I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. It is thought Provoking Thursdays. Ativa's show, historically on our Program on Wealthy Wednesdays, has now moved to Thursday Afternoons, Thought Provoking Thursdays, Our Conversations with Atiba. Ativa is the former deputy executive director for the National Black Caucus of State Legislators NBCSL. He's a Strategic Alliance consultant and president of Party Politics US. He's worked as a TV political contributor for B and C News, The Heat in the no with Mo, The Leslie Marshall Show, at Heart Radio, Gov Exec ninety six point three, w h u R, and the One America News Network. He most recently was a guest host on Rising in American Daily News and Opinion of web series produced in Washington, D C. By the political newspaper The Hill in nineteen. In twenty twenty, Atiba released his first novel, Saving Grace, a political thriller. T But welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Jesse, Happy New Year, and it's great to be. Back, Tiba. I am so grateful that you're here. There are number of subject matters that I like to cover today, including but not limited to Minneapolis, Venezuela, and what's going on generally in the world. But one of your consulting specialties is collecting data to determine what the American people want the president of the United States to work on. Can you share a little bit more about that with us? Yeah? So, Jesus is hard to believe. It was eleven years ago a friend of mine came up with this idea of why don't we take get a chalkboard and let young people on a college campus educate us about what it is that they wanted to see the next president work on. And what we did was home Depot built us a chalkboard which was four hundred pounds. You learn a lot when you do these things, but it was on wheels and then we willed it out. And the whole idea of when I started like an organization called Party Politics US, was about how do you put the fund before the politics to attract people. So Coca Cola donated refreshments and items, and someone else. Came out with. A drone and we had music, and we created this party around the chalkboard at Texas State University. Within four days, seven five hundred plus students had written on the board what they wanted to see the next president work on. Wow. And what we learned from that was people just want to be heard. And so we had, you know, different viewpoints. You know, some people wanted to be able to conceal and carry, some people wanted abortion rights. It was like, whatever it was, it was there. And then some things that ended up becoming repetitive. We just said to people, just checked checked next to those items. And it was fascinating. That those students weren't just sharing what they wanted to see the next president work on, but that they said simply by being feeling like they were being heard that they it made them want to vote. And from there and we called it chalkboard conversations, and from there we started doing that and then we started having different conversations. We started doing like little group talks and then panels. And then that took us to Drake University for the Drake Debates. It took us to Morgan State University, It took us to Virginia Statem. It just took us to all these different places. But Ultimately, what it taught us is that people regardless of age, because then older people who saw that we were posting this were like, well what about us? So we started a private group on Facebook and people started talking and what the. Whole idea was, how can we do this and get people. From across party affiliation, religion, ethnicities, gender, etc. Together to the conversations. And it was just became fascinating and that's what we started doing. That's how we started collecting data. I think that's a fascinating story. I do have a question though, eleven years later, can you imagine that what the same students or different set of students students might be writing on a similar on a similar board if you had to wheel a four hundred pounds home depot onto the onto the yard of Texas of Texas, Texas Southern or Texas State. Texas State, you know that's where Lyndon Johnson's I want to say library, but I know Lyndon Johnson School is there. But well, first of all, we learned how to buy small chalkboards and take pictures of people writing on those talkboards a lot lighter and a lot easier to transport. Imagine trying to get a four hundred pounds chalkboard from Texas State University to Drake University in Iowa. It was a chore and we believe it or not, there were some some students from Texas State University that volunteered the that did that and they took that trip. Today. Yes, I do think. You know, we live in a very volatile, very sensitive. Nation where anyone who disagrees with us people automatically think that they're against us. And I often use the phrase to people that if you take a glass and put it on a table and we're all sitting around the table, we all came to the table from different places, but we're all looking through the same glass, and as we look through that glass, we're going to see something different. In other words, we all come from different viewpoints, we all come from different journeys, but we could be looking at the same thing but see it have a different perspective. And I think this overall, that's where we have what that's what's going on in this country, is that we're looking through the same glass. We're looking through the same country. We're all part of the same country. We just have different perspectives because we've had different journeys. Kind of feels like the Canterbury Tales. We're all trying to get to the Archbishop, the monk, the friar, the various characters in I think Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales kind of gave some semblance of what we're going through as a nation and certainly what TIVA experienced on Texas's campus. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. It's thought provoking Thursdays. Our conversations with the TIBA will continue when we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. Jackson eighty, Well, there will be any conversation with the TIVA on a myriad of issues, and one that is dominating the news as we speak, tragic shooting and the loss of life in the state of Minnesota of a young thirty seven year old mother, young white woman who was exercising, by all obvious and objective accounts, her First Amendment rights to talk to law enforcement, shout at them, scream at them. They were certainly being somewhat aggressive when he grabbed her car doors. If he was going to snatch her out of her car. Whatever that conversation was, that, clearly from my perspective, did not lead to her being read her miranda rights, the right to remain silent, the remind the right to counsel, all of those things that you're issued when police officers get ready to snatch you out of your car, which is clearly what he was doing when he grabbed the door handle. But the irony for me, Attiva is this, And I'm not just talking about the fact that this tragedy occurred just four blocks from where George Floyd was killed. I'm talking about all of the incidences where an unarmed African American man or woman were denied, their rights were not read, their rights were unarmed, and trained law enforcement officers shot them. Now, I make the distinction between trained law enforcement officers who function at the municipal letter and level and border patrol agents who work near the nation's borders to secure them and their interaction with legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, undocumented workers, the process that we never read about in the paper. When some action between border patrol and someone crossing the border goes awry, it doesn't make the news. But given the behavior of how the American people themselves are being treated by ice in our cities. We can only imagine that that which we cannot see when I is actually on the southern border, that some crimes against humanity are taking place that the American people have never heard about. You're getting your behind whoop by ice in Minnesota or Chicago, or Los Angeles or wherever else ice is. You better believe someone who has absolutely no constitutional protection is taking it on the head. But this event yesterday is particularly troubling because not only because of the national attention, but it wasn't a young black man or Breonna Taylor. It was white woman and an agent shot her in her face, an unarmed woman. The consequences of that a team but I think are just as extraordinary as any event in the last thirty years of civil rights and social justice TIBA. So many things come to mind with all that. Thank you for that, Jesse. First off, my thoughts, my prayers, my condolences to her family. M Ron grind And an astronaut just spent one hundred and I think in seventy eight days on the space station, and he talked about living a lie. He talks about in an interview he talks about seeing the earth from above and seeing lightning hit in one place and how it reverberated across the planet even though we don't see it. He talked about how he could see not just the seven continents, but see how all the continents and there then the people all connected questioned and asked, are we doing and living the right way by putting. Profit over the planet? Wow? I'm saying this because what we are seeing today, whether or not it is in Russia or China or the United States, is a reverberation of a few men who are using the power that they believe that they have, and that they're targeting people who are innocent in the pursuit of profit. And over time we look at religion and scripture and we say the word prophet. All of these things that we are seeing happen today have been prophesied. We have put our faith in our belief and other things aside from the Creator. And until we come back to recognizing that, then our humanity and our livelihood. And our lives are at stake. So you have people that believe that these men will make their lives better. And again what I said before the break perspective, people are coming to these things with different perspectives, and we don't want to listen to how and why they feel the way that they do because there's so much there's stone at them that is creating fear as opposed to offering hope. Let me ask this question to Tiva because my father often tells this story of how I guess it's Robert F. Kennedy. He went to an urban area and he held up a little black child, and the nation's response when Bobby Kennedy was running for president, I think in nineteen sixty eight, was poor little black baby. Look at Bobby Kennedy holding poor little black child. Then he went to Appalachia and maybe even to deep rural South, and he held up a kid of a similar age, but the kid was poor and white, tighter, tattered clothing, hungry, ill kempt I struggle with hygiene, absence of water and soap and basic and living in a shotgun house. And America's response between Bobby Kennedy holding up the little black child was one response, like, all little black kids are in poverty, so we understand that. But when they saw the little white kid in poverty, the country responded with this idea of a fervor for a war on poverty and to eliminate poverty. I'm thinking in this moment that the death of this mother in Minneapolis, and we've seen how we've been treated as young African Americans, some