Speaker 1: Of litigation and government relations firm, and Almo serves as
the senior pastor of the Douglas Memorial Community Church of
Baltimore and affiliates.
Speaker 2: He's also the former chief executive officer of the Rainbow
Push Coalition. Doctor Yary, welcome forward to the show. Good
to be with you on a Wednesday. It's a little
while today. Let's see what happens, Doctor Yeary. You know,
Gina has proposed that we take a look at yesterday
in history. I meant to get to this yesterday, but
we ran out of time on this day. On January twentieth,
Colin Powell was selected or appointed, if you will, to
be the first African American Secretary of State of the
United States. Significance, Doctor Yurie, of the leadership of Colin Powell.
Speaker 3: Well, aside from a distinguished military career, certainly his appointment
was very hopeful. I think there was, by virtue of
things beyond his control, a little bit of disappointment and
tarnished when it came down to the testimony concerning weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. But I think overall, if
we were to try to position General Powell service, it
would be highly unlikely, nearly impossible that he would be
Secretary of State under this administration, simply because of the
way they view the expertise and the capabilities of people
of color, particularly of African descent. So I think if
we just used that benchmark from yesterday and look at
how far we have regressed in many ways in terms
of who is actually called upon to serve in this government,
particularly with this administration, I think we would all agree
that it leaves a lot to be desired, and that
would be putting it mildly.
Speaker 2: I know that we'll be coming forward in just a moment,
but I do want to ask the question and remind
people that Barack Obama was also inaugurated twice president of
the United States. On January twentieth, Kamala Harris was nominated
and was sworn in as the first African American woman
Vice President of the United States on January twentieth, and
so January twentieth in and of itself, including but not
limited to Hiram Rebels, and the role that he played
in the history of African Americans, was also very significant.
On the date of January eleventh, I'm Jesse Jackson Junior
listening to The Jesse Jackson Junior Show. My producer telling
me to keep talking because I guess we're going right
to the thirty. No, she's just saying keep talking generally.
Oh it's okay. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. More we come
forward on Kblate Talk fifteen eighty. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
Welcome lord to the Jesse Jackson Genia Show on Giulate Talk.
Our regular contributor on Wealthy Wednesdays is doctor s todd Yurie,
principle of the Yearie Firm. He's both a lawyer and
a minister. He has one foot in the pulpit and
also one foot in the courtroom, but both feet in reality,
Doctor Uri, Welcome forward to the show. It's it's Wednesday.
Speaker 3: It's I'm waiting to see what the producer is gonna
tell us when she says keep talking. That's a good
thing rightday.
Speaker 2: But Gina does an extraordinary job. Really grateful for the
work that she does here at the program and at
the station. Hey, let me throw this out at you.
I'm thinking in this moment, as we reflect during this
drive time in Los Angeles, of just how significant January
twentieth is in Black history. Now. I say that because
I believe, even though Shirley Chisholm gets a significant amount
of credit, that the first campaign by black people in
a presidential election year to get the attention of Democrats
and Republicans after the Voting Rights Act was the poor
People's campaign. Doctor King is trying to get the attention
of both parties at the hour of his assassination with
this idea of the poor people's campaign. It's a campaign.
It is a campaign like mailers and billboards and yard science.
It's a poor people's campaign bringing them into the process
just three years after the Voting Rights Act. Then you have,
of course Shirley Chisholm in campaign nineteen seventy two. We
have Jesse Jackson in a campaign nineteen eighty four and
eighty eight. We have Reverend Sharpton running a presidential campaign.
Everybody trying to get Reverend Yeary to January twentieth. Then
we have Barack Obama as President of the United States.
January twentieth, we have Kamala Harris inaugurated on January twentieth.
January twentieth is as significant a date in the history
of black people as any thing we celebrate all year,
including Watch Night, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth, the election of a
United States President, doctor yeary all forty seven of them
is black history. It is.
Speaker 3: The question becomes, is it history in a progressive sort
of sense where we're building and expanding on the principles
of opportunity and inclusion, or does it become a very
regressive kind of date that has many of us kind
of marking the calendar to say, you mean to tell me,
it's only been one year since this dude's been in
office and we got three more to go. What does
that portend for folks who are relying on the government
to be a resource and not just an adversary in
opposition to what's in the best interest, particularly of those
who are most vulnerable. If we think about who gets snap,
what it looks like we still don't have a livable
wage in this country.
Speaker 2: There are a number of things.
