July 15, 2025 • 39 mins
Activist, Author, Historian and Former Teacher, Ernest Crim III is back to continue the conversation - the overdue meeting of the generational mindsets - in a now is the time moment. Completely honest and real, the conversation continues to clear up misconceptions and clarifies reasoning for actions we see or think we should on both ends of the generational spectrum toward community- our common unity.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From Jesse Jackson Junior looking or show they talk fifteen
eighty on this It's wonderful Monday. So far we have
lined up in our national political historical discourse Senator Corey
Booker the longest speech ever delivered in the United States Senate.
(00:23):
In the House of Representatives, Congressman Jakim Jeffreys now stands
and holds the record for the longest floor speech delivered
by a Democratic leader and maybe even any leader in
the Congress of the United States. It's called the magic minute.
(00:47):
That's the one minute that the Democratic leader is given
to voice their opposition or support for legislation. However, the
magic minute, based upon tradition, is as long as the
minority party wants to exercise that minute. The minority leader
(01:08):
can speak as long as they want. Haakim Jeffries spoke
for eight hours and forty four minutes. And now Thurgood
Marshall was known as the great dissenter on the Federal
Supreme Court. But now Katanji Brown Jackson and Justice Soto
(01:31):
Mayor are emerging as the great dissenters in this generation.
And there you have it, two African American men, an
African American woman, a Latina ex woman on the Federal bench,
(01:51):
voicing and ringing the bell, the bell that may very
well toll for the idea of democracy in our republic.
Here we stand as guardians of the historical system that
treated us in bondage, oppressed us out of bondage, and
(02:13):
yet our voices are still being lifted, and we are
grateful for that witness. Our guest today is part of
a new generation, a millennial. I was asking our producer
right before the show when my father was born on
October eighth, nineteen forty one, was he a baby boomer?
(02:36):
And she said, no, your father's part of the Silent generation.
I said, my dad ain't never been silent. Do you
mean the silent generation? She says, this is the generation
that is essentially at the end of Jim Crow segregation.
And there was so much going on in the households
(02:57):
of Black Americans. Our women were violated, many young teenage mothers,
like my grandmother Helen Jackson, age sixteen, impregnated by her neighbor.
That union would lead to the birth of Jesse Jackson.
(03:18):
The Silent generation, the generation right before the baby boomers.
When the men returned home from the war, those men
began an entire generation of Americans that were largely responsible
for the freedoms that we now enjoy. The next generation,
(03:39):
beyond those of us who are Generation I want to say,
we're Generation X. Come the millennials. And my favorite millennial
is mister Ernest Krim the third. An Emmy nominated producer,
public teacher, anti racist educator, hate crime victor who uses
black historical narratives to empower and educate their culturally equitable lens.
(04:00):
Mister Krem a South Side of Chicago native and University
of Illinois Champaign or ban A graduates, a former high
school history teacher educator of twelve years who now also
advocates for social justice issues and teaches black history to
the world through social media with a platform that reaches
roughly four million people each month as of twenty twenty four.
(04:24):
Ernest Krim the third. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show. Ernest, how are you.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me today.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm so honored. We have about about a minute and
a half before we come forward. Let me first check
in with you, Ernest. How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You know, first off, I'm doing great because you called
me your favorite millennium. So I'm honored to have that
title because I think of so many other people in
my generation who are doing great work, so to have
someone like you, but so that sided with pun me.
I'm off to a great start for this Monday, and
I look forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I have very few millennials who have taught history and
have such a broad breadth of knowledge of the history
of our people and how we got to this point.
I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. When we come forward on KBLA
talk fifteen to eighty on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
My very special guest is the Krim de la Krim,
Ernest Krim, the Third and Emmy nominated producer on the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show, My favorite Millennial, Ernest Krim, the Third. Ernest,
(05:29):
welcome forward. I think you're still muted, my brother.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Thanks again for having me, Brother Jesse. It's great being
here again with I look forward to this conversation, Ernest.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Last week we began a conversation about organizing. Can we
pick back up on that point right there? How are
millennials organizing themselves?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I think that's a great question and Also, it's something
that we have to take a lot of time to
dissect because I think it's become one of those statements
that we hear so often reiterated and stated about people
without any context behind what it means. When people say
we need to organize, we need to organize, the question
(06:16):
I have as an educator is well, what exactly do
we mean by that? And I think the best way
to look at that is a breakdownor phrase. As an educator,
I'm thinking about how can I break this down to
the child in class that's not paying attention or the
class of the child in class who might not care
too much about history. And the first thing I will
say is, well, we talked when we talk about organized
and we're talking about organs, we think about organs. We
(06:39):
think of the body, and you know what does it
take for a body to function? Well, well, everything has.
Everything in your body has to be working the way
it's supposed to. When you eat food, which I was
doing right before I got on this call with you.
I did not have to think about what happened inside
of my body as I digested the food. I just
(06:59):
tried my best to pick the proper food from the
nutrient intact that I need every day, but the body
takes care of the rest. Now, of course, those of
us who are believers, who have a spiritual sense, we
know that there's something broader than that. But now when
we talk about what people need to do in terms
of organizing, the first thing I will say is, well,
(07:20):
what is your role with this body?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
We can say body of Christ, we can say body
of humanity? What is your role? Are you someone on
the exterior of this body that's working? Are you someone
on the interior? The stomach doesn't get jealous with the
heart being testined, you know, isn't jealous with the paincre
is you know, the kidney and so on and so forth.
(07:43):
So I think that we have to do a lot
of ref reflecting in terms of what are our strengths,
what is it that we can do best as people?
And I think because of with millennials, we are inundated
with social media messages. We get most of our news
from online. We are a generation that does not trust
the mainstream media as much. And there's a gift in
(08:05):
the curse with that because the news that we get
is sometimes in bite size segments and oftentimes and I
can speak from my own experience as a way to
intercede with what we were raised on that we did
not think was the best. We attempted to add our
hat into this and add our perspective. Now. I'm someone
who loves to communicate. I'm someone who I believe is
(08:25):
gifted in it. But there are some folks who work
best behind the scenes as writers, some folks who work
best behind the scenes as coordinating things. There are some
folks who work best meeting people where they are canvasy.
So I think when we talk about how we organize,
first thing we have to do as millennials before we
even digest what we're actually doing, is cut through all
(08:47):
the noise and understand that the stage that we are
even on right now is not for everybody. And that
does not mean that their mission and their purpose and
their function as an organ in this body is any
less important than our brother Krim.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I want to organize the next great dissenters. I began
this program by talking about Senator Corey Brooks and Congressman
Hakim Jeffries and Justice Soto Mayor and Justice Katanji Brown Jackson.
One thing that all four of them have in common
(09:23):
is that they chose the road of the system itself
to change it. I think that's true of our movements
from nineteen fifty four to the present, and maybe even
our movements from the inception of legal movements for African Americans. Notably,
I think about Frederick Douglass. I think about W. E. B.
