Of litigation and government relations firm, and Almo serves as the senior pastor of the Douglas Memorial Community Church of Baltimore and affiliates. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. There are a number of things. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? Right? 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. 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. 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. Uh. 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. Go to the club. 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 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. 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. 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. For decades, for. 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. Accused or the victim. This fiction was useful. 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. 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. 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. And I think what you're. 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. On the playground. 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. That you can't just use who's. 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. 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. Theory, yeah, there are few things embedded in that very cogent question. The US economy is a consumption based economy. What makes it thrive is for the. 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. Than the state wage. 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. Again. 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. 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. And when he's running off. 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. And so I think he's spreading things too. 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. 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. 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. But here's what I was saying for us. 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. You the power that God has given. 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. 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