Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson. You're welcome forward to Jesse Jackson's junior show
and provoking their stay. We are in the worldhouse Jumping Max.
Doctor Johnny Mack is a sociology in New York. A
smaller practitioner with expertise and subje is a peace conflict,
social change and movements. He has traveled extensively throughout the
America's Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, working in
the fields of peace, development, conflict, and non violent social change.
Doctor Max's seminal work After Confrontation Then what challenges the
putative logic of non violent social change theory and practice. Particularly,
he rearticulates non violence beyond the traditional understanding of non
violent struggle as principally non violent resistance. He articulates non
violence beyond the traditional understanding of non violent struggle as
principally non violent resistance. Important subject matter. Doctor Max's research
includes extensive study of Doctor King's logic of non violence
as in the US Civil rights movement. He explicates Doctor
King's logic of non violence using King's call to restructure
the social edifice and particularly it's triple evils of poverty, racism,
and militarism with a revolution of values that is affected
through peaceable power. Doctor Mack, Welcome forward to the Jesse
Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jesse.
Speaker 1: Glad to be here. It's always a pleasure. In this
week where we have been commemorating the ninety seventh birthday
what would have been the ninety seventh birthday of Martin
Luther King Junior, we did turn our attention to beyond Vietnam.
Vietnam a time to break the silence, and there we
found obviously the triple evils of racism, militarism, and poverty. Johnny,
for a few minutes and maybe even for a significant
part of the show, I like to turn our attention
to militarism. We've asked for more policing in our communities.
I remember when I was in the third and fourth grade,
Officer Friendly used to come to my class and he
would bring tricks and magic tricks and some candy and
nice old jolly Chicago police officer had a lot of jokes,
just wonderful, almost like mister Ed mister Need from Boso Circus.
He just brought that kind of demeanor. Of course, I've
not seen the officer Friendly program in decades, because every
cop these days must be on the streets. There's no
more real community relations quite like visiting classrooms as law enforcement.
Today's military between the body armor and the stun guns
and the massive sophistication at the level of even a
patrolman obviously necessary for the security of law enforcement and
light of violent crime, but even the SWAT teams reflect
used military equipment. That suggests, even on our nation's programming,
that there is a militarized attitude with respect to the
American people that the nation itself is willing to accept.
And I'm thinking now that militarism isn't just what we
do in Venezuela, or what we do in Greenland, or
what we do around the world. We are so used
to what we inflict upon people around the world that
when it presents itself to us as Americans in the
form of warrantless searches by ice, half the population are
saying at this hour that they're okay with it. Johnny,
That's a problem from my perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesse, it is a problem. It's a problem among
a plethora of problems that we must understand, and too
many of us don't understand Jesse was intrigued by the
last hours conversation with a Tiba. Really an important discussion
that the two of you are having, and it speaks
to this problem that you're now raising, how we have
used the monopoly of power, which is what or how
we define a state its sovereignty, and it's monopoly on power,
excuse yes, and monopoly on force. Internally, Jesse, as you know,
that monopoly on force is pretty much what we call policing,
and externally, that monopoly on force has been worrying or militarism.
What is interesting in this dispensation at this time in
the twenty first century, we find the script flipped where
we're using that external monopoly internally which is anathema to
the founding principles of our nation. And how is that possible?
And even Jesse, as you point out, it's being accepted
by too many of us as citizens of the nation.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm Jesse Jackson listening to Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
When we come forward more with Johnny Mack, We're going
to have a deep conversation about the triple evils racism, militarism,
and materialism. We're going to hang around militarism a little
while longer more will we come forward? On KBLA Talk
to the Junior show, I was looking for a quote
by Martin Luther King Junior about studying war no more.
And if we continue to study war, Johnny, we become
what we study. If I study physics, I become a physicist.
If I become if I study math, I can become
a mathematician. If I study history, I can become a historian.
But if I spend all of my time studying war,
studying the Second Amendment and everyone's right to a gun
and the right to just you know, shoot people at
random or run into a schoolhouse with mental health crises
and take my my if we study war, we become
what we study. And part of doctor King's revolution of
values is that he wants us to study war no more, Johnny, militarism, Johnny,
I think you're muted.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Jesse. Fantastic point. And in his last book we've
talked about on several occasions, where do we go from here?
It it manages us to study war no more, for sure,
But more importantly in that book, it manashes us to
study nonviolence in all its forms, and how we can
use it as a tool of liberation, as a tool
of integration, as a tool for social change and human development.