(09:46):
Du Bois. Of course, towards the end of his life,
he decides to live abroad, and he's buried abroad. I've
been by his grave site. But I think about the
witness of our generation, the witness of the previous generation,
and I'm wondering if this term organization for the millennials
(10:08):
is a kind of organizing that is taking place separate
and apart from descent. And by that I mean history
seems to be recording our descent in this album.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I love that perspective. And my contribution to that is
I think that when we talk about organizing dissenters, we
have to reflect on how often do we chastise kids
in our community who exhibit that type of that perspective,
that behavior, Those kids in our community that we might
(10:47):
say talk back too much or speak up too much,
those kids who talk too much in class, who are
maybe labeled as having an attitude. I think that we
have to. I'm a huge opponent as someone who of
course did not make it far in athletics, but have
those dreams. At one point, I'm a huge proponent of
saying that we need to scout those organizers in our community,
(11:11):
those kids who have those skills. The same way we
look at a tall black boy and say he should
be on the team, or you know, or maybe a
large boy and say he needs to play football. We
need to be identifying those kids when they're in our schools.
We need to be identifying those kids when they are
at our churches, at our family functions, and we need
(11:34):
to speak life into them. I'll give you this example.
I was recently speaking out of school before the school
year ended in Chicago, and it was a mixed school
in fact. And afterwards, there was a young black boy
who was in seventh grade, I believe a little bit
taller than me. He came up to me, and you know,
he talked about how much he loved my talk and everything.
And my first, the first thought for me to break
(11:57):
the ice was to make a remark about, you know,
if he plays basketball or whatever, because that's what I
relate to. That was what I did for most of
my childhood. But before I said anything, I said, but
why would I say the same thing that so many
other people probably said to him or assumed about him.
So without even knowing him, I could tell that he
was a proactive person. Because some people might feel the
(12:20):
desire to talk to someone they saw speak, but they
might be too shy, so they might just say, well,
maybe i'll do it next time, they'll be a little hesitant.
He decided to be proactive to come up to me
and tell me he liked what I said. So what
I said instead was, young man, what's your favorite subject?
And when he told me his favorite subject was math,
(12:41):
which is something you don't often hear from our kids.
That's a lot of our kids are great in math,
but that's not something I don't believe it's even popular
to say that you love. Right, My next response was,
you would make a great math teacher, And then we
had an amazing conversation of what that would look like.
(13:02):
And his principal, who was a black man, came over.
We had a conversation about that too, because I did
not care what his grades were. In fact, I didn't
even know what his grades were. I was there for
one day, but I knew that what I said to
him in that moment could dictate a path and he
takes in his life just like the hour I had
(13:24):
with him in his classmates, this one on one conversation
could be an epiphany moment for him. And when we
look back at our lives oftentimes as people who are leaders,
whether they be in political affairs, educational affairs, just let me.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Cut you off for a second right there. Yeah, you
actually saw in that moment that a turning point in
the kid's life depended upon the conversation in that moment
and the direction he may take as a teacher. You
were conscious enough to know that what happened in that
(13:57):
moment could be the life changing event that changes the
course of his life.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yes, I say that with the utmost confidence because I've
had those moments in my own personal life. Oftentimes when
I talk to my wife about you know, we reflecting
our childhood, and it amazes me in reflection why I
remember certain things and you know why she might remember
certain things that have that emotional connection. And I think
about even why I was able to remember certain things
(14:24):
that I wrote about throughout my book, and it's because
it was something that was so drastically different from my
common experience. I can pinpoint the freshman year educator I had,
who was an Earth space science teacher named mister Miles,
a black man who taught me science, like although I
was not in love with the subject, seeing a black
(14:46):
man passionate about science did something for me. Or when
I was at u of I and I had that
professor Abdul al Kamaud who who spoke life into me
indirectly with his lectures twice a week, you know, like
there are those moments like that. That young man, according
to his black principal, did not have any black teachers there.
(15:10):
In fact, so even though he had a black principal,
he probably only saw him in passing. So I might
be that only example who knows where he might go
to high school. So for me, it's an extra responsibility,
and it's a responsibility of us all, not just me,
because these conversations, these these are mentor in conversations. This
(15:31):
is how we also enter this space as educators. I'm
not an educator just because I have a certification. I'm
an educator because I feel like I have something that
I can help bring out of in the youth. I'm
no different than that young man, but I have to
make sure that with my limited time there, I give
him everything that I received that I feel like was
(15:52):
different from most of my friends on the South Side
of Chicago, so that he could become the best version
of him, which hopefully is better than me.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
You know, I in this moment, first of all, thank
you for mentoring and working with our young people. You know,
I'm thinking about the cultural icons who stood out as descent,
and not often do we see our teachers as those
cultural icons. And what I think you're showing our listeners
today is that our teachers do matter in that process.
(16:20):
But for example, the cultural icons of descent. There are
lots of black boxers, But you have to give Muhammad Ali,
at the pinnacle of his career, the title of great
dissenter his descent on the question of the Vietnam War.
(16:43):
In football, you have to give the title of iconic
dissenter to Colin Kaepernick. I think you also have to
give it to Jim Brown. In basketball, I think you
have to give the great dissenter title to Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
(17:07):
Plenty of basketball players, lots of US dribble, lots of
US Well, a few people can take off from the
from the free throw line, some people can take off
from the three point line. But Kareem abdul Jabbar. Sure
there were more graceful basketball players Jordan Kobe, but they
(17:32):
reached cultural iconic status in the minds of the public
because they stood up and took a stand, or in
the case of Colin Kaepernick, he took a knee. When
I think about cultural dissenters, I think about Stevie Wonder
and his lyrics. I think about the direction of his
(17:56):
of his singing, and how he was speaking. Also to
the times. I think about Curtis Mayfield, I think about
I think about what's going on with Marvin Gay, people
who took their art and transformed it into speaking about
this moment. And then I think about, you know, the
(18:17):
thought that you give to teaching a student that while
you may not have at this point in your life,
the kind of recognition that these celebrities might get, and
hopefully you will become a celebrity and earnest Krim the
third will be in style like that. But the idea
that you recognize that we can have an impact on
(18:39):
one kid at one time, in one moment, simply by
the things that we say. We walk out of our homes,
we see some kid who's wayward, and as a black
man or as a black woman, we ask them, where's
your mom at, where's your daddy at? Go home? And
in that moment, all of eternity the power to change
(19:03):
who they are.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
When when you say that, especially about Muhammad Ali, what
I immediately think about is this story of how when
he was a child, I can't remember the exact age
right now, but when he was growing up in Kentucky
and he lost his bike and he was wondering. I
remember like hearing about this story. He was wandering around
trying to find his bike and he was like really angry,
(19:27):
and he came across a cop, and this was actually
a white cop, and this cop saw how angry, frustrated,
yet motivated he was to find his bike, and he
saw something in him. Now, in this instant, it does
relate to athletics. But when we see who and what
(19:47):
Muhammad Ali Cashius Clay became, we knew that it was
a positive thing in that situation, especially considering this was
Jim Crow era apart time, and this white guy says,
you know what, you should come to the boxing gym
with me. You should train with me. Now that's what
I mean by the one conversation, because what most of
(20:10):
us will say when we see a child like that,
whether we see that child in the Chicago, La, New York, Atlanta,
or whatever, we'll think that that child is bad, or
that child is angry, whatever like. But what we don't
see is as adults, we have the potential to redirect
it and help them channel that in a way they
(20:30):
have not had before. Muhammad Ali would have grown up
to become more aware of his condition in America as
he already did, and if he had not probably had
that avenue and platform of boxing, who knows what that
could have led to, especially in such turbulent times as.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
That I am. I am again completely taken aback by
the idea that each of us can have an infinite
and eternal impact on how we conduct ourselves on any
given day, and how we engage young people, how we
(21:08):
interact in community with young people, because ultimately it is
these stories, the ones that I know I take to
the grave with me. If I don't share them with someone,
then These are lived experiences that someone has to relive
(21:28):
just to arrive at certain conclusions that many of us
have already reached in our lives. It just doesn't make
sense to me that we have so many silent generation
and baby boomers who are not spending the time with
the next generation. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show. My very special guest is Ernest Krim.
