Speaker 1: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty and welcome the
Fat Meets Fridays and the Jay Lunch Club are very Special.
Myst known as by regular contributor Gina Towns is Doctor
Ted william the Third and Indicator, actor, author who teaches
political science at the City Colleges of Chicago. He's a
graduate of the University of Chicago, Rutgers University, and Northern Seminary.
His acting credits include NBC's Chicago pd Showtimes, The Shy,
various films, plays, and commercials for companies including Empire Carpet, Cheerios,
and Subway. Williams is the former host of WYCC PBS Televisions,
The Professors, author of the book The Way Out Christianity,
Politics and the Future of the African American Community, and
creative the musical theater production sixteen nineteen, The Journey of
a People for the Chicago City Council. He currently serves
on the Illinois Reparations Commission. He and his wife, Roslyn,
have three children. Doctor Ted Williams Welcome forward on Fat
Meat Fridays to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show and with
our creator Gina Towns. Hi, Ted, I think Ted's having
has to be unmuted.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: It is so good to be with you guys again
for that.
Speaker 2: I apologize trying to stay together here, but it's going
to see all again this week and that happy LKA
week slash month slash here.
Speaker 1: Ted, thank you so much for contributing with us most
responably Monday Welcome, where we were invited as the keydom
speaker of their annual Martin King Junior Commemorative event. More
than six hundred and fifty people were present, and at
the conclusion of the program, Doctor Williams joined me here
live on Jesse Jackson Junior Show. We went upstairs, found
us good Wi Fi and we call into the show
Doctor Williams. Before we get to a number of contemporary
issues that are confronting the country in this first segment,
share with us your thoughts about the legacy of Martin
Luther King Junior. January fifteenth, twenty six.
Speaker 2: Doctor King is probably the most significant American with respect
to the issue of freedom and equality and justice for
all people. Without doctor King, the promises of America are
really not true. For all people. We hold these truths
to be self evident, that all men are created equal
in are endowed by their creators with certain an able rights,
among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If
doctor King does not live and does not do the
work he does, along with myriad other significant civil rights leaders,
including your father, we recognize that America is not America,
as Langston Hughes so eloquently said, and so doctor King
and the civil rights struggle the country. I'd be thanking
us and the leaders of this and doctor King and
people that worked with him for that, because it has
truly made America live up to what it's said on paper.
And I can tell you that immigrants who come from
across the world see what happened for our people in
the sixties and the fifties, and they have hope for America.
And without that, I will tell you it'd be a
much different place. And if we cannot extend this promise
to all people, then the country has no real future.
Speaker 1: And you know, Ted, you know, and I think and
I didn't mean to cut you off, that was an
next and I promise you, but when I think about
you know, with hygends. We rely upon the legacy of
Martin Luther King Junior in just about every single protest
within the context of our democracy even to this day
that had, me to your point, not existed, and we
think about the leaders that did exist during the period, Malcolm,
to stoke the to other community students who were rising up.
Their frame of reference for us in twenty twenty six
would not be the same frame of reference if King
simply had never existed. To your point, his contribution just
that extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, my brother. You know, right before I came on
with you all, I was watching a documentary on Colin
Kaepernick and the story of his protests just now ten
years ago. He first took that knee in at twenty
sixteen football season, and to watch the reaction to his
efforts and other NFL players f first to bring light
to the issue of social justice and police brutality, it
reminds me of what doctor King lived for, what he
fought for, and what he ultimately died for. And I
think the greatest thing that we can do in recognizing
his legacy, my brother, and I know you know this
very well, is to live it today. We still have
such a long way to go when we have people who,
as I watched this brother get treated as if he
was not an American citizen. And to see the history
of sports protests, mak mul Abdul Rauf in the NBA
who lost his job and his home for protests, and
Muhammad Ali and the way that they treated him, it
just just illuminates the need for each one of us
to continue fighting because we still have such a long
way to go, Gina.
Speaker 1: We have about a minute before we come forward.
Speaker 3: When we come forward, certainly I want to take a
deeper dive into what made doctor tick because like us,
you know, we're studying what he said, how he said it,
why he said it, and the time in which he
said it. But he studied some people too, and he
came to some conclusions that he was able to share
with us. And you know, in that way, history was
always flying. It's kind of like when he said in
the speech, you know, I wish that I could have
lived here. That would have been great in this time period,
and I could have lived here, But I am happy
that I'm right here in this period. And so as
we reach back for him, I have some things that
I wanted to take some comparisons on and we'll come
forward and we will get right back to doctor King.