Speaker 3: Even when we get into fair housing and the regression
that happens there, we still don't have justice for black farmers.
Because every time that comes up, the argument is is
that somehow justice for disadvantage black folk is somehow discrimination
against white folk. That every time we get to a
January twentieth. We have to wrestle with whether or not
these next four years is going to lend itself lend
themselves to needing to be much more engaged and then
much more assertive in making sure that we don't go
back in time, which is exactly where we find ourselves today.
Speaker 2: I am particularly honored to hear that reflection. I've not
heard one on this subject matter, and I think we
together come up with a creative energy to put an
angle on a particular date that some might just see
as the third Windnesday, third Monday in January, where we
celebrate the King Holiday and where we hear the speeches
over and over again. But the fact of the matter
is so much of our history now comes together in
the cycle and Indian interpretation of what that date specifically means.
I mean it ought to be a day of voter
registration of a day of participation, a day of environmental justice,
a day of equal high quality education, a day of
health care, a day of holding Congress accountable, a day
of sharing with future presidents of the United States, the
kind of expectations we have in judicial appointments to the
Federal bench and to the Supreme Court. I mean January
twentieth is definitely not a laid back date because when
you look at people like Hiram Revels, and you look
at the significance the hopes of swearing in a new
Congress occur on the January twentieth in a presidential election year.
All of these things are happening in the context of
January that somehow we just see as as small by comparison.
Hiram Roodes revel was elected by the Mississippi Legislature as
the first African American to serve in the US Senate
or Milestone during reconstruction, so he wasn't sworn in until
February twenty fifth, facing opposition and debate over his eligibility
due to racial citizenship laws. According to sources like the
Equal Justice Initiative, Hiram Revels the first black Senator. The
Mississippi Sippy Department of Archives and History shares with us
his story January twentieth, eighteen seventy. Dr Yuri.
Speaker 3: Well, bear in mind what eighteen seventy represents is a
shift post Civil War, post Civil Rights Act of eighteen
sixty six, and then you moved to Civil Rights Act
of eighteen seventy you're beginning to see the emergence of
a very influential voting block of people who had been
historically excluded. And so Hiram revels election first of all,
being selected by the legislature in and of itself ought
to tell us a whole lot just because of the
way senators were elected at that particular time. It wasn't
a popular vote per se. But it also speaks to
I think the importance of our full engagement and participation
in this process. Where I think we've tended to lose
our way is we've kind of held our engagement at
the polls subject to kind of instant gratification. This isn't
this isn't a one and done. As you were talking
a minute ago, I was thinking January twentieth for us,
or the third Monday in January, in observance of doctor
King's birthday, should be a day that we actually issue
a report card on the United States government on how
well the government is doing addressing the issues for whom
doctor King had great concern. And so it shouldn't just
be hearing a president pontificate about Some would say pontificate,
others might say defecate on the reality of what he
had done on behalf of the nation. But rather than
listening to this dude just poo poo over everything and
make us believe that somehow other things are great and
we're better off than we would have been otherwise is problematic,
and the people's voice needs to be heard, and the
government needs to be critiqued and evaluated on its effectiveness
and doing what the government is supposed to do if
it is government of.
Speaker 2: For and by the people. Oh, doctor ear you've said
something about this report card. Now, this report card makes sense,
I mean, and it can come from not only a
national perspective, but even local communities ought be issuing on
January twentieth what the state of play is on these
critical questions raised by doctor King and raised in our
society large given the very nature that January twentieth is
a turning point in American history every four years, as
part of a cycle in our historic memory as a nation,
there is, as I was corrected earlier by James Felton Keith,
of course it's January twenty twenty nine when we inaugurate
a new president. But it still happens right around that
third Monday in January every single year. Yeah, it's always there.
Speaker 3: It's here where I think it's important that we lift
up the work of Tavis Smiley and the regular publications
of the State of Black America when we would do
an evaluation and an assessment of where are we in
terms of the fundamental and essential points of evaluation, in
terms of quality of life, participation, engagement, protection, are we
secure in our person It is that kind of ongoing
spirit that we have to go back and pick up again.
But we also have to expand who are the teachers
that are informing the report card?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: We get grades in more than one subject. Certainly we
need to do a collaborative, cooperative, even a coalition focused
evaluation of where the government is because that's how we
begin to inform our own community. It's not just to
tell the government the obvious. They know they're not doing anything.
