Speaker 1: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Speaker 1: Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. It is thought
Speaker 1: Provoking Thursdays. Ativa's show, historically on our Program on Wealthy Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: has now moved to Thursday Afternoons, Thought Provoking Thursdays, Our
Speaker 1: Conversations with Atiba. Ativa is the former deputy executive director
Speaker 1: for the National Black Caucus of State Legislators NBCSL. He's
Speaker 1: a Strategic Alliance consultant and president of Party Politics US.
Speaker 1: He's worked as a TV political contributor for B and
Speaker 1: C News, The Heat in the no with Mo, The
Speaker 1: Leslie Marshall Show, at Heart Radio, Gov Exec ninety six
Speaker 1: point three, w h u R, and the One America
Speaker 1: News Network. He most recently was a guest host on
Speaker 1: Rising in American Daily News and Opinion of web series
Speaker 1: produced in Washington, D C. By the political newspaper The
Speaker 1: Hill in nineteen. In twenty twenty, Atiba released his first novel,
Speaker 1: Saving Grace, a political thriller. T But welcome forward to
Speaker 1: the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2: Jesse, Happy New Year, and it's great to be.
Speaker 1: Back, Tiba. I am so grateful that you're here. There
Speaker 1: are number of subject matters that I like to cover today,
Speaker 1: including but not limited to Minneapolis, Venezuela, and what's going
Speaker 1: on generally in the world. But one of your consulting
Speaker 1: specialties is collecting data to determine what the American people
Speaker 1: want the president of the United States to work on.
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit more about that with us?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, Jesus is hard to believe.
Speaker 3: It was eleven years ago a friend of mine came
Speaker 3: up with this idea of why don't we take get
Speaker 3: a chalkboard and let young people on a college campus
Speaker 3: educate us about what it is that they wanted to
Speaker 3: see the next president work on. And what we did
Speaker 3: was home Depot built us a chalkboard which was four
Speaker 3: hundred pounds. You learn a lot when you do these things,
Speaker 3: but it was on wheels and then we willed it out.
Speaker 3: And the whole idea of when I started like an
Speaker 3: organization called Party Politics US, was about how do you
Speaker 3: put the fund before the politics to attract people. So
Speaker 3: Coca Cola donated refreshments and items, and someone else.
Speaker 2: Came out with.
Speaker 3: A drone and we had music, and we created this
Speaker 3: party around the chalkboard at Texas State University. Within four days,
Speaker 3: seven five hundred plus students had written on the board
Speaker 3: what they wanted to see the next president work on.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And what we learned from that was people just want
Speaker 3: to be heard. And so we had, you know, different viewpoints.
Speaker 3: You know, some people wanted to be able to conceal
Speaker 3: and carry, some people wanted abortion rights. It was like,
Speaker 3: whatever it was, it was there. And then some things
Speaker 3: that ended up becoming repetitive. We just said to people,
Speaker 3: just checked checked next to those items.
Speaker 2: And it was fascinating.
Speaker 3: That those students weren't just sharing what they wanted to
Speaker 3: see the next president work on, but that they said
Speaker 3: simply by being feeling like they were being heard that
Speaker 3: they it made them want to vote. And from there
Speaker 3: and we called it chalkboard conversations, and from there we
Speaker 3: started doing that and then we started having different conversations.
Speaker 3: We started doing like little group talks and then panels.
Speaker 3: And then that took us to Drake University for the
Speaker 3: Drake Debates. It took us to Morgan State University, It
Speaker 3: took us to Virginia Statem. It just took us to
Speaker 3: all these different places. But Ultimately, what it taught us
Speaker 3: is that people regardless of age, because then older people
Speaker 3: who saw that we were posting this were like, well
Speaker 3: what about us? So we started a private group on
Speaker 3: Facebook and people started talking and what the.
Speaker 2: Whole idea was, how can we do this and get people.
Speaker 3: From across party affiliation, religion, ethnicities, gender, etc. Together to
Speaker 3: the conversations. And it was just became fascinating and that's
Speaker 3: what we started doing. That's how we started collecting data.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fascinating story. I do have a
Speaker 1: question though, eleven years later, can you imagine that what
Speaker 1: the same students or different set of students students might
Speaker 1: be writing on a similar on a similar board if
Speaker 1: you had to wheel a four hundred pounds home depot
Speaker 1: onto the onto the yard of Texas of Texas, Texas
Speaker 1: Southern or Texas State.
Speaker 3: Texas State, you know that's where Lyndon Johnson's I want
Speaker 3: to say library, but I know Lyndon Johnson School is there.