of whom have died due to police behaviors. You know, it's so used to young black men getting shot. Just another brother got shot. Chicago has a crime problem. There's just another look how violent Donald Trump says we are in these various cities. But this is different. This is a white woman who got shot exercising her constitutional rights. And Christinoan the administration, the president, the vice president offer an interpretation of events that the investigation itself has not yet rendered. And I'm finding a level of hypocrisy and irony and irony in that. Fatiba Muhammad Ali said the eyes that the hands can't hit what the eyes can't see, and we've heard the believe is Norm Chowski say that he who controls the news controls the people. I'm constantly engaged in conversations with my friends who work on the Hill and my friends who are elected officials around the country about the need to create a more simplified, concise message. Part of my message is that this woman who died was more than white. She was more than a woman, She was more than a mother, She was. A human being. Yes, when I think about the movie, I can't remember the name of it, but Samuel Jackson plays a father who kills or shoots a man, kills a man because he rapes his daughter a time to kill. And in the movie, Matthew McConaughey, he's up against this Southern da and when he in his closing arguments, he gives this picture and tells the jury, now, imagine that this child, that your child was in the situation, what's raped and whatever? And he gives us gory picture and then they know that it's him talking about Samuel Jackson. And he ends it and he says, now, imagine she was white. We've got I believe that there are a lot of reasons for us to be fearful today. And I'm listening to a book right now called Peaks and Valleys, and I just finished reading it for the like maybe the fifth or sixth time. Who moved my cheese? We're in a valley right now. We want to get back to the peak. We want to be able to be on the top with the moral high ground and the financial well being and the religious believe in that. Okay, what we're doing is right, But how do we get there with all of these things that all keep pushing us down to the valley. And I think that in order to get back to the peak, we've got to figure out how do we let go of the baggage. The baggage is how we keep saying, well, they keep doing this to us because of the color of our skin, because of my gender, Because how do we figure out that all of us, regardless of ethnicity or gender or nationality, are all have the same enemy. We can't do that if we keep carrying the baggage. The woman who was killed you just said, was killed just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. And both of them were killed by law enforcement. Both of them were killed by men with a gun. America has a gun problem. America has a violence problem. America has an issue. Yes, it is deeply rooted in terms of ethnicity. That goes back to I'm just going to use two thousand and eight to twenty sixteen because I've been saying this on the show, that they didn't attack President Obama just because he was a skin color. They attacked him because he represented us, because he offered hope. They don't want us to hope, because when we hope, we can be free. That's what they did to us when we were enslaved. And we're still enslaved today because we're still living on the preceidice of this idea that fear is grounding us and keeping us from moving up the mountain that doctor King talked about. We think about these things and these quotes and these speeches that have been given, but there's a deeper meaning that I too will get to the mountaintop. Let me try this, because I know we have just two or three minutes before we come forward. And this is a profound conversation for me. I still mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk. Do I agree with anything he said? No? Do I like his politics? Did I know? Do I agree with his right wing spin on everything and matter of fact, racist spin on me. Absolutely not. Do I think that that man, at the end of the day had the right to return home to his wife and to his family. Absolutely I do, because at the end of the day, we all get to go home. That's American That was political violence, and it is unacceptable on the left or on the right, when we do it to each other, when we do it to others, it is just plain wrong and it needs to stop. I want to make the state the distinction, however, between political violence and state violence. State violence, when law enforcement puts their knee on the neck of a citizen, when law enforcement shoots a woman protesting in the face, that's state violence. That's different than political violence. That's state violence. When the head of the Department of Homeland Security or the President of the United States or the Vice president of the United States make justifiable statements about an American citizen who's married with kids and seeks to change the narrative to justify why she was shot in the face, that's different for me than pure political violence. That's state sponsored terror. And it's going to happen again because the government itself is justifying and is essentially told in numbers of speeches where President Trump was running for office, he said, why don't you put your cuffs on him and slam their heads into the back of the car. Take the gloves off. He would say, go ahead and hit him. They come up, they spit we hit back or something. He said, that's state violence. For men and women who serve the country honorably and historically have been seen as public servants, whether they're border patrol agents, law enforcement officers. We serve and protect