(21:49):
When we come forward more with Ernest Krim special guest
is mister Ernest Krim. Ernest has created content for companies
such as HBO, Hulu, Disney, Paramount, and the History Channel. Additionally,
he is the CEO of Krim's Cultural Consulting LLC, an
international speaker who spoken at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Microsoft,
(22:10):
Colin Kaepernick Know Your Rights campaign and audiences in the
UK Canada, and the author of two books and a
passionate progressive education activist who's work closely with the organizations
to advocate for educational and political equity. Ernest, welcome forward
to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Hey, it's good to be back with your brother, Ernest.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I want to pick up on this idea of descent.
Not everybody can be Martin Luther King Junior. Not everybody
can be Malcolm X. Not everybody can be their good Marshall.
Not everybody can be Katanji Brown Jackson or Soto Mayor.
Every time the voting season comes around, we get hit
(22:54):
over the head with this guilt trip. Martin died and
Malcolm so we can rosa sat down, so we could vote,
and we ain't voting. But I'm wondering why millennials and
others don't see the vote as descent. That is, it
(23:15):
isn't something that you just vote for exercise and exercising
your right to vote, but that it is your nonviolent
tool to say this is how I feel. This is
my objection to the behavior of the present order. It
is my objection to the lack of equal, high quality
(23:38):
funding for schools. It is my objection to the inadequacy
of healthcare in the nation. It is my objection to
spending so much money on weapons of mass destruction and
on the military budget and not spending money on social
uplift to put a man on his own two feet
right here in America. This is my objection. I got
(24:00):
one vote, and I get to cast it up and
down a ticket for people that I feel are like minded,
and then leave that voting experience, quite frankly, with tears
or even in a religious frenzy, the same religious frenzy
that some of us might experience on Sunday morning in
church when Pastor preaches and and Miss william sings. But
(24:22):
at the end of the day, your right to vote
is your descent. It is your right to say, hey,
I'm for Jesse Jackson, but it's also your right to
say I'm for Barack Obama, I'm for Kamala Harris. But
your right to vote is also your right to say,
I don't like what the hell is going on in
America right now, and therefore I am exercising it for
(24:43):
the person other than this guy. Help me understand what
the transition is for this resistance generation, to understand that
their vote is the power of descent.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, the way you laid that out. As millennials across
the board, especially black millennials, we are very progressive and
liberal minded, although, as you said, you know, some of us,
especially those who are very vocal online, don't always feel
like voting is the best way to articulate that or
(25:19):
to express that descent. And I would say, in fact,
that that's even a form of descent people who have
decided that voting is around to go. It's not one
that I agree with at all, but I think that
what we gather from that is And the best way
I can explain this is when you look at a generation,
(25:39):
the generation who is usually born after the family gains wealth, right,
they always talk about how difficult it is to keep
that same hunger within that next generation because they did
not have to overcome those same obstacles. So oftentimes that
generation of kids has to really search for meaning because
(26:00):
it's not as clearly defined as when I go outside,
I see struggle like you think about Like Lebron when
he was growing up in Akron, Ohio, he could clearly
see the struggle of growing up in public housing. His kids,
especially the ones who played basketball, it's a completely different
experience because that goal that they have might strictly just
(26:21):
come from I love the game, or for Lebron, it
was I love the game and I gotta find a
better way. I can tell you from the experience of
someone who was in the class, or who has been
engaged and always believed in the voting and understood the
merits of it. Even I have not been fully educated,
so I have to be self taught, you know, about
(26:43):
everything that was won in the previous generation. We have
not been taught. Like we see the photo ops. We
see the march, and we see the protests, and we
see doctor King and LBJ in the room and everything.
We see Malcolm saying, by any means necessary, ballad of
the bullet. But we don't, like, we need to really
break down that entire era with a course, because I
(27:08):
will admit I did not know job core K from
that time period. You know, there are so many intricacies
of the bills and the laws that were passed by
efforts of our ancestors foreseeing the president back then to
do so that we don't We always hear about the
voting rights acted as Civil Rights Act, and you know,
house and discrimination and everything affirmative action, but we don't
(27:31):
get into the nitty gritty of the issues that weren't
as black and white that still impacted us. When I
first started speaking, when I was teaching, I worked very
closely with TRIO and that program is probably not going
to be funded moving forward. But that also comes from
that era. So there's an element of us not being
(27:51):
made aware of the ways in which our vote can
impact things like this. But there's also the frustration of
seeing the ways in which we have been betrayed in
our minds by politicians and the ways in which we
have seen them operate in ways that exacerbate the issues
in our community. I think some of it is we like, yeah,
we know, based on the structure we have now, we
(28:13):
do need that political assistance. But metaphorically speaking, there are
people in my community passed out and they need CPR
right now. So and a lot of times, in our
mind it's like, well, I can keep investing in something
that's going to take Sometimes it can take generations for
us to even see the change that's gonna happen from
a politician as opposed to I got to get on
(28:36):
the block right now and provide help. I think there's
a way.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
For us to do both, though, Ernest, you know, let
me just say this, because you know I respect you,
But I'm not so sure. When I heard discussions on
the ground in Philadelphia, and when I hear them on
the ground in Chicago, I've heard them in Detroit, Michigan.