Speaker 3: But well, first of all, we learned how to buy
Speaker 3: small chalkboards and take pictures of people writing on those
Speaker 3: talkboards a lot lighter and a lot easier to transport.
Speaker 3: Imagine trying to get a four hundred pounds chalkboard from
Speaker 3: Texas State University to Drake University in Iowa. It was
Speaker 3: a chore and we believe it or not, there were
Speaker 3: some some students from Texas State University that volunteered the
Speaker 3: that did that and they took that trip.
Speaker 2: Today. Yes, I do think. You know, we live in
Speaker 2: a very volatile, very sensitive.
Speaker 3: Nation where anyone who disagrees with us people automatically think
Speaker 3: that they're against us. And I often use the phrase
Speaker 3: to people that if you take a glass and put
Speaker 3: it on a table and we're all sitting around the table,
Speaker 3: we all came to the table from different places, but
Speaker 3: we're all looking through the same glass, and as we
Speaker 3: look through that glass, we're going to see something different.
Speaker 3: In other words, we all come from different viewpoints, we
Speaker 3: all come from different journeys, but we could be looking
Speaker 3: at the same thing but see it have a different perspective.
Speaker 3: And I think this overall, that's where we have what
Speaker 3: that's what's going on in this country, is that we're
Speaker 3: looking through the same glass.
Speaker 2: We're looking through the same country. We're all part of
Speaker 2: the same country. We just have different perspectives because we've
Speaker 2: had different journeys.
Speaker 1: Kind of feels like the Canterbury Tales. We're all trying
Speaker 1: to get to the Archbishop, the monk, the friar, the
Speaker 1: various characters in I think Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales kind
Speaker 1: of gave some semblance of what we're going through as
Speaker 1: a nation and certainly what TIVA experienced on Texas's campus.
Speaker 1: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior
Speaker 1: Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. It's thought provoking Thursdays.
Speaker 1: Our conversations with the TIBA will continue when we come
Speaker 1: forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. Jackson eighty, Well, there
Speaker 1: will be any conversation with the TIVA on a myriad
Speaker 1: of issues, and one that is dominating the news as
Speaker 1: we speak, tragic shooting and the loss of life in
Speaker 1: the state of Minnesota of a young thirty seven year
Speaker 1: old mother, young white woman who was exercising, by all
Speaker 1: obvious and objective accounts, her First Amendment rights to talk
Speaker 1: to law enforcement, shout at them, scream at them. They
Speaker 1: were certainly being somewhat aggressive when he grabbed her car doors.
Speaker 1: If he was going to snatch her out of her car.
Speaker 1: Whatever that conversation was, that, clearly from my perspective, did
Speaker 1: not lead to her being read her miranda rights, the
Speaker 1: right to remain silent, the remind the right to counsel,
Speaker 1: all of those things that you're issued when police officers
Speaker 1: get ready to snatch you out of your car, which
Speaker 1: is clearly what he was doing when he grabbed the
Speaker 1: door handle. But the irony for me, Attiva is this,
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about the fact that this
Speaker 1: tragedy occurred just four blocks from where George Floyd was killed.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about all of the incidences where an unarmed
Speaker 1: African American man or woman were denied, their rights were
Speaker 1: not read, their rights were unarmed, and trained law enforcement
Speaker 1: officers shot them. Now, I make the distinction between trained
Speaker 1: law enforcement officers who function at the municipal letter and
Speaker 1: level and border patrol agents who work near the nation's
Speaker 1: borders to secure them and their interaction with legal immigrants,
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants, undocumented workers, the process that we never read
Speaker 1: about in the paper. When some action between border patrol
Speaker 1: and someone crossing the border goes awry, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: the news. But given the behavior of how the American
Speaker 1: people themselves are being treated by ice in our cities.
Speaker 1: We can only imagine that that which we cannot see
Speaker 1: when I is actually on the southern border, that some
Speaker 1: crimes against humanity are taking place that the American people
Speaker 1: have never heard about. You're getting your behind whoop by
Speaker 1: ice in Minnesota or Chicago, or Los Angeles or wherever
Speaker 1: else ice is. You better believe someone who has absolutely
Speaker 1: no constitutional protection is taking it on the head. But
Speaker 1: this event yesterday is particularly troubling because not only because
Speaker 1: of the national attention, but it wasn't a young black
Speaker 1: man or Breonna Taylor. It was white woman and an
Speaker 1: agent shot her in her face, an unarmed woman. The
Speaker 1: consequences of that a team but I think are just
Speaker 1: as extraordinary as any event in the last thirty years
Speaker 1: of civil rights and social justice TIBA.