And I think that's what we're missing, you know, Jesse,
we've talked about previously. What you've just said is what
I like to think of as the human nature. And
I've mentioned this before. Human beings are what the what
the academics might call tereleological in nature. We move toward
what we think about. Why am I raising this not
to sound academically profound, but to point out what you
were discussing with the table once again in the last hour.
We talk about racism. We talk about these these matters
often because it's driven by the media itself, and we
were very often spoon fed with things that the powers
that be want us to focus on, rather than breaking
those change and those those limitations, and being guided and
directed by memes and and and what's the term I
want the algorithms? Uh? In today's current technology that drives
our thinking and keeps us from really assessing what is
our challenge today? And more importantly, Jesse, what we must
do about it? M hm and and and not only
what we must do about it, but how we must
do about it the things we must do, And I
think that that's what TV was trying to get at
the close of your discussion with him. It's such an
important What are the things that are available to us today?
How do we overcome poverty, racism, and militarism or their roots?
Remember Jesse that we describe the roots of poverty, racism,
and militarism as bigotry, violent rivalry, and cupidity or greed.
So racism is not merely a term that stands alone
by itself, but it is something much larger.
Speaker 1: There's only so much time that I have left at
age sixty, and others have even less time. So how
do I address poverty? What is the best way to
address poverty? For me? In a single stroke, it is
a tax structure that meets basic human needs of equal
high quality. Just basic human needs. Some need high quality healthcare, decent, safe,
affordable housing for all as guaranteed rights, the right to
breathe fresh air. Doesn't get much more humane than that.
How about a minimum high quality floor beneath which no
American can fall? And what is the best position I
can be in or anyone can be in to guarantee
as doctor King I believe would suggest a minimum high
quality floor of human existence. So I say we have
to reform national tax policy, that we have to reach
the barrios and the hamlets of the nation. And that's
the mountain top view, because the valley view is that
we need a floor. The valley view and there's a
mountain top view. Now, it seems to me that tax
policy is a factor in doctor King's message when we
look at the skewed nature of where the nation's wealth
and income is going, and why people in the bottom
third or the bottom fifth of the nation can't get
health care or even need an Affordable Care Act. In
the first place, they work already, they have jobs, and
they can't afford healthcare. They get high premiums if they
don't have the Affordable Care Act. That means that they
work every day, but they can't afford healthcare with but
for the Affordable Care Act. People working one, two and
three jobs needing a supplemental nutrition assistance program in the
first place is a problem. At the end of three jobs,
you can't get some knee. That's a problem. That is
a systemic problem that must be addressed, not one state
at a time, not one city, at a time, not
one hamlet at a time, but by the national government
which is in which is not in a position at
this hour to even come close to fulfilling that mission. Johnny, Yes, Jesse, So.
Speaker 2: You've mentioned an important inegal part of the social structure
that drives in many respects whether there is poverty or
non and who lives in poverty. You've mentioned that poverty
is a function of tax policy, and policy is a
function of governing. Indeed, that is, Jesse, a component of
the social structure. But there are also two other components
of the social structure. That's the market as well as
civil society. What roles do they play. I would agree
with you that tax policy is important in defining what
levels of poverty this nation or any nation, particularly in
a capitalist society, might have. But what about development, what
about the market? What about a participation in the economy,
full participation, what about economic opportunity? They also those elements
of the social structure have as much And I would argue, Jesse,
here even more to do with who lives in poverty
and who does not than does tax policy.
Speaker 1: So tax policy.
Speaker 2: Is incredibly important, indeed, but so is full participation in
the economic structure of our capitalist society.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate that because I watched Jesse Jackson take
many Black people to Wall Street and make the argument
for participation in that very capital system. You're gonna hear
some critique of me and my dad in this. I've
also walked Reverend Al Sharpton take black people, black businesses
demanding participation as minority contractors to Wall Street. And I've
seen the Urban League essentially build its organization around the
corporate elite and structure demanding African American participation. But I'm
raising doctor King's point. In nineteen fifty four, the Dow
Jones Industrial average that measured how the economy was functioning.
By the way, that average four h four did not
include black fox black women, they lived in a separate,
unequal society that was probably not covered by the Dow
Jones Industrial average. By and large, the market was taking
off on its own. By the hour of doctor King's death,
the market was at nine to fifty six. Less than
one thousand was the Dow Jones Industrial average. At the
beginning of the Reagan administration, the Dow Jones Industrial average
was around seven thousand and points. At the end of
the Obama administration, with all of the hope that even
my brother Artiba was talking about, the Dow Jones Industrial
Average was still leaving millions of people behind, even with
the great contributions of the of the Man of hope himself,
Barack Obama, Even at the Dow Jones in nineteen thousand.
Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at forty nine
thousand and growing. Trump's jerking tariffs around and jerking the
world around. But what happens when the Dow Jones Industrial
average chows a system that is so intricately tied to
artificial intelligence, to robotics, to more and more industries becoming
more and more efficient to turn a profit where it
doesn't need people any longer. That means the market is
no longer bound by the constitution. It's something that functions
over here and out of space, outside of the rule
of law, with no capacity to provide healthcare, housing, education,
because tax policy doesn't extract from the progress of the
marketplace and deliver tranquility to the American people. So there
is a tipping point, and I'm gonna preach this until
I'm blue in the face. There is a tipping point
here where the government itself is now under Kennedy staying
that listen, no one needs to be vaccinated. Let's just
catch a disease and let the population itself dwindle on
its own. Let's stop taking care of seniors. They gonna
die anyway. Why should we be paying the Social Security
Let's stop all these minority programs. Let these negro shoot themselves.
We don't care so that the market concludes that we
are not necessary. And I don't find anything about market
economics that supports that human agenda. And I'd like to
think that I'm a capitalist, but let me tell you
where I really am. I'm not a democratic socialist, although
I think Jesus probably would be. But I'm certainly a
person who believes that every American deserves certain rights in
the Constitution so that they can exact from the Constitution
and from America the highest possible standard of living possible
for them. And I think that I too, achieved doctor
Greening's dream without being called a socialist, without being called
a communist, without being called anything but an American. If
we just amend our way out of the problem in
the direction of human.
Speaker 2: Rights, yeah, you'll get no argument from me. There Jesse,
and you are, I think, arguing that not only has
our social policies changed, but our economic structure has changed fundamentally,
and it has changed in ways that Ai and we've
talked about this before. Blockchain and quantum computing eliminates the
need for labor, for the labor intensive economy that we
found in the mid twentieth century industrial economy, and so yes,
even a tax policy Jesse, under that system becomes significantly
irrelevant if, after all, all production, essentially or the preponderance
of production is done robotically. Who then works, what then
creates the value which then will be distributed, and how
will it be distributed. I'm not sure that that's a
tax policy issue. I'm not sure anybody knows what kind
of issue it.
Speaker 1: Is just yet.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the discussion that we must have
as a nation in the world.
Speaker 1: I am, I am.
Speaker 3: I am deeply trouble that America at this hour, I'm
losing confidence of this how as to whether or not
I've asked my people to integrate into a house that's burning.
I am profoundly concerned about America.
Speaker 1: That's exactly where I am. I'm right there with doctor
King on that I know it so well I can
hum it in my sleep, almost in its intonations. That
has a problem, and it's not being addressed by the market.
It's not being addressed by the moral fiber of our politics.
It's not speaking out and for the least of these
in our nation. I mean, I'm looking at so much
money coming in to these political campaigns that no wonder
the voices of our leaders are singing and blowing uncertain
tunes get elected. You know, man, I haven't raised three
hundred thousand dollars in my campaign, but do you know
how much money people are spending in these campaigns. I
mean I had to be in a campaign to figure
out just how much money they're spending in campaigns. This
is democracy, This is ridiculous. I think money all day
long to get elected is outrageous. And everybody wants something
for the money. Everybody they do.
Speaker 2: Jesse, We're going to have to come forward here in
a minute, but I sure want to pick up.
Speaker 1: We got done here. I'm thank you. Johnny More on
Kbilly Talk fifteen to eighty when we come forward with
doctor Johnny Mack, doctor mac and Fiscal Year nineteen fifty
four National Security programs dominated. Military spending consumed about seventy
three percent of the federal budget, totaling approximately fifty seven
point three billion dollars the year nineteen fifty four when
Brown versus the Board of Education is decided. Today, the
US military budget for fiscal year twenty twenty six is
set at approximately eight hundred and thirty nine billion dollars,
a bipartisan agreement reached by the House and the Senate
appropriators in January of twenty twenty six, and now Donald
Trump proposes a military budget for fiscal year twenty twenty
seven that exceeds a trillion dollars. I am suggesting to
you and our listeners that the Dow Jones Industrial average
also follows the history of race in America. Well, it
follows everything, because every one of us wakes up every day.
Are we better off today than we were yesterday? Since
we think that way, since those are our values. But
today the economy itself is driven by the military budget,
the millions of corporations and contractors who keep the beast
of the mill military machine moving so much so that
this beast has to be fed. It has to be
fed with more oil. The largest polluter in the world.