Speaker 1: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior Moore on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty.
In just a moment, Hey, you're listening to the Jesse
Jackson Junior Show. If you're on the Golden State, the
Santa Anna, the Santa Monica, the San Bernardino, the San Diego,
the Harbor of the Century, What Hill, as well as
the Satin Grave, Gabriel River and Long Beach Freeway. Right
here on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. This is fat Meet
Fridays with Gina Towns and our very special guest, doctor
Ted Williams, the Third Gina. When we here, We are here, Ted,
we are here, my brother. It is the end of
the week and.
Speaker 4: A day.
Speaker 2: Uh. Ed.
Speaker 1: Gina wanted to go, I think a little bit deeper
into some of the ideas and the motivating. Just before
the break, she said she wanted to know what made
doctor King tick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think a lot about to influence him.
We understand that no one and then all of us
come from somewhere, that we are all influenced by various people.
And I'm, you know, being a student of doctor King,
and so many of us are. I think about Henry
David Throw, and I think about his eighteen fourty eight
essay on the duty of civil disobedience, and I think
about how.
Speaker 1: About his.
Speaker 2: Actions to refuse paying taxes and to be jailed rather
than support a war that would expand slavery into Mexico.
And doctor King being as a college student so inspired
by seeing the idea that you could take whatever you
were engaged in, rather than using the weapons of war,
use the weapons of peace and resistance and make statements.
And I will flip that back around to what I
was saying before the break. I am so inspired when
I see those things, that tradition of civil disobedience continuing,
Thinking about some of the protests that have happened in
the NFL and the NBA and other places like that,
it inspires me because it shows us that, as doctor
King took Throw's words and his life and his experience
and his example, we today in twenty twenty six can
take doctor King's experience life an example and apply that
in every place or in space that we find ourselves
in academia, in the sports world, and the media, and
resist through civil disobedience issues that we find morally reprehensible,
police brutality, inequality, blatant racism, the takeover the American imperialism
and takeover foreign governments. And I think that the in
closing on this, the way that we really live out
Doctor King's legacy is that we find places in spaces
today to enact our own forms of civil disobedience.
Speaker 1: Gina, your thoughts on what made doctor King tick?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly I have a couple of slides that that
I want to put up for those who can see,
but we'll certainly have a discussion around them. When King
came to the march on Washington, I think he really
had contemplated the presidency and the evolution of of Abraham Lincoln,
and he came to cash a check, if you will,
on the promise that America had delivered. And so when
you think about he says, in a sense, we've come
to our nation's capital to cash a check with the
architects of our republic. It wrote these magnificent words of
the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They were signing
a promissory note to which every American was to fall air.
And sometimes we forget, you know, when people say in
our community in particularly, well, it wasn't written for us. Well,
there was an amendment that was added. In fact, there
were three amendments that were added as a result of
the evolution and the resolve that President Lincoln had. And
so that's what we have to hold on. That's the
check that he went to cash to remind us as
the people that we are part of this, and so
here channeling all throughout the month of January what happened
on this day in African American history, because it's not
just a month for us in February, it is people
who have ascended in January twentieth. We looked at the
importance of that date earlier in the week ted that
is the Barack Obama is inaugurated as president, Kamala Harris
is inaugurated as the vice president, and certainly there are
a lot of other things. But as we go through
all these the contribution of black people and the progress
here we have Daniel Hall Williams here at Provident Hospital
in Chicago eighteen ninety three, and then Susan Rice in
two thousand and nine. And that was the reason I
said earlier that it seems like about every sixty or
one hundred years, we have to revisit our freedom. We
have to remind ourselves in two generations, three generations later
that you know, perhaps this is not the end of
our struggle, but we have ancestors that we can reach
back to.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think about in this moment, Doctor King,
Gina and Ted, I envision a man in a very
very crowded space, and he lifts up his arms with
very pointed elbows, and very gingerly he begins swinging to
create some space for himself, some space. While the analogy
itself is imperfect, what Doctor King has done in our
consciousness is he has created a space for action for us,
a space that did not exist, a train of thinking
linearly that allows us to fight in every generation in
a spirit of love, in a spirit of nonviolence, a
way of overcoming whatever the particular evils are. And he
referred to himself as man adjusted. He didn't see himself
in any other negative term, but maladjusted. There are people
who had adjusted to the status quo. They had gotten
used to it, they had gotten silent. They were comfortable
with the way things were. They didn't want to be
an agitator. They didn't want to be a fly in
the middle of someone's milk. But Doctor King expanded that
space for us. So we know how to react to
George Floyd, We know how to react to the kidnapping
of Maduro. We know and we have liberty in the
space to condemn what took place to Renee Good in Minneapolis.