Speaker 3: So many things come to mind with all that. Thank
Speaker 3: you for that, Jesse. First off, my thoughts, my prayers,
Speaker 3: my condolences to her family. M Ron grind And an
Speaker 3: astronaut just spent one hundred and I think in seventy
Speaker 3: eight days on the space station, and he talked about
Speaker 3: living a lie. He talks about in an interview he
Speaker 3: talks about seeing the earth from above and seeing lightning
Speaker 3: hit in one place and how it reverberated across the
Speaker 3: planet even though we don't see it. He talked about
Speaker 3: how he could see not just the seven continents, but
Speaker 3: see how all the continents and there then the people
Speaker 3: all connected questioned and asked, are we doing and living
Speaker 3: the right way by putting.
Speaker 2: Profit over the planet?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: I'm saying this because what we are seeing today, whether
Speaker 3: or not it is in Russia or China or the
Speaker 3: United States, is a reverberation of a few men who
Speaker 3: are using the power that they believe that they have,
Speaker 3: and that they're targeting people who are innocent in the
Speaker 3: pursuit of profit. And over time we look at religion
Speaker 3: and scripture and we say the word prophet. All of
Speaker 3: these things that we are seeing happen today have been prophesied.
Speaker 3: We have put our faith in our belief and other
Speaker 3: things aside from the Creator. And until we come back
Speaker 3: to recognizing that, then our humanity and our livelihood.
Speaker 2: And our lives are at stake.
Speaker 3: So you have people that believe that these men will
Speaker 3: make their lives better. And again what I said before
Speaker 3: the break perspective, people are coming to these things with
Speaker 3: different perspectives, and we don't want to listen to how
Speaker 3: and why they feel the way that they do because
Speaker 3: there's so much there's stone at them that is creating
Speaker 3: fear as opposed to offering hope.
Speaker 1: Let me ask this question to Tiva because my father
Speaker 1: often tells this story of how I guess it's Robert F. Kennedy.
Speaker 1: He went to an urban area and he held up
Speaker 1: a little black child, and the nation's response when Bobby
Speaker 1: Kennedy was running for president, I think in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: was poor little black baby. Look at Bobby Kennedy holding
Speaker 1: poor little black child. Then he went to Appalachia and
Speaker 1: maybe even to deep rural South, and he held up
Speaker 1: a kid of a similar age, but the kid was
Speaker 1: poor and white, tighter, tattered clothing, hungry, ill kempt I
Speaker 1: struggle with hygiene, absence of water and soap and basic
Speaker 1: and living in a shotgun house. And America's response between
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy holding up the little black child was one response, like,
Speaker 1: all little black kids are in poverty, so we understand that.
Speaker 1: But when they saw the little white kid in poverty,
Speaker 1: the country responded with this idea of a fervor for
Speaker 1: a war on poverty and to eliminate poverty. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: in this moment that the death of this mother in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and we've seen how we've been treated as young African Americans,
Speaker 1: some of whom have died due to police behaviors. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so used to young black men getting shot. Just
Speaker 1: another brother got shot. Chicago has a crime problem. There's
Speaker 1: just another look how violent Donald Trump says we are
Speaker 1: in these various cities. But this is different. This is
Speaker 1: a white woman who got shot exercising her constitutional rights.
Speaker 1: And Christinoan the administration, the president, the vice president offer
Speaker 1: an interpretation of events that the investigation itself has not
Speaker 1: yet rendered. And I'm finding a level of hypocrisy and
Speaker 1: irony and irony in that.
Speaker 3: Fatiba Muhammad Ali said the eyes that the hands can't
Speaker 3: hit what the eyes can't see, and we've heard the
Speaker 3: believe is Norm Chowski say that he who controls the
Speaker 3: news controls the people. I'm constantly engaged in conversations with
Speaker 3: my friends who work on the Hill and my friends
Speaker 3: who are elected officials around the country about the need
Speaker 3: to create a more simplified, concise message. Part of my
Speaker 3: message is that this woman who died was more than white.
Speaker 3: She was more than a woman, She was more than
Speaker 3: a mother, She was.
Speaker 2: A human being.
Speaker 3: Yes, when I think about the movie, I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name of it, but Samuel Jackson plays a father
Speaker 3: who kills or shoots a man, kills a man because
Speaker 3: he rapes his daughter a time to kill. And in
Speaker 3: the movie, Matthew McConaughey, he's up against this Southern da
Speaker 3: and when he in his closing arguments, he gives this
Speaker 3: picture and tells the jury, now, imagine that this child,
Speaker 3: that your child was in the situation, what's raped and whatever?
