Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Drackmons Junior Ship on La Top fifteen eighty. We're just one day in from the nast celebration of the birth of Martin Luther King Junior. In this twoenty twenty six years it is. The birth of Jesus of Nazareth. His life was so profound that it changed the course of human history and divided time between BC and Anno Dominie. We are in year two zero two six Anno dominie measured against the time of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and particularly his ministry, so critical and so important to the idea of civilized behavior. Martin Luther King Junior a significant and pivotal force, not only in the twentieth century, but a man who lived for only thirty nine years. Yesterday we commemorated nationally his birthday, having would have been ninety seven years old. In this particular context, and of course it's not without controversy, every president since the inauguration of the holiday has issued a proclamation commemorating and celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Junior, and Donald Trump almost missed it. He would have been the first president to not sign a proclamation honoring the life of Martin Luther King Junior. He subsequently did so when it was brought to the attention. I'm assuming through the media of his of his presidency to not sign a proclamation, but he did. Late last night, before the holiday officially ended, he signed the proclamation honoring the life of Martin Luther King Junior. I think it's fascinating in and of itself that the people around the President of the United States do not have the President of the United States prepared for a national and international gaff quite like the one that took place yesterday. But it says a lot about the spirit energy of the President of the United States, and it says even more about the time that we find ourselves in. Our very special guest today is Wendell L. Griffin, an Arkansas lawyer, jurist, legal educator, business leader, ordained Baptist minister, and public speaker. On April fifteenth, nineteen eighty five, Governor Bill Clinton appointed him Chairman of the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission, making Griffin the first person of color named to that state agency and the first to chair it. Griffin served in that position until February second, nineteen eighty seven, when he returned to his law practice with Wright Lindsay and Jennings. Governor Jim Guy Tucker appointed Judge Griffin to the Court of Appeals at the end of nineteen ninety five, and he entered the judicial service in nineteen ninety six. While on the Cour of Appeals, Griffin also remained active in professional, civic and religious life, including service as president of the Pulaski County Bar Association, pastor of Emmanual Baptist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas, and parliamentarian of the National Baptist Convention USA. He is the author of two books, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope and Parables Politics and Prophetic Faith. Judge Griffin, Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Congressman Jackson, it is good to be with you again, and Happy New Year to you. Happy day after the King Holiday. How are you. I'm so grateful and honored, deeply honored by your presence on our show, and I can't think of a more appropriate guest to help contextualize what we are going through in the Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope. Lord knows we need prophetic hope at this hour. Clearly you were inspired to really write, create, and think through a masterpiece. We have about three minutes before we come forward, which means the first break in our show. Will you share with us during this time period, why the nation, why the country, maybe even the world needs a prophetic hope at this hour? We are in a time where hope seems to be almost difficult for people to imagine. People are dealing with trauma on so many levels. In the United States, we see the modern version of the twenty first entry version of the KKK operating in IC. We see Washington, d C. Threatening to invade Greenland, already having invaded Venezuela, threatening to invade other countries. We see the ongoing genocide in Sudan, in the Congo, in Gaza, we see all kinds of trauma, and people are finding difficult to believe in the notion of hope. So the issue of hope is almost People are almost breathless for it at the same time desperate for it. You know, Judge, I had the privilege yesterday of speaking in Walking Hegan, Illinois, and I spoke from the subject matter. April fourth, nineteen sixty seven, when Doctor King delivered a speech that quite frankly changed his ministry. It changed his relationship to the Baptist Convention. Joseph Jackson, the pastor and leader of that convention at that time, even changed the entrance to his church from Kings to thirty first Streets. So I know you understand that the context, Doctor King, I was told by my father, I believe, was to speak at one of the conventions and a pastor a shuffle began on the stage at the Baptist Convention. A pastor was knocked off the stage, broke his neck and died. Literally, a fight broke out. Doctor King was an immensely unpopular man at that time and during that period. But in that Beyond Vietnam Vietnam speech, I chose yesterday as my subject matter beyond Venezuela. Beyond Venezuela. He spoke about Venezuela in the same speech, bringing an urgent currency to this to this moment, Judge Griffin. He spoke about it. It was prescient. And I'm glad you named your speech beyond Venezuela because and we can talk about after the break. Because April four, nineteen sixty seven, is perhaps the most prelevant, relevant speech that King ever delivered. For our time. We need to talk about that in detail because too many people are courting sixty three. We need to be courting sixty seven. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. We're going to have an exciting program in this first hour with Judge Wendell Griffin, Arkansas lawyer, jurist, legal educator, business leader, ordained Baptist minister and public speaker. Particularly honored that he's. On our show. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. More on k BAA Talk fifteen eighty. Hey, I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. Welcome forward to the show. Our very special guest is none other than Reverend doctor Wendell Griffin and Arkansas lawyer, jurist, legal educator, business leader, ordained Baptist minister and public speaker. And just before the break before we came forward, Judge Griffin and I were having a conversation about how immensely unpopular Martin Luther King Junior was. On April fourth, nineteen sixty seven, he was thirty nine thirty nine, almost thirty eight years old, almost thirty nine years old. He'd be shot and killed a year from the delivery of this speech. But this year was a year of great depression for Martin Luther King Junior. He had received the Nobel Peace Prize. He had delivered in nineteen sixty three a memorable speech at the Lincoln Memorial. But there's a fight breaking out between Baptist preachers and young people he talks about it in the speech, who were disagreeing with a generation of people were saying the Doctor King's tactics were not working. And I can't think of anyone more important in this hour to share with us the context of the fierce urgency of prophetic hope and the prophetic hope admission that Doctor King was on at that hour, Judge Griffin. We forget. I like to remind people who have Doctor King's picture in their church and church studies that oftentimes the people have the Doctor King's picture in their church studies when predecessor passors out of congregation wouldn't have had Doctor King in their town along in their pulpit. And so we need to remember that Doctor King was ousted from the National Baptist Convention USA Incorporated. As you mentioned, he was let he was thrown out of the home of his father and his grandfathers on both sides, and he literally was without a denominational home until the progess of National Baptist Convention was organized. He and Gardner Taylor were thrown out. I say that because Doctor King called this nation to account for its racism, for its militarism, and for its gangs to capitalists. We call it gangs to capitalism now our word what he called it crass materialism. We realize now too late, that doctor King was more than a civil rights leader. He was a prophet. He was a preacher, as you mentioned, and he spoke prophetic truths, and he was killed because his truth cut too deep and too close to the real, very own wrongs of this society. We are now, We are now in wars in this country, and not the King begged this nation to end his military involvement in Southeast Asia. You know, you know, Judge, when I reflect upon that in my own studies over the last couple of months, in preparation for this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this young nation July fourth, twenty twenty six, we will be celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Doctor King stands out as this prophetic voice raising questions about this new civilization that has entered the global sphere of contemplation. Not only a young nation, but it emerges as the most powerful nation, the most influential nation, against the backdrop of human civilization with significant unfinished work in front of us. They talked about the value system, the value system of putting people over politics, of putting people over things. We needed to move quickly, he said, from a thing oriented society to a to a oriented society. Doc, we have a clip right here that I'd like to play. We are living in a moral crisis, not symbolic, but so deep. Our humanity is at stake. There is a battle going on between good and evil, and the fear creature of this nation and the world house hangs in the balance. That was Bernice King, Reverend doctor Bernice King, speaking just yesterday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Doctor Griffin, your thoughts. She speaks not only the truth her father spokes, but she speaks the truth that we know. Our children, our young people, are speaking it. They We're hearing it all across this country across the world. It is as real as the murder of people who are murdered or killed by ice in confinement, but also the killing of Nicole Good Rene Good in Minneapolis. It is the murder of people who are literally killed because of their ancestry or because of their perceived ancestry. Because ice people are killing icees are killing folks and detaining folks based on appearance. They're profiling people, and being racially profiled now is a capital offense. We are seeing doctor King's concern about not being a people, a personal in society, as he said so clearly on April four, nineteen sixty seven, to being a thing or in society where we are more concerned about cryptocurrency than the currency of human beings in communication with each other and in solidarity with each other. And so we have this very big dichotomy, as Bernice King mentioned, where literally we our souls are being split apart. I want to pick up on that because you know, I've heard thousands of sermons have been delivered about the fierce urgency of now. Rarely does anyone refer to in those sermons beyond Vietnam speech and or bring the connection to beyond Venezuela a time to speak. But really, doctor King's challenge is not only to the US government. What makes him unpopular is that his challenge is to each and every one of us. And by that I mean when he says a thing oriented society. I tried to break it down this way. We all want bananas, but we don't want to have anything to do with Panamanian neighbors or Costa Rican neighbors. We don't have anything to do with people living next door to us who actually come from lands that grow bananas. We all want lower gas prices, but we're ignoring the Venezuelan and the immigrants and the crisis that they're going through in their own country, the people who stand on the largest oil reserves in the nation. We wake up in the morning we hear the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which in nineteen fifty four, when Brown versus the Board of Education was decided. If you google it, the Dow Jones Industrial average was at four hundred and four. Right the power of Doctor King's death. In nineteen sixty eight, the Dow Jones Industrial average, the industrial average, the measure of the American economy, was one thousand at the beginning of the Reagan administration, the Dow Jones Industrial average was at seven thousand. At the end of the Barack Obama administration, the Dow Jones Industrial average was at nineteen thousand. It closed last Friday at forty nine thousand. And yet there is so much misery in the land. People are not getting their snap benefits. There's a great debate in this nation about health care, about housing, about affordability, about quality of life. And then I reflected upon in my remarks that what happens in this AI and robotic, profit driven economy for more and more efficiencies. When Dow Jones is at sixty thousand and at eighty thousand, there is a tipping point when the economy itself no longer needs the American people because it becomes so efficient that it doesn't take care of the least of these. I think you have tesched on what doctor King talked about. You recall quite well that doctor King said that at some point, at some point, a nation that has a true evvulution of values will have to regalize that when