To tell them they're not doing anything is really more
of a waste of energy, but to raise it and
elevate it to a point of public discourse, local, state
and federal. If they're going to give us a state
of the city, state of the state, state of the
Union address, then the people need to have their own
retort to be able to say, we call bs for
what you're trying to sell us in terms of a
billy good. What's really going on here is you're hustling
the people to the benefit of an exclusive club and
to the harm of the masses. And therefore the people
now need to get organized and mobilized to be able
to take back their government.
Speaker 2: You know, we're onto something here. I'd like to see
that State of the Union. The Black State of the
Union Report reissued every January twentieth as a reflection on
what the state of the Union really is, what the
state of the Negro is, from our economic to our political,
to our social to our cultural and there is no
doubt that at this hour in the nation's history, we
are in a source or space of regression. We are
going backwards, not because we the people, particularly us, are
not moving forward, but because the government itself is turning
its back on the least of these year each just
a few more minutes before we come forward.
Speaker 3: Well, uh, you call it turning turning his back. I
think I think we got mooned. Uh. Something about this
feels like a childish or a high school prank. That
basically what what the Congress keeps showing us is there
behind right, they're basically saying, we'll do what we want.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got a president that's overseas today saying
he's not going to give up on taking somebody else's land.
He's just not going to use force to do it. Uh,
and then comes out with some statement that says he
has some sort of agreement that allows him to back
away from imposing tariffs some folks who oppose his point
of view about the seizing of land. There is this
sense that we who have lived this history must be
able to recount it. One because this year marks one
hundred years since Black History Week was initiated and installed
in this country, that we've got to go back and
remember how we got here, and how we got here
was not by some sense of charity or some sense
of you know, egalitarian focus. Oh, let's just make room
for the negro. No, we came in kicking down doors
and making demands and persisting until the cries and the
calls for justice had to be heard and had to
be honored.
Speaker 2: Go to the club.
Speaker 4: Recent claim by President Trump that the nineteen sixty four
Civil Rights Act harn white Americans is just wrong and
it's dangerous. It rewrites history in a way that fuels
fear and resentment. My fathers and so many leaders of
the movement, Fred Shuttlesworth dying, Nash John Lewis, I can
call the role, but I won't do it today, did
not risk their lives to divide this nation. They did
so because America was denying millions basic rights, the right
to work, the right to vote, to live where they please,
to move through society with dignity. The Civil Rights Act
did not give Black people special treatment. It made discrimination illegal,
the same discrimination you're trying to turn around and use
a quiet the law to protect everyone equally. That is democracy.
So to my white brothers and sisters, the Civil Rights
Act was never meant to harm you. It was meant
to heal a nation broken by injustice. Fairness does not
steal from you. Justice strengthens us.
Speaker 2: All Junior listening to Jesse Jackson Junior show, Bernice King
said it all more. When we come forward on k
BLA talk fight, welcome for with me, Come on, come
on with me. More than past political Action chair for
the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP, as co founding
principle of Community Churches for Community Development, Inc. And as
the founding principle of Assault Strategic Advocacy and Legislative think Tank,
a faith based public policy collaborative that works on regional
and national empowerment strategies impacting disaffected communities. He's often called
upon to facilitate creative conversations that solve challenging public policy problems.
A civil rights attorney and public policy advocate, Doctor Yeerie
holds a deep belief that honest dialogue creates opportunities to
form strategic partnerships that strengthen families and communities. Doctor Eerie,
welcome forward the Wealthy Wednesdays and the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
And as we wait for Doctor Yerie, I wanted to
share with with everyone that I thought the profundity with
which Bernice King delivered her remarks, which from my perspective,
must always be difficult for Reverend doctor Bernice King. Obviously
she's commemorating all the birth of her father, but also
having to reflect not very far from his grave site
along with the gravesite of her mother, and yet with
such poise and such grace. She comes forward every single
year on this holiday to reflect upon the life of
her father in a timely, relevant, courageous, and clear way,
and she almost always challenges the occupant of the White
House and the nation's leadership to a higher moral calling
and purpose. And so I was particularly moved just a
few years ago when I sat through the King Holiday
service at Ebenezer Church when Bernice delivered her annual address.
Senator Rafael Warnock was present on that occasion. Of course,
he is the pastor of Beniezer Baptist Church right across
the street from the King Sinner. And the grace with
which she approaches under very difficult circumstances, that reflection must
be some kind of special place that she has to
dig in order to be able to provide the kind
of clarity that provides every single year during this period.