Speaker 3: And he gives us gory picture and then they know
Speaker 3: that it's him talking about Samuel Jackson. And he ends
Speaker 3: it and he says, now, imagine she was white. We've
Speaker 3: got I believe that there are a lot of reasons
Speaker 3: for us to be fearful today. And I'm listening to
Speaker 3: a book right now called Peaks and Valleys, and I
Speaker 3: just finished reading it for the like maybe the fifth
Speaker 3: or sixth time.
Speaker 2: Who moved my cheese? We're in a valley right now.
Speaker 2: We want to get back to the peak.
Speaker 3: We want to be able to be on the top
Speaker 3: with the moral high ground and the financial well being
Speaker 3: and the religious believe in that. Okay, what we're doing
Speaker 3: is right, But how do we get there with all
Speaker 3: of these things that all keep pushing us down to
Speaker 3: the valley. And I think that in order to get
Speaker 3: back to the peak, we've got to figure out how
Speaker 3: do we let go of the baggage. The baggage is
Speaker 3: how we keep saying, well, they keep doing this to
Speaker 3: us because of the color of our skin, because of
Speaker 3: my gender, Because how do we figure out that all
Speaker 3: of us, regardless of ethnicity or gender or nationality, are
Speaker 3: all have the same enemy. We can't do that if
Speaker 3: we keep carrying the baggage. The woman who was killed
Speaker 3: you just said, was killed just blocks away from where
Speaker 3: George Floyd was killed. And both of them were killed
Speaker 3: by law enforcement. Both of them were killed by men
Speaker 3: with a gun. America has a gun problem. America has
Speaker 3: a violence problem. America has an issue. Yes, it is
Speaker 3: deeply rooted in terms of ethnicity. That goes back to
Speaker 3: I'm just going to use two thousand and eight to
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen because I've been saying this on the show,
Speaker 3: that they didn't attack President Obama just because he was
Speaker 3: a skin color. They attacked him because he represented us,
Speaker 3: because he offered hope. They don't want us to hope,
Speaker 3: because when we hope, we can be free. That's what
Speaker 3: they did to us when we were enslaved. And we're
Speaker 3: still enslaved today because we're still living on the preceidice
Speaker 3: of this idea that fear is grounding us and keeping
Speaker 3: us from moving up the mountain that doctor King talked about.
Speaker 3: We think about these things and these quotes and these
Speaker 3: speeches that have been given, but there's a deeper meaning
Speaker 3: that I too will get to the mountaintop.
Speaker 1: Let me try this, because I know we have just
Speaker 1: two or three minutes before we come forward. And this
Speaker 1: is a profound conversation for me. I still mourn the
Speaker 1: loss of Charlie Kirk. Do I agree with anything he said? No?
Speaker 1: Do I like his politics? Did I know? Do I
Speaker 1: agree with his right wing spin on everything and matter
Speaker 1: of fact, racist spin on me. Absolutely not. Do I
Speaker 1: think that that man, at the end of the day
Speaker 1: had the right to return home to his wife and
Speaker 1: to his family. Absolutely I do, because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, we all get to go home. That's
Speaker 1: American That was political violence, and it is unacceptable on
Speaker 1: the left or on the right, when we do it
Speaker 1: to each other, when we do it to others, it
Speaker 1: is just plain wrong and it needs to stop. I
Speaker 1: want to make the state the distinction, however, between political
Speaker 1: violence and state violence. State violence, when law enforcement puts
Speaker 1: their knee on the neck of a citizen, when law
Speaker 1: enforcement shoots a woman protesting in the face, that's state violence.
Speaker 1: That's different than political violence. That's state violence. When the
Speaker 1: head of the Department of Homeland Security or the President
Speaker 1: of the United States or the Vice president of the
Speaker 1: United States make justifiable statements about an American citizen who's
Speaker 1: married with kids and seeks to change the narrative to
Speaker 1: justify why she was shot in the face, that's different
Speaker 1: for me than pure political violence. That's state sponsored terror.
Speaker 1: And it's going to happen again because the government itself
Speaker 1: is justifying and is essentially told in numbers of speeches
Speaker 1: where President Trump was running for office, he said, why
Speaker 1: don't you put your cuffs on him and slam their
Speaker 1: heads into the back of the car.
Speaker 4: Take the gloves off. He would say, go ahead and
Speaker 4: hit him. They come up, they spit we hit back
Speaker 4: or something. He said, that's state violence. For men and
Speaker 4: women who serve the country honorably and historically have been
Speaker 4: seen as public servants, whether they're border patrol agents, law
Speaker 4: enforcement officers. We serve and protect the public. Never before have.