the public. Never before have. The talking about weaponizing a vehicle. Never before have people weaponized law enforcement towards and against the American people on the scale that we're witnessing it. More conversations with a Tiba on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty. When we come forward on KBLA it stopped provooking Thursdays with one of our most thoughtful contributors. Atiba is our very special guest in this hour. Atiba, welcome forward to the show. Hey, jesse A. Tiba, I I just want to call her name. Renee Nicole Good lost her life at the hands of the United States. An American citizen was shot in the face by someone who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to serve the people of the United States. They shot her in her face, and the justification before the investigation has been completed, from the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the Secretary of Homeland Security have all but said they reserve the right to shoot an American in the face or protesting their presence in our cities. It's hard for me to imagine that I'm even having this conversation ATIBA. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but it's a conversation that we need to have. It's a This is one of those conversations you would expect the President to come out and say something that was compassionate, something. That was that would be healing. But we're not going to get that. I keep saying, no one's coming to save us. This is up to us. This is up to us to figure out how do we connect with our friends and fellow citizens in Middle America. It is up to us to figure out how we go to the rust Belt and to the South and talk to people who don't necessarily agree with us, but that have the same issues that we do. And part of those issues right. Now is and I keep asking my friends who are running campaigns, and maybe it's something that I feel like I keep sending, nobody's next some save us. Maybe it's sometimes to do myself to do a video. Of a family sitting at a computer looking at how their healthcare costs are going up and ended just shortly with it's a thirty second clip that says affordability as a hoax. I'm jumping to this that I'm going to come back to where we're. We're just talking about. Take your talk is what about the person who goes into the grocery store and buys butter and eggs and milk, and before they get to meat and vegetables, they've already spent close to thirty dollars. Now, let's go back to why some of these folks. Joined and are wearing these masks and going out in the streets. They were offered a great deal of money even as signing bonus. We don't know what their situation is, what led them to there. But how do we, like I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan, figure out how to attract someone else to my team. Usually is because I'm paying I'm going to pay you more than than another team is going to be or I think that the culture there is going to be better. We have to figure out a way to show and to re. Establish that the country's best interest is not to attack Venezuela. The country's best interest is not to attack our own citizens and the best in the country's best interests are not to keep kicking out immigrants who are doing or who are who are not violating or breaking any laws. We've got to figure out how do we when we see law enforcement doing what we saw happened in Minneapolis. And we know how the world came to our age came to our to support us after George Floyd. But we've got to go back to slavery and talk about how this law enforcement culture and virus that is in this country that plagues us, that is a cancer, started with slavery. We've got to go back. And talk about how profit over the planet started with slavery. We've got to go back and talk about how the idea that poor white people being against black people was started because there were a few people that have money that told those poor people that I'm not the problem. The problem is that we have this free labor right here. We have to do a better job of not just talking about the color of our skin, but to talk about how this country has always put its knee on the back, has always shot people in the face, has mamed has killed, has kicked people out, and it is all founded in this idea that this country was founded on, which is a corrupt thing, which was enslavement, because we're still living it out today. It's just that we're going to our jobs every day and getting paid a little bit and then getting taxed a lot, and not realizing that we are the slaves of today. I can say this, and I really appreciate the depth of this conversation and certainly the tone and spirit within which you are engaging it. I just longed for the moment where a woman can exercise her First Amendment rights. She can shout at law enforcement and shout at law enforcement, and a law enforcement officer or agent can come from behind his mask and say, ma'am, I'm just doing my job. Ma'am, ma'am, I'm just doing my job. But these stone faced, masked bullies who've been authorized by Boveno, Christie Home and the President of the United States to come to our cities and well, just open up a cannawoop pass. You know, I think it's beneath the dignity of the creed of the nation. Give me you're tired, Give me your poor, give me your huddle. Masses who yearn to breathe free, come to these teeming shores where we essentially have a place for which we can live free and express ourselves in freedom at the Kennedy Center, in the clothes that we wear, in the dresses that we wear, or pants that we wear. If you like cross dressing, hey that's on you. But in America it's not a problem because in America you are free to be yourself. But