And so I am particularly grateful for her spirit. I
am completely grateful that God has given us a woman
in this particular time, a leader of immense moral authority
and clarity in Reverend Doctor Bernice King. I do believe
that I want to turn our conversation to this question
of Donald Trump and Greenland and his preoccupation and obsession
with Greenland. With that said, I'm going to turn to
our team and ask them to play a clip regarding Greenland.
Speaker 5: Thucidides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of
international relations reasserting itself, and faced with this logic, there
is a strong tendency for countries to go along, to
get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that
compliance will buy safety. Well it won't, so what are
our options. In nineteen seventy eight, the Czech dissident Vaslav Havel,
later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless,
and in it he asked a simple question, how did
the communist system sustain itself? And his answer began with
a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in
his window, Workers of the world unite. He doesn't believe it,
no one does, but he places a sign anyway to
avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because
every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system
persists not through violence alone, but through the participation of
ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havell called this living within a lie. The system's power
comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to
perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes
from the same source. When even one person stops performing,
when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends,
it is time for companies and countries to take their
signs down.
Speaker 2: For decades, for.
Speaker 6: Decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the
rules based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised
its principles, We benefited from its predictability, and because of that,
we could pursue values based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules based order
was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient,
that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that
international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity
of the.
Speaker 5: Accused or the victim.
Speaker 6: This fiction was useful.
Speaker 5: An American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open
sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support
for frameworks for resolving disputes. Placed the sign in the window.
We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling
out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer.
Speaker 2: Works, Doctor Yarie. I want to turn our attention to Greenland.
But I'm also deeply troubled by the reality that much
of the investigations into Donald Trump in his first term
were largely driven by what James Comy, Hillary Clinton others
actually knew about Donald Trump and his ability to bring
chaos to the world order. We have just a few
minutes before we come forward, Doctor Eerie, your thoughts on
the chaos of the hour from Donald John Trump in
the international order. Two words that come up in that speech.
One is American jiminy.
Speaker 3: It is that sense of entitlement and self proclaimed dominance
and domination that the rest of the world is now
paying very close attention to.
Speaker 2: And I think what you're.
Speaker 3: Beginning to see is a realignment of allegiances and alliances
that could very well leave the United States out on
a limb by itself. And simply claiming that you've got
the strongest military on the face of the planet does
not somehow make you the one who sets the rules.
Speaker 2: On the playground.
Speaker 3: And so I think inside the US bubble, the thing
that has to be determined, particularly in the halls of Congress,
is how long do we let this reckless type of
leadership go unchecked and not use what Congress has as
its greatest tool, and that's the power of the purse.
Speaker 2: That you can't just use who's.
Speaker 3: Somebody else's money, which he's accustomed to doing, to do
what he wants to do for his own benefit. And
it's going to have diminishing returns. It already does, and
eventually it's going to start causing arm in places where
he claims that he's got his greatest success.
Speaker 2: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
This is doctors Todd Yuri more than We Come forward
on KBLA Talk fifteen j Lunch Club welcomes doctor Yuri forward,
Doctor YERI I have a I have this revelation in
our conversation that just arrived. Everything Trump did in his
first term. When I think about Greenland, including demanding that
Europe pay more of its own defense, It's not like
it was an effort that if they paid more of
their own defense, he would reduce the US military budget.
In fact, he will be the first president to propose
a trillion dollar annual military budget for the United States,
the largest military budget per animal spending in the history
of the world per year. But by demanding that Europe
pay more of its own defense and then the American
people giving him a second term, he's essentially saying, now,
pay for all of your own defense. And of course,
the greatest threat to Europe is Putin and Ukraine and
the march of Putin westward from Ukraine to the borders
potentially of Europe itself. When you speak about unraveling the
entire international order, there is something to be said about
the early investigations into Donald Trump and his behavior that
was deeply troubling for the intelligence community in the United States.
Speaker 3: Theory, yeah, there are few things embedded in that very
cogent question. The US economy is a consumption based economy.
Speaker 2: What makes it thrive is for the.
Speaker 3: Consumer to be able to get what they need to consume.
The US economy is not built to be self sustaining.