Speaker 1: The talking about weaponizing a vehicle. Never before have people
Speaker 1: weaponized law enforcement towards and against the American people on
Speaker 1: the scale that we're witnessing it. More conversations with a
Speaker 1: Tiba on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty. When we come
Speaker 1: forward on KBLA it stopped provooking Thursdays with one of
Speaker 1: our most thoughtful contributors. Atiba is our very special guest
Speaker 1: in this hour. Atiba, welcome forward to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, jesse A.
Speaker 1: Tiba, I I just want to call her name. Renee
Speaker 1: Nicole Good lost her life at the hands of the
Speaker 1: United States. An American citizen was shot in the face
Speaker 1: by someone who swore to uphold the Constitution of the
Speaker 1: United States and to serve the people of the United States.
Speaker 1: They shot her in her face, and the justification before
Speaker 1: the investigation has been completed, from the President of the
Speaker 1: United States, the Vice President of the United States, and
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Homeland Security have all but said they
Speaker 1: reserve the right to shoot an American in the face
Speaker 1: or protesting their presence in our cities. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to imagine that I'm even having this conversation ATIBA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to believe, but it's a conversation that
Speaker 3: we need to have. It's a This is one of
Speaker 3: those conversations you would expect the President to come out
Speaker 3: and say something that was compassionate, something.
Speaker 2: That was that would be healing. But we're not going
Speaker 2: to get that. I keep saying, no one's coming to
Speaker 2: save us. This is up to us.
Speaker 3: This is up to us to figure out how do
Speaker 3: we connect with our friends and fellow citizens in Middle America.
Speaker 3: It is up to us to figure out how we
Speaker 3: go to the rust Belt and to the South and
Speaker 3: talk to people who don't necessarily agree with us, but
Speaker 3: that have the same issues that we do.
Speaker 2: And part of those issues right.
Speaker 3: Now is and I keep asking my friends who are
Speaker 3: running campaigns, and maybe it's something that I feel like
Speaker 3: I keep sending, nobody's next some save us.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's sometimes to do myself to do a video.
Speaker 3: Of a family sitting at a computer looking at how
Speaker 3: their healthcare costs are going up and ended just shortly
Speaker 3: with it's a thirty second clip that says affordability as
Speaker 3: a hoax. I'm jumping to this that I'm going to
Speaker 3: come back to where we're.
Speaker 2: We're just talking about.
Speaker 3: Take your talk is what about the person who goes
Speaker 3: into the grocery store and buys butter and eggs and milk,
Speaker 3: and before they get to meat and vegetables, they've already
Speaker 3: spent close to thirty dollars.
Speaker 2: Now, let's go back to why some of these folks.
Speaker 3: Joined and are wearing these masks and going out in
Speaker 3: the streets. They were offered a great deal of money
Speaker 3: even as signing bonus. We don't know what their situation is,
Speaker 3: what led them to there. But how do we, like
Speaker 3: I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan, figure out how to attract
Speaker 3: someone else to my team. Usually is because I'm paying
Speaker 3: I'm going to pay you more than than another team
Speaker 3: is going to be or I think that the culture
Speaker 3: there is going to be better.
Speaker 2: We have to figure out a way to show and
Speaker 2: to re.
Speaker 3: Establish that the country's best interest is not to attack Venezuela.
Speaker 3: The country's best interest is not to attack our own
Speaker 3: citizens and the best in the country's best interests are
Speaker 3: not to keep kicking out immigrants who are doing or
Speaker 3: who are who are not violating or breaking any laws.
Speaker 3: We've got to figure out how do we when we
Speaker 3: see law enforcement doing what we saw happened in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: And we know how the world came to our age
Speaker 2: came to our to support us after George Floyd. But
Speaker 2: we've got to go back to slavery and talk about
Speaker 2: how this law enforcement culture and virus that is in
Speaker 2: this country that plagues us, that is a cancer, started
Speaker 2: with slavery. We've got to go back.
Speaker 3: And talk about how profit over the planet started with slavery.
Speaker 3: We've got to go back and talk about how the
Speaker 3: idea that poor white people being against black people was
Speaker 3: started because there were a few people that have money
Speaker 3: that told those poor people that I'm not the problem.
Speaker 2: The problem is that we have this free labor right here.
Speaker 3: We have to do a better job of not just
Speaker 3: talking about the color of our skin, but to talk
Speaker 3: about how this country has always put its knee on
Speaker 3: the back, has always shot people in the face, has
Speaker 3: mamed has killed, has kicked people out, and it is
Speaker 3: all founded in this idea that this country was founded on,
Speaker 3: which is a corrupt thing, which was enslavement, because we're
Speaker 3: still living it out today. It's just that we're going
Speaker 3: to our jobs every day and getting paid a little
Speaker 3: bit and then getting taxed a lot, and not realizing
Speaker 3: that we are the slaves of today.