That that space that we function in isn't reactionary. That
like the young man who took his rifle to Minnesota
determining that he was going to defend property at a
very young age and was subsequently set free by.
Speaker 5: The justice system, it seems to me that the space
that we operate in is a space that matters to
my sense of morality, my sense of Christianity.
Speaker 1: It is a space that matters to Buddhism. It is
a space that matters to Judaism. It is a space
that matters to Islam. It is a space that we
did not have access to until Doctor King raised his
elbows and said, listen, we don't have to be conformist.
We can fight, we can fight the power. But this
is how we're going to fight the power, and we're
going to do it with our heads high and with
a level of profound dignity, Doctor Williams.
Speaker 2: Yes, I really, you know, as you're talking about your
friend Kyle Rittenhouse thinking about that, because I'll tell you
guys this I was in. Actually, here's a funny story.
After we spend our time together on Monday and we
did a radio show after your keynote, I stayed in
the area for a little while and went to a
mall and.
Speaker 1: Connected in.
Speaker 2: The suburban northern suburban Chicago, And was walking through the
mall and saw a store where in the front of
the window of the store were t shirts that said,
you know, God is good and Heaven is great and
you should live in principles of Godliness and things like that.
And then I saw behind that a huge wall sized
American flag. I saw a display of guns and AMMO,
and I saw a display with Charlie Kirk quotes. And
it made me think about how this conflation of white nationalism,
this American patriotism identity with theology and the violence that
is so represented by the Second Amendment is really what
doctor King was fighting against in the nineteen fifties and sixties,
and that strand still exists today. As we were talking
about the significant dates from January. The one date I
thought about that we did not talk about potentially was
January sixth, which might be as significant in this conversation
about our rights because of what we still are fighting
against and how we have to be vigilant in this
space and in this way, and so in so many
ways as you talk about, doctor King carved out the
space for himself, and he made sure that the country
understood where we needed to go after you know, maybe
we'll come back around to this. I've got a few
thoughts about the eye have a dream speech directly, and
some quotes that I wanted to pull, But I think
that for me, it reminded me that we cannot rest.
It reminded me that we must stay vigilant. It reminded
me of the things that you were talking about and
how the work still needs to be done because we
still have a world in which militarism material is and
racism reign very heavily.
Speaker 1: Gene, I thought you're slide with Daniel Hall Williams, the
first African American to perform, or at first American maybe
the first person in the world to perform to perform
open heart surgery right here at Provident Hospital here in
the city of Chicago. And then in that intervening space
is Martin Luther King Junior, of course, and then of
course Susan Rice and the opportunities that she and Colin
Powell and Condoli sa Rice and Eric Holder and obviously
Barack Obama. The space that they could operate in would never,
would forever never be seen as a space that wasn't
appealing to all. They weren't just, if you will, leaders
on our side of town, Gina. They were leaders who
emerged in their own rights to global significance because of
the roles in which they played and the presidents they
had the opportunity and the people of course to serve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's a great point. And thinking about
what Ted was saying, I began to wonder, is this
the ongoing fight between good and evil? In our last segment, Meek,
you just said, you know, very plainly, and we've had
lots of guests who have called what is going on
right now evil? And I went back to the I
have a dream speech. And for those who cannot see uh,
there is on our screen. If you get a chance
to download the podcast, you will see Lincoln at the
Lincoln memorial, sitting in his chair and overlooking the mall,
and doctor King giving his I have a dream speech,
and it's almost prophetic in some ways to see this,
and King says that we must forever conduct our struggle
on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must
not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community
must not lead us to distrust all white people. For
many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their present
here today, have come to realize that their destiny is
tied up with our destiny. We cannot walk alone. That
almost is prophetic in that this is a struggle that
will go on until the end of time. I guess
the struggle has gone on since the beginning of time,
that struggle for a higher plane of dignity and discipline.