Is the US military more pollution than most states and
some countries the US military, that's just how much diesel
and oil and gas we pump into the environment protecting
and defending the nation. Climate change directly tied to the
United States government willing to lower carbon emissions and its
carbon footprint. That's just how large it is threatening the
planet itself. But nineteen fifty four a military budget of
fifty seven billion dollars and in twenty twenty six eight
hundred and thirty nine billion dollars, while we're closing schools,
property taxes are high, people can't afford to go to college,
people struggling to get healthcare, and some folks trying to
find something to eat. Johnny Mack, well, you know, Jesse.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty four, the global population was around four
billion people, well three billion actually in nineteen fifty four,
and today it's almost nine billion, three times. The world
has changed significantly, hasn't it. So we moved from fifty
seven billion in US military budget to eight hundred and
thirty nine billion, and so that sets up priorities, doesn't it?
Really real changes. The populations change and the values change
as well. But the fundamental values that drive the military
budget also drives the conversation we were having in the last segment,
and that's our market and those value use are the
ones we we we mentioned their bigotry and uh and
rivalry and greed, and how do we protect, how do
we defend how do we ensure the status quo of
that bigotry, rivalry and greed or cupidity. We do it
through our military or our control over the monopoly over
power or force or violence. Again internally through policing and
externally through the military budget. So that explained, That explains
I think, in large part Jesse, your point about a
military budget that's nearly a trillion dollars now.
Speaker 1: And and it's it's it's not just that, it's that
the blue chip stocks that each of us as Americans
invest in for our retirement programs, our pensions, our iras,
investing in drone technology, investing in IE, investing in robotics,
our value systems are what we are investing in. We
are investing in war. And doctor King wasn't just challenging Vietnam.
He was challenging the conveniences that we enjoyed here in America,
in my home and in your home as directly tied
to our willingness to invest for higher profits on the market.
But he said, I can't negate the fact that the
helicopters that are dropping napalm on these poor peasants in
Vietnam are paid for by investments made by the American
people to fuel the military economy.
Speaker 2: M yeah, yeah, But Jesse, keep in mind, I'm not
quite sure that King said quite the way. I think
I'm understanding you to say it, because the average American
struggling from paycheck to paycheck is not invested in the
stock market's you know, I'm eighty percent of the stock
market is controlled by the super wealthy incorporations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Americans has gone off and left us. I think
that's no doubt that I don't have a stock yet,
I don't have an ir right, it is gone off
and left us. We're over here, paycheck to paycheck, disability
to check, disability check, whatever it is, you know, whalefare
check to whalefare check. That's where we are.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and Jesse, what the average American is invested in?
If there is an average American, I'm not sure that
I agree with that definition. But let's use it for
the same think of our our discussion. What that average
American is invested in is supporting that very system that
we are criticizing, that very system that allows one tenth
of one percent of the population to own sixty percent
of its wealth, and yet we the people, that very
population that we're discussing supports it.
Speaker 1: How would you remedy that other than through tax policy.
Speaker 2: I don't think you remedied through through tax policy at all,
because I don't think, as we said in the last segment,
that tax policy will survive the way we know it today,
given the trajectory of how wealth is being generated, not
being generated through the through the sweat of you know,
of the brows of the ordinary citizen, as your father
and my father's generation understood in the mid twentieth century,
or even as we grew up, Jesse. The economy is
changing and we must change with it. What we haven't
studied is how to change it. So I'm not suggesting
that you're wrong about tax policy. I am suggesting that
we don't know enough about the current trajectory of our
economy to understand what that change must be. But we
do know it must change.
Speaker 1: I am I'm right there with you. I just think
that the change is statutory. It can't be done state
by state. It has to be the collective. There is
a role for the federal government in that process. The
way most members of Congress think, and particularly the progressives
in Congress, they would like a progressive tax structure. They
would like to go where and get the money from
where they went. That's what my father used to say
in nineteen eighty four when he was running where you're
gonna get the money from? Just I'm going to get
the money from where the money went. The money went
over here to the wealthiest one percent of the nation,
So we got to go over there and get it,
and we get it and bring it back over here.
It's not like we hold a gun to their head.