Speaker 1: I can say this, and I really appreciate the depth
Speaker 1: of this conversation and certainly the tone and spirit within
Speaker 1: which you are engaging it. I just longed for the
Speaker 1: moment where a woman can exercise her First Amendment rights.
Speaker 1: She can shout at law enforcement and shout at law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and a law enforcement officer or agent can come from
Speaker 1: behind his mask and say, ma'am, I'm just doing my job. Ma'am, ma'am,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing my job. But these stone faced, masked
Speaker 1: bullies who've been authorized by Boveno, Christie Home and the
Speaker 1: President of the United States to come to our cities
Speaker 1: and well, just open up a cannawoop pass. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's beneath the dignity of the creed of
Speaker 1: the nation. Give me you're tired, Give me your poor,
Speaker 1: give me your huddle. Masses who yearn to breathe free,
Speaker 1: come to these teeming shores where we essentially have a
Speaker 1: place for which we can live free and express ourselves
Speaker 1: in freedom at the Kennedy Center, in the clothes that
Speaker 1: we wear, in the dresses that we wear, or pants
Speaker 1: that we wear. If you like cross dressing, hey that's
Speaker 1: on you. But in America it's not a problem because
Speaker 1: in America you are free to be yourself. But at
Speaker 1: some point in time on Tiva, decency is part of this, ma'am.
Speaker 1: I'm just doing my job, I ma'am. I have a
Speaker 1: job to do between now and five o'clock. I want
Speaker 1: to go home too. And I remember when they sent
Speaker 1: the agents to and the National Guard to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, take every take all of them
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee. They're there on orders, They're just
Speaker 1: there to do their job and make them feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: In that space. Something has broken down in terms of
Speaker 1: the civility between even men who have orders to punish us.
Speaker 1: There is still a way to handle the moment, in
Speaker 1: the moment, in the now that can If they won't deescalate,
Speaker 1: we can deescalate. I believe that there's this thing called
Speaker 1: being human, as you stated, Atiba, and being decent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's being is about being human. We're not being
Speaker 3: human and we've lost class. I remember two thousand and
Speaker 3: two being in France and talking to people and practicing
Speaker 3: my French because I used to speak fluently, and the
Speaker 3: conversation being that, Tiva, your country is like the Simpsons. Well,
Speaker 3: Europe has been seeing that about us for a long time.
Speaker 3: We're seeing it now America. Our culture, from the top
Speaker 3: to the bottom is the Simpsons. You know, we've got
Speaker 3: Bart literally running the country in the sense, and we've
Speaker 3: got so and what is Bart or what is his father?
Speaker 2: Do you know?
Speaker 3: And Bart's like, don't have a cow man? And you know,
Speaker 3: all these things like this is the cartoon. We are
Speaker 3: in the cartoon. We can't change this until we recognize
Speaker 3: that we've got to be the adult in the in
Speaker 3: the room, and that we cannot think that we can
Speaker 3: do this by giving away our power. Because as John Lewis,
Speaker 3: who you served in Congress with, always told us about
Speaker 3: the importance of the vote, and people took that for granted.
Speaker 2: The vote is the most important thing.
Speaker 3: And if we don't get that today, then we're not
Speaker 3: going to recognize that.
Speaker 2: On November third, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: They're going to do whatever they can to to take
Speaker 3: more of that away from us.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go back to this too, slavery.
Speaker 3: We act as if I won't say all of us,
Speaker 3: but some of us act as if civil rights began
Speaker 3: with nineteen sixty three, nineteen sixty civil rights movement, and
Speaker 3: it didn't or that the civil rights movement was like
Speaker 3: the beginning of our history.
Speaker 2: It wasn't. We've got to go all the way back
Speaker 2: to the beginning.
Speaker 3: This woman being killed reminds me of the woman who
Speaker 3: died in during the Civil rights movement, Viola driving some
Speaker 3: of that during the bus boycott.
Speaker 1: Teba. We're going to come forward. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior
Speaker 1: on KBLA Talk fifteen to eighty more. When we come forward,
Speaker 1: we'll pick right up where we left off. I'm Jesse
Speaker 1: Jackson Junior listening to conversations with a Tiba on KBLA
Speaker 1: Talk fifteen club on BLA Talk and on Thursdays his
Speaker 1: newly scheduled hour, our conversations with Atiba will commence. Welcome
Speaker 1: forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show and Conversations with
Speaker 1: the Tiba. Atiba. Hey, Jesse Hey, Tiva, just before the break,
Speaker 1: you were making the comparison between miss Good in Minnesota
Speaker 1: and the tragic loss of the life of viol Luitso
Speaker 1: from Selma to Montgomery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, just overall, I'm kind of speechless right
Speaker 3: now because I feel like there are all these different
Speaker 3: things that are happening that are metaphors and lessons and
Speaker 3: something for us to use out of this, and we've
Speaker 3: got I think we we have to go back and
Speaker 3: talk about the past, because the past has a way
Speaker 3: maybe not a repeating itself, but it dagon certainly rhymes.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: Renee's death and passing in Minneapolis, I feel the same
Speaker 3: way I feel about George Floyd that I.