at some point in time on Tiva, decency is part of this, ma'am. I'm just doing my job, I ma'am. I have a job to do between now and five o'clock. I want to go home too. And I remember when they sent the agents to and the National Guard to Los Angeles, and I said, hey, take every take all of them a cup of coffee. They're there on orders, They're just there to do their job and make them feel comfortable. In that space. Something has broken down in terms of the civility between even men who have orders to punish us. There is still a way to handle the moment, in the moment, in the now that can If they won't deescalate, we can deescalate. I believe that there's this thing called being human, as you stated, Atiba, and being decent. Yeah, it's being is about being human. We're not being human and we've lost class. I remember two thousand and two being in France and talking to people and practicing my French because I used to speak fluently, and the conversation being that, Tiva, your country is like the Simpsons. Well, Europe has been seeing that about us for a long time. We're seeing it now America. Our culture, from the top to the bottom is the Simpsons. You know, we've got Bart literally running the country in the sense, and we've got so and what is Bart or what is his father? Do you know? And Bart's like, don't have a cow man? And you know, all these things like this is the cartoon. We are in the cartoon. We can't change this until we recognize that we've got to be the adult in the in the room, and that we cannot think that we can do this by giving away our power. Because as John Lewis, who you served in Congress with, always told us about the importance of the vote, and people took that for granted. The vote is the most important thing. And if we don't get that today, then we're not going to recognize that. On November third, twenty twenty six. They're going to do whatever they can to to take more of that away from us. I'm just gonna go back to this too, slavery. We act as if I won't say all of us, but some of us act as if civil rights began with nineteen sixty three, nineteen sixty civil rights movement, and it didn't or that the civil rights movement was like the beginning of our history. It wasn't. We've got to go all the way back to the beginning. This woman being killed reminds me of the woman who died in during the Civil rights movement, Viola driving some of that during the bus boycott. Teba. We're going to come forward. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty more. When we come forward, we'll pick right up where we left off. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to conversations with a Tiba on KBLA Talk fifteen club on BLA Talk and on Thursdays his newly scheduled hour, our conversations with Atiba will commence. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show and Conversations with the Tiba. Atiba. Hey, Jesse Hey, Tiva, just before the break, you were making the comparison between miss Good in Minnesota and the tragic loss of the life of viol Luitso from Selma to Montgomery. Yeah, you know, just overall, I'm kind of speechless right now because I feel like there are all these different things that are happening that are metaphors and lessons and something for us to use out of this, and we've got I think we we have to go back and talk about the past, because the past has a way maybe not a repeating itself, but it dagon certainly rhymes. And so. Renee's death and passing in Minneapolis, I feel the same way I feel about George Floyd that I. Hope that it's not in vain. And the only way that we can make sure that. It's not in vain is for us to pick up and recognize that through our own veins flows blood, and that blood connects us far more than this on the surface color, because there are people of all different ethnicities that have A and B and O and O negative oh plus et cetera, et cetera. That we're more connected by what's in our veins than we are by what's in our color, and part of that connection is also in our tissues. I use the term that our issues are in our tissues. So this whole idea that you know, it's white versus black, and Muslim versus Christian and gender this and it's not you know, John Glenn, when he was in Out of Space said how could anyone believe that. There isn't a God? And I know that there are people that are questioning how is God and why is God letting this happen? And my answer is that because we dropped the ball, we have got so caught up in me and we've forgotten about. We Yeah, yeah, let me ask this question to you. But often on our show I asked, I ask our regular contributors to share with our audience how they can be supportive of your work. Tell us about Saving Grayson. Where we can get your book. Thank you for that. It's ironic, you know, actually it was when when we came up with the cover for Saving Grace. It was a friend of mine who, after reading the manuscript thought, like Aativa, this is justice. It's about the country, it's about corruption, it's about power, it's about the absence of justice. Why not use a gabble. And show it breaking the flag, but not to be derogatory about it, but to show that it's broken. But then by the time you get back to that, you get to your third book. The how it's the story is putting it back together. So I say that to say that Saving Grace, the main character's name is Anthony Grace, which is hence the reason why it's called Saving Grace, Who's the story starts off with him being kidnapped, and it's all tied to a case that he's working on something he finds in Washington, DC that he knows that if unless people see it, that they're not going to believe it, and it's an underc our operation. And I say all that to say with