This kind of new wave of African American voters who
(29:04):
knew not Egypt. Maybe that's the best way I can
say it. From the Bible, who knew not Egypt, you know,
found themselves at the bottom of Mount Sinai, who knew
not Egypt and ended up wandering in the desert for
like forty years. I'm just wondering why they don't see,
(29:24):
with all of the logic and whatever social media is
doing to their response systems, why they don't see that
closing a trauma unit or eliminating your grandmother's medicaid wasn't
compelling enough to be able to say I need to
(29:48):
engage this thing. In other words, we chose in many
instances to say that Kamala's not black enough, and we
willing to give him a chance because we got a
COVID check which was our own money, by the way,
with his signature on it. At some point in time,
(30:09):
Ernest and I know we're going to have to address
this when we come forward, and of course we're going
to of course we're going to close on your word
of hope. Some of this just becomes just downright well,
I'm not prepared to call us ignorant. There's just something
wrong with the idea that we pick and choose, that
we cherry pick what it is we want to identify
with that our moment of descent. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
(30:30):
KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show. When we come forward more welcome forward to
kbl WE Talk fifteen eighty. I'm Jackson Junior Show. I
am Jesse Jackson Junior. My very special guest in this
hour is to Ernest Krim, the third I May nominated producer,
public teacher, anti racist educator and a good friend. In
(30:52):
our next hour, we will be discussing the dangerous act
of worship with doctor Walter Owens, who serves as doctor
Charlie Dates and the third teen thousand member Congregation of
the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago as its Minister of
Music and Arts, a role that includes leadership to ten
arts related ministries and five hundred plus volunteers. The church
(31:13):
warships in the ten thousand seat Sanctuary of the House
of Hope, located in the Rosland neighborhood on the South
side of Chicago, and whose Sunday and Wednesday evening services
can be seen live each week at www dot SBCC
dot org. Ernest Krim, Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, I'm back, brother, I'm back, and I'm ready to
chime in on this right here. Man you brought up,
please do some great points and insight. And I would say,
in defense, in defense of my generation and family, we
are not taught in a manner in our education system
that would promote vigorous and involvement in our political system.
(32:02):
And I say that because of my time not just
teaching history, but teaching government and thinking of the way
the elementary ways in which we taught kids who are
preparing to be adults, the way we glossed over complex
themes in an effort to get them to pass the
test for a graduation requirement. As I say that, though
(32:23):
I want to reflect on, then how did our previous
generation know about the urgency to vote? If they were
a generation who wasn't that far removed from when our
folks had where it was illegal for us to read
and write, where they had to fight tooth and nail
to get an education, where they did not have the
so called graduation requirement of passing the Constitution test. How
(32:45):
was it then that they did not know that they
did know the urgency? And I think that's where we
come in as a community, but also too, that's where
our elders fill in these gaps. I think of the
role that the church has played historically and educating and
making sure that we are aware of these things. We
are primarily getting our information, like I said before, through
(33:05):
social media, which means that we have to be aware
that some of our social media influencers are entertainers of
people that we admire. They are being paid to spread
dissension in our communities. They are paid to advertise and
promote the other perspective so that we think there's merit,
(33:26):
and receiving a check from a president who did not
originally even want it, and while giving us the check,
which is our tax money, is pulling the rug from
under us. There are pages I can scroll through now
on meta platforms Facebook and Instagram that are continuing to
spread misinformation to cause dissension between working class folks, black folks, Latinos,
(33:48):
white folks, and there's no fact checking, so we have
to be very weary of this, y'all. I'm speaking to
my millennial folks, but also to my parents, generation and beyond,
because Mark zuck Berg made it clear they ain't fact
checking anymore. This is the type of misinformation that leads
to us either not wanting to vote or deciding to
(34:09):
vote for people who do not have our best interests
in mind. Because we're creating now, brother Jesse, we're creating
realities that don't exist. When I go on my Facebook page,
and that which is my personal page, I can scroll
through and see ninety nine percent of posts that are
completely inaccurate. On a jovial side, I'll see posts that
(34:31):
are spreading lies about people like Jannis and Takumpo signing
with the Lakers. I've seen a post that said there
was a black man who decided to go against his
job and approve every person for Snap benefits. And when
you do a quick Google search to find out about
this story, you find out that it's false. But the
(34:53):
story has a million views and it's been shared one
hundreds and thousands of times. Now, a simple fact like
that might not seem like it's a big deal, But
what happens then if that information is about somebody running
for president, somebody running for mayor somebody running for State rep.
We internalize that, and that feeds into confirmation bias. We
(35:14):
already are probably gonna feel like these politicians don't have
our best interests in mind. So when we see something
like that that con seemingly confirms it to us, we
go down that rabbit hole. We have to really be
very weary, y'all about this type of stuff moving forward,
because I am a firm believer that that is one
of the reasons why this selection became what it is today.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You know, I want to give you two or three
minutes towards the end of the program for a word
of hope, But just before we do, I just want
to share what it's like for me to walk into
a voting booth. I mean, I know the Democratic Party
of Thomas Jefferson in seventeen ninety three history matters, the
Party of States Rights, the Party of slavery. It was
a red party until after Brown versus the Board of Education.
(35:59):
We can to become a blue party. The party of
Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I know who the Democrats are. I also know the
Party of Abraham Lincoln in eighteen fifty four, and it
being a party of liberation, stopping the expansion of slavery
into the Western States and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Party
(36:19):
of Lincoln, which ultimately, over time became the Party of
Jim Jordan, the Party of Marjorie Taylor Green, the Party
of Donald Trump. So why is black history important? Why
are you my favorite millennial? Because when I walk into
that voting booth with my one little vote, I bring
Harriet Tubman with me, and I bring Frederick Douglass with me.
(36:40):
I bring Sir Journer Truth with me. I bring w
Evita Boys with me. I bring Fanning the Hamer with me.
I bring Jesse Jackson with me. I bring Martin Luther
King with me. I bring Andy Young with me. I
bring every Negro I've ever met with me. And then
I look down at the names and I say, where
(37:02):
are these negroes going to be? And how can black
history save my life? With my one vote? And then
I cast my vote based on that. I'm sure Jewish
Americans do the same. I'm sure Irish Americans do the same.
I'm sure they bring all of their history and everything
that they've ever been about to that process with them.
And that's the guiding post for me our history. You
(37:25):
are a black history teacher. You wrote the book Black
History Can Save Your Life from the talk to George Floyd,
everything you need to know to de escalate a racial situation.
With that said, we have about two minutes. Eric Krim
share with us a word of hope.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
I want to just expound on that point you made
and say that I think quite simply, when I speak
to kids and I'll ask them a very deep question,
I'll say, what is your purpose? And I say that
because I want to rattle them. I want them to
begin to think deeply. But for all of us, I
(38:03):
would say, without knowing anybody personally, that's a listener right now.
Our purpose truly is to help make life easier for
everybody who comes after us, and there are things we
can do on a daily basis to do that. It
includes listening to conversations like this, listening to radio shows
like this, and implying these principles. And it also includes
every four every two years, every six years, sometimes voting
(38:27):
in our best interest as a community. It does not
mean that the people we're voting for are perfect, but
it means that we're voting to help create something that
is more perfect and more perfect union right moving forward.
I think there's a way for us to understand that
too with how we do this. Always tell folks we
agitate and we create. You can agitate the system while
(38:48):
simultaneously working to create something outside of that that helps
the benefit us all. And as long as we remember that,
we will continue to make these steps. This race, this
war is not one in one election, in one day,
in one conversation on one radio show. It's one step
at a time.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Y'all, stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod.