Speaker 2: Hope that it's not in vain. And the only way
Speaker 2: that we can make sure that.
Speaker 3: It's not in vain is for us to pick up
Speaker 3: and recognize that through our own veins flows blood, and
Speaker 3: that blood connects us far more than this on the
Speaker 3: surface color, because there are people of all different ethnicities
Speaker 3: that have A and B and O and O negative
Speaker 3: oh plus et cetera, et cetera. That we're more connected
Speaker 3: by what's in our veins than we are by what's
Speaker 3: in our color, and part of that connection is also
Speaker 3: in our tissues. I use the term that our issues
Speaker 3: are in our tissues. So this whole idea that you know,
Speaker 3: it's white versus black, and Muslim versus Christian and gender
Speaker 3: this and it's not you know, John Glenn, when he
Speaker 3: was in Out of Space said how could anyone believe that.
Speaker 2: There isn't a God?
Speaker 3: And I know that there are people that are questioning
Speaker 3: how is God and why is God letting this happen?
Speaker 3: And my answer is that because we dropped the ball,
Speaker 3: we have got so caught up in me and we've
Speaker 3: forgotten about.
Speaker 1: We Yeah, yeah, let me ask this question to you.
Speaker 1: But often on our show I asked, I ask our
Speaker 1: regular contributors to share with our audience how they can
Speaker 1: be supportive of your work. Tell us about Saving Grayson.
Speaker 1: Where we can get your book.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: It's ironic, you know, actually it was when when we
Speaker 3: came up with the cover for Saving Grace. It was
Speaker 3: a friend of mine who, after reading the manuscript thought,
Speaker 3: like Aativa, this is justice. It's about the country, it's
Speaker 3: about corruption, it's about power, it's about the absence of justice.
Speaker 2: Why not use a gabble.
Speaker 3: And show it breaking the flag, but not to be
Speaker 3: derogatory about it, but to show that it's broken. But
Speaker 3: then by the time you get back to that, you
Speaker 3: get to your third book. The how it's the story
Speaker 3: is putting it back together. So I say that to
Speaker 3: say that Saving Grace, the main character's name is Anthony Grace,
Speaker 3: which is hence the reason why it's called Saving Grace,
Speaker 3: Who's the story starts off with him being kidnapped, and
Speaker 3: it's all tied to a case that he's working on
Speaker 3: something he finds in Washington, DC that he knows that
Speaker 3: if unless people see it, that they're not going to
Speaker 3: believe it, and it's an underc our operation. And I
Speaker 3: say all that to say with the premise, so hopefully
Speaker 3: that pulls some people in and gets a visual because
Speaker 3: what we see happening today is a travesty of justice.
Speaker 3: And so I kind of feel almost like, you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of the cover, that it is exactly what's
Speaker 3: happening today, and that all of us have to be
Speaker 3: play a part in saving this and and and forming
Speaker 3: some way to you know, how do we save Grace.
Speaker 2: How do we save ourselves?
Speaker 3: How do we save the idea that you know, we're
Speaker 3: all in this together. But you can get my copy
Speaker 3: of my book. You can either put my first and
Speaker 3: last name, which is Atiba Matt June dot com, A
Speaker 3: T I B A M A d y un dot
Speaker 3: com and it'll redirect you to the website Novels by
Speaker 3: a Teba dot com to.
Speaker 2: Get a copy.
Speaker 3: And if you buy a copy on my on my page,
Speaker 3: I will sign it and put it, put a personal
Speaker 3: message in it and send it. Or you can also
Speaker 3: go onto Amazon and put Saving Grace and Atiba and
Speaker 3: it will come up and you can get it either
Speaker 3: of the physical form which I can't sign because it's
Speaker 3: coming from Amazon, or you can get it on Kindle.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that. At Tiba Tiba, Miss Good,
Speaker 1: miss Renee Good. Does she represent a turning point in
Speaker 1: the consciousness of the nation's country for the or the
Speaker 1: activity activity of the role that the federal government has
Speaker 1: historically played in the States and a red line that
Speaker 1: we may be crossing now.