Speaker 2: And I would agree with you on that, Gina, that
that battle we must continue to fight. The one that
I I think exhausted in fighting is I think many
of us are, is the one that deals specifically with
the dynamics within this American context, the created and constructed
identity of race. Right that did not exist even four
or five hundred years ago. In the same way the
understanding in a capitalist system, this hierarchical look at how
some ought to be at the top, and it is
okay to have the masses at the bottom struggling to
find housing and struggling to have healthcare while we have
billionaires who millionaires who get tax brace consistently. I'm okay
with the struggle. Theologically, as the three of us understand
very well of good and evil. What I am exhausted
from is the struggle of race, class, and inequality and
how that manifests itself. And I think that, you know,
as I recognize as even theologically, the Bible teaches us
that the poorlow always be with us, and so we
know we'll never live in utopia. I'm just at the
place in America. I'm like, man, can we get a
little less poverty, Can we get a little less racism?
Can we get a little less violence in the country.
That's where I want to get to.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking in this moment that America as
conceived and the wealth that we have been able to
generate since the inception of the Republic, I'm not so
sure that that admonition in the Bible that the poor
will be with us always is a reality. It is
something that we choose to allow to happen because of
our lack of concern for neighbor. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior.
More on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. When we come forward,
I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show on LA Talk fifteen eighty. We're closing out
our King celebration and commemoration and reflection. We do have
some final thoughts.
Speaker 3: Gina Hi, Jeff heighted Hey, thirteen Amendments. What I thought
when I was doing a little bit of research on this,
it was very interesting to see that passage of the
thirteenth Amendment part in the opera. If you're watching, if
you're listening, it's this January eighteen sixty five. Lincoln makes
a deliberate plan to ensure passage of the thirteenth Amendment
a king cure for all the evils. Lincoln viewed the
Thirteenth Amendment as God's cure for America's sin with slavery,
and then he says, I leave it to you to
determine how it shall be done. But remember that I'm
the president, clothed with immense power, and I expect you
to procure these votes. He felt really strongly about it,
in a prophetic kind of way. Not that he himself
was entrenched in any word of spirituality. We don't find
that about him, but certainly he feels that way about
the ill of slavery, the mistreatment of people. And I
find that King is pulling from him, and you know
hence he gives his very last speech at the feet
of King in Washington, at the at his statue.
Speaker 2: I would also add to this about Lincoln, which I
find to be partially problematic, is that the idea of
the devil's in the details. So when Lincoln says, hey,
I will leave this, you determine how it shall be done.
That is more than an ancillary comment. What Lincoln does
by passing the thirteenth Amendment is still leave in this
clause that has unfortunately terrorized the African American community since
the thirteenth min was passed. Saying that slavery shall not
exist except as a punishment for a crime.
Speaker 4: This was not.
Speaker 2: An unimportant phrase, and we have seen post the past
of the Thirteenth Amendment We've seen countless institutional efforts, generational
efforts to use mass incarceration as a new form of slavery,
as a new form of discrimination, as a new form
of isolation, And to this day, in twenty twenty six,
still are wrestling with these questions. When African American males
make up about six percent of the population but make
up about sixty percent of the people who are incarcerated
in this country, we recognize very clearly that this was
beyond imperfect in this way, and America, we have got
to do the We've got to have these conversations because
we are still in many ways suffering, and I think
that we Yeah, I just think it's that we do that.
As I look at the legacy of Lincoln. When I
was younger, I used to look at him as a
true hero. I still think that he is heroic in
what he accomplished for us, But I also recognize the
severe limitations that we're wrestling with still today.
Speaker 3: And that's why I believe King says that the struggle
is our struggle, our forever struggle must be non violent,
and so it is a perpetual struggle good versus evil
for the oppressor and the oppressed to fight and non violently.
Speaker 1: In this case, I see to both of your point.
See that in the era of Lincoln, those Americans would
have been deeply troubled those who are on the abolitionist
side of the equation by Old Testament scripture, the Exodus story,
the Moses story as being essentially fatal to the idea
of civilization, and that on the other side of the
Moses story is this idea of a promised land, a
new Israel, that the architects of our Republic were at
least trying to get to conceptually and certainly spiritually. I
say that to say that Lincoln's challenge is a little different.
Unlike any other form of slavery in the history of
the world. We are the only people who've had to
amend a constitution to get out of it, requiring the
people themselves to assent to the idea that chattel slavery
would be illegal going forward, coming out of the Civil War.