the premise, so hopefully that pulls some people in and gets a visual because what we see happening today is a travesty of justice. And so I kind of feel almost like, you know, in terms of the cover, that it is exactly what's happening today, and that all of us have to be play a part in saving this and and and forming some way to you know, how do we save Grace. How do we save ourselves? How do we save the idea that you know, we're all in this together. But you can get my copy of my book. You can either put my first and last name, which is Atiba Matt June dot com, A T I B A M A d y un dot com and it'll redirect you to the website Novels by a Teba dot com to. Get a copy. And if you buy a copy on my on my page, I will sign it and put it, put a personal message in it and send it. Or you can also go onto Amazon and put Saving Grace and Atiba and it will come up and you can get it either of the physical form which I can't sign because it's coming from Amazon, or you can get it on Kindle. Thank you very much for that. At Tiba Tiba, Miss Good, miss Renee Good. Does she represent a turning point in the consciousness of the nation's country for the or the activity activity of the role that the federal government has historically played in the States and a red line that we may be crossing now. There's so much to unpack with that and including her last name Good because you know, my great grandmother used to say good better, best, never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best. Better. It's got to make her this good. Her, you know, better in terms of our minds and in terms of how we not just call on her, remind ourselves of what happened, but recognize that we are in this together. My great grandmother used to also say, it's a good thing to remember, but a better thing to do. Always hang with a construction gang and not the wrecking crew. And what we see right now is definitely is the wrecking of an idea that began two hundred and fifty years ago this July. We are in the midst right now of we have to we are in a reckoning right now, and we have to realize that we are we the people, and that the government right now what we are seeing is not is not representative of what we have been believed that the government should be, and that there are a small cadre of men and there are some others who are helping them, that are pushing for an agenda that is for them. It is not for us, and it's not for the people that voted for them. They have made them believe that this is for them. This is right now. The back door of the bank is open and they're taking everything that we have in order to make us enslaved to them and have to bend our need to them. So when we think about George Floyd and we think about the bended knee that was on his neck, and we think about Renee Good and we think about what happened to her, she was doing something good and she was her life was taken from her, and that can happen to any of us. That we all have to figure out how we are going to come together as a nation, because the reality is they want us to fear them, and we have to let go the same way that John Lewis talked about how he let go of his fear walking across the Edmund Pettis Bridge that after they beat him and his skull was cracked open. When he lived through that, he didn't have any more fear. That he was able to stand up and speak to that, to the injustice that was going on. And all of us collectively need to lock arms together, imagine and think about whether or not we're touching each other or not. How those men and women crossed the bridge, even though they were denied the opportunity to walk the first time that they went back and they went back and they persevere. They persevere because they did. Not stop, and they said, ain't gonna let nobody turn me around. It's going to be an interesting commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That's exactly what we are celebrating for the entire year, certainly through July fourth, twenty twenty six, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And to get the new year started. The first chapter is probably named Renee Good that one woman in Minnesota to start the New years off was shot in the face by the United States ATIPA. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. It's always good to be with you or Jesse. You know, we have about one minute left the tea, But did you want to summarize for us just a brief port of hope. I'll just summarize it or try to do with this. We're in twenty twenty six, and it's a two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this country, and there's so much that that has happened over the two hundred and fifty year history of this nation, and there's so much that is going on today and just for us to look for the symbols, the symbols not just the freedom, but the symbols that have marked oppression in this country. And then over the course of time how people always figured it out ways, whether or not they did it because they wanted to or because they were forced to. Come together for the greater good. And today is like no other, perhaps more so than ever before. It's this is our time to recognize that we have to come together and to let go of the fear and to take one step in front of the other and keep marching, as you know in terms of the staircase. Staircase that you know we have to keep walking on faith and believe that God has something better in store for us, but that we've got to figure out how. To do this together. Always an amazing conversation. Thank you, t But I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to Jesse jacks Junior show. This is thought provoking. Thursdays when we come forward, none other than doctor Johnny Mack