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty. My very
special guest in this hour has been Ernest Krim Third,
the Krim Dela Krim of the Millennials. When we come forward,
our very special guest will be none other than doctor
(39:26):
Walter Owens. Doctor Walter Owens is the Minister of Music
at the Salem Baptist Church under the leadership of Reverend
Charles Dates. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. When we come forward,
From Jesse Jackson Junior looking or show they talk fifteen
eighty on this It's wonderful Monday. So far we have
lined up in our national political historical discourse Senator Corey
Booker the longest speech ever delivered in the United States Senate.
(00:23):
In the House of Representatives, Congressman Jakim Jeffreys now stands
and holds the record for the longest floor speech delivered
by a Democratic leader and maybe even any leader in
the Congress of the United States. It's called the magic minute.
(00:47):
That's the one minute that the Democratic leader is given
to voice their opposition or support for legislation. However, the
magic minute, based upon tradition, is as long as the
minority party wants to exercise that minute. The minority leader
(01:08):
can speak as long as they want. Haakim Jeffries spoke
for eight hours and forty four minutes. And now Thurgood
Marshall was known as the great dissenter on the Federal
Supreme Court. But now Katanji Brown Jackson and Justice Soto
(01:31):
Mayor are emerging as the great dissenters in this generation.
And there you have it, two African American men, an
African American woman, a Latina ex woman on the Federal bench,
(01:51):
voicing and ringing the bell, the bell that may very
well toll for the idea of democracy in our republic.
Here we stand as guardians of the historical system that
treated us in bondage, oppressed us out of bondage, and
(02:13):
yet our voices are still being lifted, and we are
grateful for that witness. Our guest today is part of
a new generation, a millennial. I was asking our producer
right before the show when my father was born on
October eighth, nineteen forty one, was he a baby boomer?
(02:36):
And she said, no, your father's part of the Silent generation.
I said, my dad ain't never been silent. Do you
mean the silent generation? She says, this is the generation
that is essentially at the end of Jim Crow segregation.
And there was so much going on in the households
(02:57):
of Black Americans. Our women were violated, many young teenage mothers,
like my grandmother Helen Jackson, age sixteen, impregnated by her neighbor.
That union would lead to the birth of Jesse Jackson.
(03:18):
The Silent generation, the generation right before the baby boomers.
When the men returned home from the war, those men
began an entire generation of Americans that were largely responsible
for the freedoms that we now enjoy. The next generation,
(03:39):
beyond those of us who are Generation I want to say,
we're Generation X. Come the millennials. And my favorite millennial
is mister Ernest Krim the third. An Emmy nominated producer,
public teacher, anti racist educator, hate crime victor who uses
black historical narratives to empower and educate their culturally equitable lens.
(04:00):
Mister Krem a South Side of Chicago native and University
of Illinois Champaign or ban A graduates, a former high
school history teacher educator of twelve years who now also
advocates for social justice issues and teaches black history to
the world through social media with a platform that reaches
roughly four million people each month as of twenty twenty four.
(04:24):
Ernest Krim the third. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show. Ernest, how are you.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me today.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm so honored. We have about about a minute and
a half before we come forward. Let me first check
in with you, Ernest. How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You know, first off, I'm doing great because you called
me your favorite millennium. So I'm honored to have that
title because I think of so many other people in
my generation who are doing great work, so to have
someone like you, but so that sided with pun me.
I'm off to a great start for this Monday, and
I look forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I have very few millennials who have taught history and
have such a broad breadth of knowledge of the history
of our people and how we got to this point.
I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. When we come forward on KBLA
talk fifteen to eighty on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
My very special guest is the Krim de la Krim,
Ernest Krim, the Third and Emmy nominated producer on the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show, My favorite Millennial, Ernest Krim, the Third. Ernest,
(05:29):
welcome forward. I think you're still muted, my brother.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Thanks again for having me, Brother Jesse. It's great being
here again with I look forward to this conversation, Ernest.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Last week we began a conversation about organizing. Can we
pick back up on that point right there? How are
millennials organizing themselves?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I think that's a great question and Also, it's something
that we have to take a lot of time to
dissect because I think it's become one of those statements
that we hear so often reiterated and stated about people
without any context behind what it means. When people say
we need to organize, we need to organize, the question
(06:16):
I have as an educator is well, what exactly do
we mean by that? And I think the best way
to look at that is a breakdownor phrase. As an educator,
I'm thinking about how can I break this down to
the child in class that's not paying attention or the
class of the child in class who might not care
too much about history. And the first thing I will
say is, well, we talked when we talk about organized
and we're talking about organs, we think about organs. We
(06:39):
think of the body, and you know what does it
take for a body to function? Well, well, everything has.
Everything in your body has to be working the way
it's supposed to. When you eat food, which I was
doing right before I got on this call with you.
I did not have to think about what happened inside
of my body as I digested the food. I just
(06:59):
tried my best to pick the proper food from the
nutrient intact that I need every day, but the body
takes care of the rest. Now, of course, those of
us who are believers, who have a spiritual sense, we
know that there's something broader than that. But now when
we talk about what people need to do in terms
of organizing, the first thing I will say is, well,
(07:20):
what is your role with this body?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
We can say body of Christ, we can say body
of humanity? What is your role? Are you someone on
the exterior of this body that's working? Are you someone
on the interior? The stomach doesn't get jealous with the
heart being testined, you know, isn't jealous with the paincre
is you know, the kidney and so on and so forth.
(07:43):
So I think that we have to do a lot
of ref reflecting in terms of what are our strengths,
what is it that we can do best as people?
And I think because of with millennials, we are inundated
with social media messages. We get most of our news
from online. We are a generation that does not trust
the mainstream media as much. And there's a gift in
(08:05):
the curse with that because the news that we get
is sometimes in bite size segments and oftentimes and I
can speak from my own experience as a way to
intercede with what we were raised on that we did
not think was the best. We attempted to add our
hat into this and add our perspective. Now. I'm someone
who loves to communicate. I'm someone who I believe is
(08:25):
gifted in it. But there are some folks who work
best behind the scenes as writers, some folks who work
best behind the scenes as coordinating things. There are some
folks who work best meeting people where they are canvasy.
So I think when we talk about how we organize,
first thing we have to do as millennials before we
even digest what we're actually doing, is cut through all
(08:47):
the noise and understand that the stage that we are
even on right now is not for everybody. And that
does not mean that their mission and their purpose and
their function as an organ in this body is any
less important than our brother Krim.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I want to organize the next great dissenters. I began
this program by talking about Senator Corey Brooks and Congressman
Hakim Jeffries and Justice Soto Mayor and Justice Katanji Brown Jackson.
One thing that all four of them have in common
(09:23):
is that they chose the road of the system itself
to change it. I think that's true of our movements
from nineteen fifty four to the present, and maybe even
our movements from the inception of legal movements for African Americans. Notably,
I think about Frederick Douglass. I think about W. E. B.