Now does the Thirteenth Amendment ban other forms of slavery,
labor or wage slavery, or forms of discrimination that may
present themselves in different form that one might consider to
be as oppressive as some form of slavery and slavery
in the various forms that it has presented itself. After
the channel system itself is destroyed by the thirteenth Amendment,
and so one could argue that we are in some
form of healthcare slavery, some form of education slavery, some
form of environmental slavery, as long as the system that
we live in remains separate and unequal, and without the
human right to be out of those systems, the legal
right to be out of those systems, we still find
ourselves trapped in the existing systems. Let me close on
this the structure of a constitution under the Bill of Rights,
and particularly the Tenth Amendment, which became, of course, that
amendment that the slave holders themselves wrapped their legal theories around.
If the right itself is not in the constant, the
Tenth Amendment says, then it is a right that belongs
within the purview of the states. And so, of course
the slaveholders are argued, since the word slavery is not
in the constitution, we have a right to do what
we want down here in Georgia. We got a right
to do what you want over here in Alabama. You
can't tell us down here in Texas what we can
do with our Negroes or Tennessee. But once the Constitution
is amendment, we now have a constitutional right, a human
right not to be born into a condition of slavery
or of chattel servitude. So if that's the framework states
rights separate and unequal, and the idea of human right,
a human right not to be in slavery, I'm of
the opinion that we need more human rights added to
the Constitution, and they have to be added in the
form of amendments. Because on one side of the thirteenth
Amendment we do know existentially there is a slave system.
What we do know on this side of its addition
to the Constitution, there's a fourteenth fifteenth Amendment, and we're
towards something. I'd like to see us separate health carelessness.
Let that be the past, give everybody a future that
is the right to healthcare. Let the idea that no one,
no citizen has the right to vote, it's controlled by
the states. Let that be the system of the past.
Let's build a super highway from Maine all the way
to California in our democracy where everyone has a fundamental
constitutional right to vote. Let's let any quality for women
be the era of the past. Let's advance the Equal
Rights Amendment and let the constitution divide the old era,
the slave era of how we treated women with respect
to their rights by empowering them with the constitutional right
to an equal Rights Amendment. Where everybody's on notice that
if you think you can pay a woman or treat
a woman differently in the system, she now has a
legal right to object, and there are legal, civil and
potentially even criminal consequences for any form of subjugation on
those questions. But the paradigm that's essentially set by Lincoln
is that human rights are forever enshined in the Constitution.
We the people said, got to add them. We got
to add them to the Constitution.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love it, and I think what you're
saying is so timely because we are in the two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the nation. We ought to
be having these conversations across the country, Jesse and Gena
to say this was the past, this was the old,
how will we go forward in the new? And what
you are talking about the issues that we're dealing with
still two hundred years you know, almost two hundred years
after this, and you know, four hundred years after you know,
our folks came to this nation, we're still dealing with
these fundamental questions of what it means to be a
human being, a citizen and American. This ought to be
a crossroads for this country to say we will not
go forward the next two hundred and fifty years without
guaranteeing these rights.
Speaker 1: I'm Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
In just a moment, we'll come forward with our final segment,
and of course from Reverend doctor Ted Williams, a word
of hope more when we come forward. On KBLA Talk
fifteen eighty Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show,
and this is our final segment that that meet Friday's
and the j Lunch Club. Gina Town's, our creator, is
our regular contributor on Fridays as well as our very
special guest, Doctor Ted Williams, the Third Ted. Gina, Welcome
forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
Speaker 2: For having us.
Speaker 5: It's always good to be here.
Speaker 1: Gina had some insights that she wanted to share during
the break that I thought she should bring forward now.
Speaker 3: So Ted and for our listeners, I can't wait till
if you were just listening, I can't wait for you
to go and download this podcast so that you can
see Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King's speeches side by side,
the similar rhetoric and the structures that are used in
these speeches. But you know, part of what I was
trying to get to was what Jesse talked about before
we went to break, and that is from eighteen sixty
three to nineteen sixty three, we see Abraham Lincoln where
he was in that portion of our history, and then
you see King come forward in another error in human history.
And so you know, we're heading toward another space in
our own human history where we see some of the
same struggles that pop up. But one thing I have
to say about this is the whole idea of the
amendment process is what Jesse was discussing that when we
got to the nineteen sixties, we enacted acts versus those amendments.
