how when they excluded us from sports, and when
they let us in, what happened. Now they try to
exclude us from ownership. So you know, we've got to
like recognize that why are they doing these things? Why
did they burn down Rosewood, Why did they burn down
a Tulsa Why because we were doing so well that

(01:20:45):
they recognized they couldn't compete with us. We have to
recognize that there is something in that that we that
within us is greatness, and we have to tap into
that and make ourselves understand that we are not just great,
but that we can be great for everyone else and
that they too can benefit. That's why they have jazz,
that's why they have hip hop. That we keep creating

(01:21:07):
and we keep letting other people take our thunder, and
we've got to make sure that they see our lightning.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
I just want to add this. We have about a
minute and thirty seconds before the end of our show.
Martin Luther King Junior once said it may be true
that the law cannot make a man love me, but
it can keep him from lynching me. And I think
that's pretty important. I want to say that in the
absence of the law, it's me versus one million Americans

(01:21:36):
or my neighbors three hundred and fifty million Americans asking
for forgiveness, that's impractical. I go to the President of
the United States under the Founder's system, and I ask
him to forgive me on behalf of the American people,
so I don't have to ask everyone individually. That's the
system we live in. That's the pardon process. So the

(01:21:59):
law does matter. And whether my neighbor in Chicago likes
me or loves me, or whether my neighbor in Los Angeles,
or my neighbor in Baltimore, ate neighbor in Washington, DC
likes or loves me, the constraint is the law. You
can't lynch me whether I'm in any of these states.
You can't treat me differently under the citizenship rights of

(01:22:22):
the Constitution in any of these states. From my perspective,
the law does matter, even in the ethic of how
we treat people individually. And I'm not suggesting that either
of my hosts are saying that's not true. I'm just
simply saying that I'm not giving up on fighting for America.
I know a Tiva's not. I know Reverend Yeerie isn't.
In terms of how we see the law on Jesse

(01:22:43):
Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show until
next time KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. When we come forward
it