(09:46):
Du Bois. Of course, towards the end of his life,
he decides to live abroad, and he's buried abroad. I've
been by his grave site. But I think about the
witness of our generation, the witness of the previous generation,
and I'm wondering if this term organization for the millennials
(10:08):
is a kind of organizing that is taking place separate
and apart from descent. And by that I mean history
seems to be recording our descent in this album.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I love that perspective. And my contribution to that is
I think that when we talk about organizing dissenters, we
have to reflect on how often do we chastise kids
in our community who exhibit that type of that perspective,
that behavior, Those kids in our community that we might
(10:47):
say talk back too much or speak up too much,
those kids who talk too much in class, who are
maybe labeled as having an attitude. I think that we
have to. I'm a huge opponent as someone who of
course did not make it far in athletics, but have
those dreams. At one point, I'm a huge proponent of
saying that we need to scout those organizers in our community,
(11:11):
those kids who have those skills. The same way we
look at a tall black boy and say he should
be on the team, or you know, or maybe a
large boy and say he needs to play football. We
need to be identifying those kids when they're in our schools.
We need to be identifying those kids when they are
at our churches, at our family functions, and we need
(11:34):
to speak life into them. I'll give you this example.
I was recently speaking out of school before the school
year ended in Chicago, and it was a mixed school
in fact. And afterwards, there was a young black boy
who was in seventh grade, I believe a little bit
taller than me. He came up to me, and you know,
he talked about how much he loved my talk and everything.
And my first, the first thought for me to break
(11:57):
the ice was to make a remark about, you know,
if he plays basketball or whatever, because that's what I
relate to. That was what I did for most of
my childhood. But before I said anything, I said, but
why would I say the same thing that so many
other people probably said to him or assumed about him.
So without even knowing him, I could tell that he
was a proactive person. Because some people might feel the
(12:20):
desire to talk to someone they saw speak, but they
might be too shy, so they might just say, well,
maybe i'll do it next time, they'll be a little hesitant.
He decided to be proactive to come up to me
and tell me he liked what I said. So what
I said instead was, young man, what's your favorite subject?
And when he told me his favorite subject was math,
(12:41):
which is something you don't often hear from our kids.
That's a lot of our kids are great in math,
but that's not something I don't believe it's even popular
to say that you love. Right, My next response was,
you would make a great math teacher, And then we
had an amazing conversation of what that would look like.
(13:02):
And his principal, who was a black man, came over.
We had a conversation about that too, because I did
not care what his grades were. In fact, I didn't
even know what his grades were. I was there for
one day, but I knew that what I said to
him in that moment could dictate a path and he
takes in his life just like the hour I had
(13:24):
with him in his classmates, this one on one conversation
could be an epiphany moment for him. And when we
look back at our lives oftentimes as people who are leaders,
whether they be in political affairs, educational affairs, just let me.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Cut you off for a second right there. Yeah, you
actually saw in that moment that a turning point in
the kid's life depended upon the conversation in that moment
and the direction he may take as a teacher. You
were conscious enough to know that what happened in that
(13:57):
moment could be the life changing event that changes the
course of his life.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yes, I say that with the utmost confidence because I've
had those moments in my own personal life. Oftentimes when
I talk to my wife about you know, we reflecting
our childhood, and it amazes me in reflection why I
remember certain things and you know why she might remember
certain things that have that emotional connection. And I think
about even why I was able to remember certain things
(14:24):
that I wrote about throughout my book, and it's because
it was something that was so drastically different from my
common experience. I can pinpoint the freshman year educator I had,
who was an Earth space science teacher named mister Miles,
a black man who taught me science, like although I
was not in love with the subject, seeing a black
(14:46):
man passionate about science did something for me. Or when
I was at u of I and I had that
professor Abdul al Kamaud who who spoke life into me
indirectly with his lectures twice a week, you know, like
there are those moments like that. That young man, according
to his black principal, did not have any black teachers there.
(15:10):
In fact, so even though he had a black principal,
he probably only saw him in passing. So I might
be that only example who knows where he might go
to high school. So for me, it's an extra responsibility,
and it's a responsibility of us all, not just me,
because these conversations, these these are mentor in conversations. This
(15:31):
is how we also enter this space as educators. I'm
not an educator just because I have a certification. I'm
an educator because I feel like I have something that
I can help bring out of in the youth. I'm
no different than that young man, but I have to
make sure that with my limited time there, I give
him everything that I received that I feel like was
(15:52):
different from most of my friends on the South Side
of Chicago, so that he could become the best version
of him, which hopefully is better than me.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
You know, I in this moment, first of all, thank
you for mentoring and working with our young people. You know,
I'm thinking about the cultural icons who stood out as descent,
and not often do we see our teachers as those
cultural icons. And what I think you're showing our listeners
today is that our teachers do matter in that process.
(16:20):
But for example, the cultural icons of descent. There are
lots of black boxers, But you have to give Muhammad Ali,
at the pinnacle of his career, the title of great
dissenter his descent on the question of the Vietnam War.
(16:43):
In football, you have to give the title of iconic
dissenter to Colin Kaepernick. I think you also have to
give it to Jim Brown. In basketball, I think you
have to give the great dissenter title to Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
(17:07):
Plenty of basketball players, lots of US dribble, lots of
US Well, a few people can take off from the
from the free throw line, some people can take off
from the three point line. But Kareem abdul Jabbar. Sure
there were more graceful basketball players Jordan Kobe, but they
(17:32):
reached cultural iconic status in the minds of the public
because they stood up and took a stand, or in
the case of Colin Kaepernick, he took a knee. When
I think about cultural dissenters, I think about Stevie Wonder
and his lyrics. I think about the direction of his
(17:56):
of his singing, and how he was speaking. Also to
the times. I think about Curtis Mayfield, I think about
I think about what's going on with Marvin Gay, people
who took their art and transformed it into speaking about
this moment. And then I think about, you know, the
(18:17):
thought that you give to teaching a student that while
you may not have at this point in your life,
the kind of recognition that these celebrities might get, and
hopefully you will become a celebrity and earnest Krim the
third will be in style like that. But the idea
that you recognize that we can have an impact on
(18:39):
one kid at one time, in one moment, simply by
the things that we say. We walk out of our homes,
we see some kid who's wayward, and as a black
man or as a black woman, we ask them, where's
your mom at, where's your daddy at? Go home? And
in that moment, all of eternity the power to change
(19:03):
who they are.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
When when you say that, especially about Muhammad Ali, what
I immediately think about is this story of how when
he was a child, I can't remember the exact age
right now, but when he was growing up in Kentucky
and he lost his bike and he was wondering. I
remember like hearing about this story. He was wandering around
trying to find his bike and he was like really angry,
(19:27):
and he came across a cop, and this was actually
a white cop, and this cop saw how angry, frustrated,
yet motivated he was to find his bike, and he
saw something in him. Now, in this instant, it does
relate to athletics. But when we see who and what
(19:47):
Muhammad Ali Cashius Clay became, we knew that it was
a positive thing in that situation, especially considering this was
Jim Crow era apart time, and this white guy says,
you know what, you should come to the boxing gym
with me. You should train with me. Now that's what
I mean by the one conversation, because what most of
(20:10):
us will say when we see a child like that,
whether we see that child in the Chicago, La, New York, Atlanta,
or whatever, we'll think that that child is bad, or
that child is angry, whatever like. But what we don't
see is as adults, we have the potential to redirect
it and help them channel that in a way they
(20:30):
have not had before. Muhammad Ali would have grown up
to become more aware of his condition in America as
he already did, and if he had not probably had
that avenue and platform of boxing, who knows what that
could have led to, especially in such turbulent times as.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
That I am. I am again completely taken aback by
the idea that each of us can have an infinite
and eternal impact on how we conduct ourselves on any
given day, and how we engage young people, how we
(21:08):
interact in community with young people, because ultimately it is
these stories, the ones that I know I take to
the grave with me. If I don't share them with someone,
then These are lived experiences that someone has to relive
(21:28):
just to arrive at certain conclusions that many of us
have already reached in our lives. It just doesn't make
sense to me that we have so many silent generation
and baby boomers who are not spending the time with
the next generation. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show. My very special guest is Ernest Krim.