Whereas Lincoln was as sure as sure it could be
that the Thirteenth Amendment had to be passed, he knew
that if he just did the Emancipation Proclamation, which is
an act that should he perish, that they could do
away with the Act. And that's what we see unfolding here.
We see the unraveling of the Voting Rights Act and
the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and sixty five.
And so that we have to rest assured that the
generations that we are teaching and pushing forward, they have
to go and read this history. They have to read
the Emancipation Proclamation, the Amendments thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. They
have to go read the Voting Rights Act and understand
why we can't just pass an act alone because it
is more easily undone. What it takes to pass a
constitutional amendment for human rights for everyone, state by state
is an arduous task, but that's the work.
Speaker 1: That is before.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I think that just to add a little clarity to
what Genus saying or is saying, the Emancipation Proclamation is
probably more akin to a executive order. It's not an
Act of Congress. So by the time you advance the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth Amendment, you know, it is ninety five
years from Fifteenth Amendment to the Voting Rights Act of
nineteen sixty five. Ninety five years to get Congress to
act and actually make it real and dwell amongst the people.
Even with the Fourteenth Amendment, you end up with a
Fourteenth Amendment interpretation in eighteen ninety six which basically instructs
Congress that their interpretation of the equal protection clause is
separate but equal, and of course, a new interpretation in
nineteen fifty four Brown versus the Board of Education overturns
the Plessy decision because separate but equal is inherently unequal.
A new interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that is largely
responsible relaying the foundation for the Civil Rights Act, which
led to the implementation by Congress of other acts, including
Americans with disability, including the right to marry, including overcoming
that loving case in Virginia, Mary, who you want to marry?
Challenges to the Man Act. That's what locked up the
heavyweight champion of the world at the turn of the
century because he did not have those basic protections. So
it seems to me that the pattern is once we
have a constitutional amendment, we have a civil rights movement
that can commence immediately, or it can take ninety five
years to get to a civil rights movement. If you
guarantee every American the right to a public education of
equal eye quality. What's up next? The civil rights movement
to reduce all class sizes across this country to less
than fifteen students or individualized instruction. What's up next?
Speaker 4: The Equal Facilities Act where if they have a swimming
pool over there, everybody gets to train for the Olympics
in all public schools everywhere in the country. Because that's
an Equal Facilities Act, a civil rights act. So if
you amend the Constitution guaranteeing all Americans the right to
healthcare of equal eye quality.
Speaker 1: It means that the number one, the trauma units aren't
on one side of town while there are no trauma
units on this side of town. And it gives people
the legal right and the government the structure by which
a civil rights can be passed. Where we find health deserts,
hospitals can then be constructed at the will of the people.
That's pretty much the structure of the system that we
live in now. It's difficult, as that sounds, two thirds
of the Congress, three quarters of the states to actually
get a new human right added to the Constitution. Imagine
if we did not have a system in place the
founding Ted of the country itself to even amend our
way out of our problems. If there were no United
States government, there would be no legal process for even
ending slavery. Some states by now might have gone on
ahead and set up their own country. But because they
agreed to union, and yes, we did fight a civil war,
there is a way out. And I can't think of
with all of America's problems, Ted a greater experiment than
the one that we are living in. Said, we have
about two minutes before the end of the show, you
might want to summarize everything for us and even offering
that context a word of hope.
Speaker 2: Sure, thank you, and I appreciate Gena your connection with
the history, this arc. This is desire for years and years,
generations and generations to get to this notion of equality.
You know, brother Jesse, as you were talking, I was
just thinking about this process, this constitutional limit process. We've
only really done it really sixteen times outside of the
Bill Rights, and the last time was in nineteen ninety one,
the twenty sixth Amendment. And I think about here we
are in twenty twenty six looking at though we have
a process to make this happen. Why is it so
difficult to have changed. That's the real question that we
wants to ask ourselves today and what do we need
to be doing? And I think to your point, it
is not a state by state question. It is not
an individual question as many people like to simplify and
make these issues. It is really a guarantee of rights
from the federal perspective, so that we can go forward
and have guarantees not just proclamations, but guarantees in public
policy that will last a beyond a particular administration or generation.
And that is the real question that we must be
speaking to. And I pray in our lifetime going forward
that we will see more amendments to this Constitution. I
wish we could not have to go issue by issue
so that we could get these basic guarantees of human rights.
I wish we could do it in a larger way,
But it looks like his history is shown as we
may have to do that.