Speaker 3: There's so much to unpack with that and including her
Speaker 3: last name Good because you know, my great grandmother used
Speaker 3: to say good better, best, never let it rest until
Speaker 3: your good is better and your better is best.
Speaker 1: Better.
Speaker 2: It's got to make her this good.
Speaker 3: Her, you know, better in terms of our minds and
Speaker 3: in terms of how we not just call on her,
Speaker 3: remind ourselves of what happened, but recognize that we are
Speaker 3: in this together. My great grandmother used to also say,
Speaker 3: it's a good thing to remember, but a better thing
Speaker 3: to do. Always hang with a construction gang and not
Speaker 3: the wrecking crew. And what we see right now is
Speaker 3: definitely is the wrecking of an idea that began two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years ago this July. We are in
Speaker 3: the midst right now of we have to we are
Speaker 3: in a reckoning right now, and we have to realize
Speaker 3: that we are we the people, and that the government
Speaker 3: right now what we are seeing is not is not
Speaker 3: representative of what we have been believed that the government
Speaker 3: should be, and that there are a small cadre of
Speaker 3: men and there are some others who are helping them,
Speaker 3: that are pushing for an agenda that is for them.
Speaker 3: It is not for us, and it's not for the
Speaker 3: people that voted for them. They have made them believe
Speaker 3: that this is for them.
Speaker 2: This is right now.
Speaker 3: The back door of the bank is open and they're
Speaker 3: taking everything that we have in order to make us
Speaker 3: enslaved to them and have to bend our need to them.
Speaker 3: So when we think about George Floyd and we think
Speaker 3: about the bended knee that was on his neck, and
Speaker 3: we think about Renee Good and we think about what
Speaker 3: happened to her, she was doing something good and she
Speaker 3: was her life was taken from her, and that can
Speaker 3: happen to any of us. That we all have to
Speaker 3: figure out how we are going to come together as
Speaker 3: a nation, because the reality is they want us to
Speaker 3: fear them, and we have to let go the same
Speaker 3: way that John Lewis talked about how he let go
Speaker 3: of his fear walking across the Edmund Pettis Bridge that
Speaker 3: after they beat him and his skull was cracked open.
Speaker 3: When he lived through that, he didn't have any more fear.
Speaker 3: That he was able to stand up and speak to that,
Speaker 3: to the injustice that was going on.
Speaker 2: And all of us collectively need to lock arms together,
Speaker 2: imagine and think about whether or not we're touching each
Speaker 2: other or not.
Speaker 3: How those men and women crossed the bridge, even though
Speaker 3: they were denied the opportunity to walk the first time
Speaker 3: that they went back and they went back and they persevere.
Speaker 2: They persevere because they did.
Speaker 3: Not stop, and they said, ain't gonna let nobody turn
Speaker 3: me around.
Speaker 1: It's going to be an interesting commemoration of the two
Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what we are celebrating for the entire year, certainly
Speaker 1: through July fourth, twenty twenty six, the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And to get
Speaker 1: the new year started. The first chapter is probably named
Speaker 1: Renee Good that one woman in Minnesota to start the
Speaker 1: New years off was shot in the face by the
Speaker 1: United States ATIPA. It's always a pleasure to have you
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: It's always good to be with you or Jesse.
Speaker 1: You know, we have about one minute left the tea,
Speaker 1: But did you want to summarize for us just a
Speaker 1: brief port of hope.
Speaker 3: I'll just summarize it or try to do with this.
Speaker 3: We're in twenty twenty six, and it's a two hundred
Speaker 3: and fiftieth anniversary of this country, and there's so much
Speaker 3: that that has happened over the two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: year history of this nation, and there's so much that
Speaker 3: is going on today and just for us to look
Speaker 3: for the symbols, the symbols not just the freedom, but
Speaker 3: the symbols that have marked oppression in this country. And
Speaker 3: then over the course of time how people always figured
Speaker 3: it out ways, whether or not they did it because
Speaker 3: they wanted to or because they were forced to.
Speaker 2: Come together for the greater good.
Speaker 3: And today is like no other, perhaps more so than
Speaker 3: ever before. It's this is our time to recognize that
Speaker 3: we have to come together and to let go of
Speaker 3: the fear and to take one step in front of
Speaker 3: the other and keep marching, as you know in terms
Speaker 3: of the staircase. Staircase that you know we have to
Speaker 3: keep walking on faith and believe that God has something
Speaker 3: better in store for us, but that we've got to
Speaker 3: figure out how.
Speaker 1: To do this together. Always an amazing conversation. Thank you,
Speaker 1: t But I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to Jesse jacks
Speaker 1: Junior show. This is thought provoking. Thursdays when we come forward,
Speaker 1: none other than doctor Johnny Mack