(21:49):
When we come forward more with Ernest Krim special guest
is mister Ernest Krim. Ernest has created content for companies
such as HBO, Hulu, Disney, Paramount, and the History Channel. Additionally,
he is the CEO of Krim's Cultural Consulting LLC, an
international speaker who spoken at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Microsoft,
(22:10):
Colin Kaepernick Know Your Rights campaign and audiences in the
UK Canada, and the author of two books and a
passionate progressive education activist who's work closely with the organizations
to advocate for educational and political equity. Ernest, welcome forward
to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Hey, it's good to be back with your brother, Ernest.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I want to pick up on this idea of descent.
Not everybody can be Martin Luther King Junior. Not everybody
can be Malcolm X. Not everybody can be their good Marshall.
Not everybody can be Katanji Brown Jackson or Soto Mayor.
Every time the voting season comes around, we get hit
(22:54):
over the head with this guilt trip. Martin died and
Malcolm so we can rosa sat down, so we could vote,
and we ain't voting. But I'm wondering why millennials and
others don't see the vote as descent. That is, it
(23:15):
isn't something that you just vote for exercise and exercising
your right to vote, but that it is your nonviolent
tool to say this is how I feel. This is
my objection to the behavior of the present order. It
is my objection to the lack of equal, high quality
(23:38):
funding for schools. It is my objection to the inadequacy
of healthcare in the nation. It is my objection to
spending so much money on weapons of mass destruction and
on the military budget and not spending money on social
uplift to put a man on his own two feet
right here in America. This is my objection. I got
(24:00):
one vote, and I get to cast it up and
down a ticket for people that I feel are like minded,
and then leave that voting experience, quite frankly, with tears
or even in a religious frenzy, the same religious frenzy
that some of us might experience on Sunday morning in
church when Pastor preaches and and Miss william sings. But
(24:22):
at the end of the day, your right to vote
is your descent. It is your right to say, hey,
I'm for Jesse Jackson, but it's also your right to
say I'm for Barack Obama, I'm for Kamala Harris. But
your right to vote is also your right to say,
I don't like what the hell is going on in
America right now, and therefore I am exercising it for
(24:43):
the person other than this guy. Help me understand what
the transition is for this resistance generation, to understand that
their vote is the power of descent.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, the way you laid that out. As millennials across
the board, especially black millennials, we are very progressive and
liberal minded, although, as you said, you know, some of us,
especially those who are very vocal online, don't always feel
like voting is the best way to articulate that or
(25:19):
to express that descent. And I would say, in fact,
that that's even a form of descent people who have
decided that voting is around to go. It's not one
that I agree with at all, but I think that
what we gather from that is And the best way
I can explain this is when you look at a generation,
(25:39):
the generation who is usually born after the family gains wealth, right,
they always talk about how difficult it is to keep
that same hunger within that next generation because they did
not have to overcome those same obstacles. So oftentimes that
generation of kids has to really search for meaning because
(26:00):
it's not as clearly defined as when I go outside,
I see struggle like you think about Like Lebron when
he was growing up in Akron, Ohio, he could clearly
see the struggle of growing up in public housing. His kids,
especially the ones who played basketball, it's a completely different
experience because that goal that they have might strictly just
(26:21):
come from I love the game, or for Lebron, it
was I love the game and I gotta find a
better way. I can tell you from the experience of
someone who was in the class, or who has been
engaged and always believed in the voting and understood the
merits of it. Even I have not been fully educated,
so I have to be self taught, you know, about
(26:43):
everything that was won in the previous generation. We have
not been taught. Like we see the photo ops. We
see the march, and we see the protests, and we
see doctor King and LBJ in the room and everything.
We see Malcolm saying, by any means necessary, ballad of
the bullet. But we don't, like, we need to really
break down that entire era with a course, because I
(27:08):
will admit I did not know job core K from
that time period. You know, there are so many intricacies
of the bills and the laws that were passed by
efforts of our ancestors foreseeing the president back then to
do so that we don't We always hear about the
voting rights acted as Civil Rights Act, and you know,
house and discrimination and everything affirmative action, but we don't
(27:31):
get into the nitty gritty of the issues that weren't
as black and white that still impacted us. When I
first started speaking, when I was teaching, I worked very
closely with TRIO and that program is probably not going
to be funded moving forward. But that also comes from
that era. So there's an element of us not being
(27:51):
made aware of the ways in which our vote can
impact things like this. But there's also the frustration of
seeing the ways in which we have been betrayed in
our minds by politicians and the ways in which we
have seen them operate in ways that exacerbate the issues
in our community. I think some of it is we like, yeah,
we know, based on the structure we have now, we
(28:13):
do need that political assistance. But metaphorically speaking, there are
people in my community passed out and they need CPR
right now. So and a lot of times, in our
mind it's like, well, I can keep investing in something
that's going to take Sometimes it can take generations for
us to even see the change that's gonna happen from
a politician as opposed to I got to get on
(28:36):
the block right now and provide help. I think there's
a way.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
For us to do both, though, Ernest, you know, let
me just say this, because you know I respect you,
But I'm not so sure. When I heard discussions on
the ground in Philadelphia, and when I hear them on
the ground in Chicago, I've heard them in Detroit, Michigan.