We simply hold tax policy to their head. We tax
the various forms by which they shelter and pass that
kind of wealth on generationally that is no longer circulating
in the American economy and benefiting the American people. I'm
Jesse Jackson, Junior more on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty When
we come forward, we're listening to Johnny Mack. I'm Jesse Jackson,
Junior Working Ford to Jesse Junior Show on January twenty
sixth at six pm PT, nine pm ET and eight
pm CT. I'm going to Tavistalks dot Com. Put my
phone right up next to this QR code, which I
did earlier today, and I became the three hundred and
seventy sixth person who will be sitting in class learn
how to do interviews and the Art of conversation based
upon the tips that the brilliant Tavis Smiley offers us
in his new six course series Courses with Tavis The
Art of Conversation. I hope all of you will be
able to join us. January twenty sixth at six PMPT,
nine pm ET and eight PMCT. Johnny Mack, Welcome forward
to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jesse.
Speaker 1: Good to be here, Johnny, as spirited as spirited a
conversation as it gets the one we've been having been
having today. Your thoughts on how the militarism angle actually
interacts with poverty, the nation's priorities, and racism. How does
militarism affect the racism dynamic in Doctor King's Triple Evils?
Speaker 2: Well, Jesse, the three These three fundamental King, as you say,
called the triple evils or the underlying values that organize
what I've called the social structure, and they are mutually reinforcing,
that is, each reinforces the other. So just in that
very simple formula, these triple evils, these three values helped
to sustain the status quo. And so the military policing
are used in order to ensure that people fall in
line with the very two things that you argued in
our previous sessions, statutory and constitutional rights as they are
interpreted by those who are in power. They are enforced
as we've seen in Chicago and Detroit and in various
communities across the country. They're enforced militarily, they're enforced through policing.
They're enforced now through new forms of exercising that power,
that that monopoly on power, through something called ice and
through something called the border patrol. And these forms of
control helped to again to sustain the status quo.
Speaker 1: Right. I'm struggling, Johnny with when doctor King says in
Beyond Vietnam, and I think paragraph number five, how the
very resources or programs that he thought might work in
the direction of ending poverty, that those resources are now
being shifted to Vietnam. And Johnson was profoundly concerned because
the commitment was to the war on poverty. And he said,
but now the Congress was pinching pennies essentially and sending
those resources to Vietnam. He saw the same budget, but
he saw that it was not feeding people around the table,
that a large piece of the pie was now killing
people in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the opportunity cause, right, if you spend it
on A, you can't spend it on B. Right, if
you give it to Peter, you can't give it to Paul.
The question is how do Peter Paul baby?
Speaker 1: And and you.
Speaker 2: Know that's what King I think was trying to call
our attention to until Yes, too much of our national
budget is given toward the military. And the second one, Jesse,
is interest, that is the national debt. These two are
the most resource sapping elements of our national economy, taking
away from so many of US citizens at the benefit
of sustaining the status quo.
Speaker 1: Johnny, how can we help your program and support your work?
Speaker 2: World House Project th World Houseproject, the World Houseproject dot org.
There you can find our work and you can contribute
to the World House Project on our website, the World
Houseproject dot org.
Speaker 1: Johnny, we have about three minutes before we come forward
your word of hope.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Jesse, I was thinking about this, and
you know I was watching the President's presentation at Dovels.
Speaker 1: Of course, you didn't call it a speech.
Speaker 2: This presentation at doubles, And while we were all struck,
I'm sure in various ways of what he said, Jesse,
I was struck by what I saw incredibly important platform
with who's who of the globe right there. But in
that hall, Jesse, on that platform, I didn't seen anybody
look like you and me, or any of our cousins,
none of our brothers and sisters, none of our parents.
Speaker 1: I saw.
Speaker 2: No one engaged in that conversation. And so my message
of hope, Jesse, I'd rather call it a message of hoping.
I'm just hoping that we, all of us, you and
I are brothers and sisters, as all of our cousins,
whichever side of the water that pond, as we call it,
they live, we find the solidarity to come together. If
we don't do for ourselves, it's clear no one's going
to do for us. And I'm hoping, Jesse, that in
this critical time we find a way to come together
once and for all. Maybe we need our own novels.
I'm hoping that we'll find that way.
Speaker 1: How profound the words are drowning that you offer, and
in this reflection, to join your reflection. I can't but
help but think that a large game is being played
at this hour, where the world itself is being divided up.
Black and brown brothers and sisters around the world are
not players in that equation. Decisions are being made about
us and for us at the highest level of governments
around the world, largely based upon the color of the
skin of the nations that are participating, whether it's Canada, Greenland,
Europe and Vladimir Putin. You're right, there were no Africans there.
There were no South Americans there. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
You've been listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior show The
World House with Johnny mack More. When we come forward
tomorrow on that Meat Fridays with Gina Towns on kb
LA Talk fifteen eighty