It needs a global marketplace in which to operate so
that you don't have as much pressure. Right, we have
a depressed labor wage, we have depressed opportunity, we have
kind of exclusions for who does and does not get
paid for certain types of work. If this wered to
really be as they talk about a market based solution,
much of what the US claims to be America first
would be beyond the reach to even be produced here
because the cost of labor as part of the formula
would be unsustainable. And so for the units to think
that somehow or other, this notion of expanding military and
getting other countries to pay more and giving this sense
that somehow other these factories are going to come back,
and yet they're going to pay seven dollars and twenty
five cents an hour only in those states where the
federal hourly wage is higher.
Speaker 2: Than the state wage.
Speaker 3: That's states, particularly in the old Confederate South. We've got
to be real clear that we understand that we're not
going to get hustled this time. That's what reverend doctor
Bernie's King was talking about. That's what we heard from
Davos this morning. Everybody is saying saying, look, we're onto
this game and we're not going to get played again.
And so remember you've been talking to mister President that
is feeding this kind of infantile insanity. You need to
understand that it's not going to be go along to
get along. You're going to get pushed back internally in
terms of in the streets of the United States, and
you're going to get pushed back in terms of global policy.
And if you want to live on that iceberg, then
go for it. But we're not going to become subjects
to American hegemony.
Speaker 5: Again.
Speaker 2: I heard the other day, and one person also commented
in our chat that they've never seen a president more
intent on a World War three and another civil war
all within his own administration. Is there a tipping point? Todd, Well,
the tipping point is you've got to be careful that
the civil war and the World war don't.
Speaker 3: Happen at the same time, because then you've got to
figure out what he's going to do with the military
that he says has these off the chart enlistments going on. Right,
there is a ceiling to what the US military can
actually handle.
Speaker 2: And when he's running off.
Speaker 3: In all of these places using the military for non
military purposes, what he's doing is he's further depleting the
capacity of the military to do what nations military forces
are really there to do to defend their interest.
Speaker 2: And so I think he's spreading things too.
Speaker 3: Thin, and I think he's giving himself too much credit
that somehow that he's going to be able to dominate.
And in the meantime, I'm sure there are a number
of conversations for which he is not pretty that those
he would maybe consider as adversaries are maybe building alliances
that are counter to the US domination strategy that has
never really worked. And even as he celebrates two and
fifty years of independence, the independence of America was not
done solely by the resources of America. They had to
have allies in that exercise. And to think that somehow
that he can celebrate it and not honor it is
something that we all have.
Speaker 2: To reckon with, you know, doctor Bury, I think that
I don't think he's making decisions at all. I don't
think he's capable given what we've seen over the last
nine months. I don't think he's capable of sitting through
a meeting and rationally approaching the present role that he
has as President of the United States, the moral questions,
the political questions, the security questions. I don't think he's
that patient. I don't think he gives the kind of
reflection that we think about previous presidents, the George W.
Bush maybe more I'm sorry, George H. W. Bush, maybe
more than George W. Who needed his vice president the
kind of reflection that Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy
and even Lyndon Johnson gave to the office of the Presidency.
I don't think he's capable of it. So this is
a useful there's some useful idiocy going on here. But
there is a cabal in the White House that this
country is going to have to come to terms with
through the legal system when this administration is over. Talking
about autopen auto pen taking a person who is like
spending the weekend with Bernie's with the President of the
United States and just having him sign things that are
part of this whole project twenty twenty five agenda has
been so catastrophic to the republic itself. To the two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He's
shredding the documentary Iman year. We have about two minutes
before you come forward. I know, I took us in
a beat valley and you take us to a mountain
of hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got to climb the mountain, though. We gotta
be real clear what we're seeing is actually the byproduct
telling exactly what you just mentioned. It is the kind
of passive endorsement of this kind of recklessness.
Speaker 2: But here's what I was saying for us.
Speaker 3: To remember as we observe Doctor King's holiday on yesterday
or day before yesterday, we have to remember that Scripture
tells us that in honoring God now into the one
who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all
that we can ask or imagine according to the power
that's at work within us. This isn't a moment about
what God's going to do. This is a moment about
what the people are going to do.
Speaker 2: You the power that God has given.
Speaker 3: Us to be able to change the dynamics and dimensions
of what human frailty cannot otherwise produce. And if the
divine in us rises in this moment, then the moral
outcomes will indeed be ours to experience, and we will
be able to pass them on to our children.
Speaker 2: Thank you, doctor here for being with us today. Always
good to be with you, my brother. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr.
You've been listening to s. Todd. You're the principle of
the year. Refirm a Maryland based litigation and government relations firm.
More with Jesse Jackson Junior tomorrow, but for now. More
with KBLA. Talked of fifteen eighty when we come f