This kind of new wave of African American voters who
(29:04):
knew not Egypt. Maybe that's the best way I can
say it. From the Bible, who knew not Egypt, you know,
found themselves at the bottom of Mount Sinai, who knew
not Egypt and ended up wandering in the desert for
like forty years. I'm just wondering why they don't see,
(29:24):
with all of the logic and whatever social media is
doing to their response systems, why they don't see that
closing a trauma unit or eliminating your grandmother's medicaid wasn't
compelling enough to be able to say I need to
(29:48):
engage this thing. In other words, we chose in many
instances to say that Kamala's not black enough, and we
willing to give him a chance because we got a
COVID check which was our own money, by the way,
with his signature on it. At some point in time,
(30:09):
Ernest and I know we're going to have to address
this when we come forward, and of course we're going
to of course we're going to close on your word
of hope. Some of this just becomes just downright well,
I'm not prepared to call us ignorant. There's just something
wrong with the idea that we pick and choose, that
we cherry pick what it is we want to identify
with that our moment of descent. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
(30:30):
KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show. When we come forward more welcome forward to
kbl WE Talk fifteen eighty. I'm Jackson Junior Show. I
am Jesse Jackson Junior. My very special guest in this
hour is to Ernest Krim, the third I May nominated producer,
public teacher, anti racist educator and a good friend. In
(30:52):
our next hour, we will be discussing the dangerous act
of worship with doctor Walter Owens, who serves as doctor
Charlie Dates and the third teen thousand member Congregation of
the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago as its Minister of
Music and Arts, a role that includes leadership to ten
arts related ministries and five hundred plus volunteers. The church
(31:13):
warships in the ten thousand seat Sanctuary of the House
of Hope, located in the Rosland neighborhood on the South
side of Chicago, and whose Sunday and Wednesday evening services
can be seen live each week at www dot SBCC
dot org. Ernest Krim, Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, I'm back, brother, I'm back, and I'm ready to
chime in on this right here. Man you brought up,
please do some great points and insight. And I would say,
in defense, in defense of my generation and family, we
are not taught in a manner in our education system
that would promote vigorous and involvement in our political system.
(32:02):
And I say that because of my time not just
teaching history, but teaching government and thinking of the way
the elementary ways in which we taught kids who are
preparing to be adults, the way we glossed over complex
themes in an effort to get them to pass the
test for a graduation requirement. As I say that, though
(32:23):
I want to reflect on, then how did our previous
generation know about the urgency to vote? If they were
a generation who wasn't that far removed from when our
folks had where it was illegal for us to read
and write, where they had to fight tooth and nail
to get an education, where they did not have the
so called graduation requirement of passing the Constitution test. How
(32:45):
was it then that they did not know that they
did know the urgency? And I think that's where we
come in as a community, but also too, that's where
our elders fill in these gaps. I think of the
role that the church has played historically and educating and
making sure that we are aware of these things. We
are primarily getting our information, like I said before, through
(33:05):
social media, which means that we have to be aware
that some of our social media influencers are entertainers of
people that we admire. They are being paid to spread
dissension in our communities. They are paid to advertise and
promote the other perspective so that we think there's merit,
(33:26):
and receiving a check from a president who did not
originally even want it, and while giving us the check,
which is our tax money, is pulling the rug from
under us. There are pages I can scroll through now
on meta platforms Facebook and Instagram that are continuing to
spread misinformation to cause dissension between working class folks, black folks, Latinos,
(33:48):
white folks, and there's no fact checking, so we have
to be very weary of this, y'all. I'm speaking to
my millennial folks, but also to my parents, generation and beyond,
because Mark zuck Berg made it clear they ain't fact
checking anymore. This is the type of misinformation that leads
to us either not wanting to vote or deciding to
(34:09):
vote for people who do not have our best interests
in mind. Because we're creating now, brother Jesse, we're creating
realities that don't exist. When I go on my Facebook page,
and that which is my personal page, I can scroll
through and see ninety nine percent of posts that are
completely inaccurate. On a jovial side, I'll see posts that
(34:31):
are spreading lies about people like Jannis and Takumpo signing
with the Lakers. I've seen a post that said there
was a black man who decided to go against his
job and approve every person for Snap benefits. And when
you do a quick Google search to find out about
this story, you find out that it's false. But the
(34:53):
story has a million views and it's been shared one
hundreds and thousands of times. Now, a simple fact like
that might not seem like it's a big deal, But
what happens then if that information is about somebody running
for president, somebody running for mayor somebody running for State rep.
We internalize that, and that feeds into confirmation bias. We
(35:14):
already are probably gonna feel like these politicians don't have
our best interests in mind. So when we see something
like that that con seemingly confirms it to us, we
go down that rabbit hole. We have to really be
very weary, y'all about this type of stuff moving forward,
because I am a firm believer that that is one
of the reasons why this selection became what it is today.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You know, I want to give you two or three
minutes towards the end of the program for a word
of hope, But just before we do, I just want
to share what it's like for me to walk into
a voting booth. I mean, I know the Democratic Party
of Thomas Jefferson in seventeen ninety three history matters, the
Party of States Rights, the Party of slavery. It was
a red party until after Brown versus the Board of Education.
(35:59):
We can to become a blue party. The party of
Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I know who the Democrats are. I also know the
Party of Abraham Lincoln in eighteen fifty four, and it
being a party of liberation, stopping the expansion of slavery
into the Western States and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Party
(36:19):
of Lincoln, which ultimately, over time became the Party of
Jim Jordan, the Party of Marjorie Taylor Green, the Party
of Donald Trump. So why is black history important? Why
are you my favorite millennial? Because when I walk into
that voting booth with my one little vote, I bring
Harriet Tubman with me, and I bring Frederick Douglass with me.
(36:40):
I bring Sir Journer Truth with me. I bring w
Evita Boys with me. I bring Fanning the Hamer with me.
I bring Jesse Jackson with me. I bring Martin Luther
King with me. I bring Andy Young with me. I
bring every Negro I've ever met with me. And then
I look down at the names and I say, where
(37:02):
are these negroes going to be? And how can black
history save my life? With my one vote? And then
I cast my vote based on that. I'm sure Jewish
Americans do the same. I'm sure Irish Americans do the same.
I'm sure they bring all of their history and everything
that they've ever been about to that process with them.
And that's the guiding post for me our history. You
(37:25):
are a black history teacher. You wrote the book Black
History Can Save Your Life from the talk to George Floyd,
everything you need to know to de escalate a racial situation.
With that said, we have about two minutes. Eric Krim
share with us a word of hope.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
I want to just expound on that point you made
and say that I think quite simply, when I speak
to kids and I'll ask them a very deep question,
I'll say, what is your purpose? And I say that
because I want to rattle them. I want them to
begin to think deeply. But for all of us, I
(38:03):
would say, without knowing anybody personally, that's a listener right now.
Our purpose truly is to help make life easier for
everybody who comes after us, and there are things we
can do on a daily basis to do that. It
includes listening to conversations like this, listening to radio shows
like this, and implying these principles. And it also includes
every four every two years, every six years, sometimes voting
(38:27):
in our best interest as a community. It does not
mean that the people we're voting for are perfect, but
it means that we're voting to help create something that
is more perfect and more perfect union right moving forward.
I think there's a way for us to understand that
too with how we do this. Always tell folks we
agitate and we create. You can agitate the system while
(38:48):
simultaneously working to create something outside of that that helps
the benefit us all. And as long as we remember that,
we will continue to make these steps. This race, this
war is not one in one election, in one day,
in one conversation on one radio show. It's one step
at a time.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Y'all, stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod.
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty. My very
special guest in this hour has been Ernest Krim Third,
the Krim Dela Krim of the Millennials. When we come forward,
our very special guest will be none other than doctor
(39:26):
Walter Owens. Doctor Walter Owens is the Minister of Music
at the Salem Baptist Church under the leadership of Reverend
Charles Dates. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. When we come forward,
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