his words, when machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. End quote. We not only have not conquered them, we have multiplied them. What you refer to in the adult Jones indjustment edge has been an exponential increase in the taw couple with an exponential increase in the misery that our people are suffering. So we have exponential increase in supposed wealth and exponential increase interposed hurt, and we cannot recognize that the wealth is going to a smaller and smaller number of people, and the hurt is expanded to a larger and wider and deeper the freedom so much so that like a virus or a cancer, we are becoming incapable of dealing with the problems. Our problems are now self made and multiplied. The triplets are now our couplets. And we wake up every morning, we read the stock market, we look at our iras, we ask ourselves the question, how are we doing? Is the economy better off today four years than it was four years ago? And we keep going down this same road to the point doctor King suggests at the end of the speech that we are looking at either nonviolent coexistence or absolute annihilation of the idea of the species and the idea of civilization. Very powerful and unpopular words for someone who peeped the direction of our economy, who peeped the direction of our politics. And if you add to that the influence that the Constitution should have on directing the economy to humane priorities for the American people, you're right. It is simply suggestive of the fact that this is a system that is moving in a direction that needs more and more oil, more and more critical minerals, more and more reserves in order to consume and meet the needs of each of us who wakes up in the morning concerning concerned about ourselves, concerned about our homes, and concerned about our bottom lines. That the collective is completely lost. The line that doctor King said that haunts me to this day, to this day, this is nineteen sixty seven he gave it. We're in twenty twenty six, so we're literally almost fifty years away. And he said, a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. I wrote in The Fierce urgency of prophetic hope, that we've continued to go over and over and over our budgets in military defense and instead of social uplift year after year. Sooner or later, people who caught spiritual death find a way to kill themselves, and our society has found a way to commit national suicide of our souls, but also of our democracy. We're seeing the democracy imperiled, we're seeing our character imperiled, and we're seeing our sense of humanity imperial. The world now is aghast at the nation that has so much hubris. It does not realize how horrible it is. Doc we only have about a minute and a half before we come forward. If you had to preach the eulogy of our system, what would it sound like. It would sound like the nation that forgot its profit. We have learned the wrong lessons from the wrong profits. We've learned the lessons from the profits of greed, of racism, of bigotry, and we have not learned the lessons from the prophet of love, justice and democracy. And when you forget the nations of your lessons, of your prophets, you commit the sins of your ancestors. We're doing that. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. You're listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Our very special guest in this hour is Judge Wendell Griffin and Arkansas lawyer juris legal educator. In nineteen eighty five, appointed by Governor Bill Clinton to chair the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission, making Griffin the first person of color name to that state agency and the first to chair it. We're having an honest conversation about the destiny of the United States. We've heard a brief eulogy of what it represents. There may be a way, there may be a way to amend our way out of this problem. The right to healthcare of equal high quality as a constitutional right and a new government priority. The right to a clean, safe, and sustainable bull environment, and the right to an education of equal high quality. And God knows we need the constitutional right to vote. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. More, but Judge Griffin and when come forward on the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Judge Wendell Griffin. This is his second appearance on the Jesse Jackson Junior show. I'm trying to find room on our schedule to make him a regular contributor to the show. I'm so great he's he's spending this quality, immerseful time with us on the spirit energy of what's taking place in our nation. Judge Griffin, welcome forward to the show. Thank you so much, and I thank you Congressmond Jackson for being the wonderfully tenacious host that you are and keeping it real because you have not chosen to give up the legacy of justice in favor of let me put it this way, in favor of the creed of the day, which is get man, and don't forget Aboutny don't think of anybody else, you know, you think about all of us. Thank you, Judge. I appreciate you very much, you know I am. I'm after having studied for the last month or so in preparation for this hour beyond Vietnam speech. I think I'm as depressed at this moment as I've been in a very long time. I share Doctor King's depression that there is something profoundly wrong in our society. There's something profoundly wrong with our system. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence have guided the nation, albeit through its most difficult and continuingly difficult periods. And I'm wondering if also in the Constitution is the possibility of our nation's salvation. In two thousand and one, I wrote about this in my book A More Perfect Union. I advanced nine new individual rights to be added to the Constitution that literally would direct capitalism to new opportunities. If the first amendment is responsible for ABC, NBCCBS, the Internet, cell phones and billboards, newspapers, and all of the outdoor advertising, and literally the millions of jobs that are created from the idea of free speech, then a carefully worded amendment to the Constitution of the United States, gearing teeing every American the right to healthcare of equal high quality could also be responsible for the creation the construction of hundreds, if not thousands, of hospitals in urban areas and rural areas. It could create tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses and share in a value to create a society where we have the longest longevity as people by making sure people can live and they can thrive. That the same constitution could build public schools of equal high quality. Knowing no disparities, and therefore the pool of athletes, for example, would be so great when we see an NFL game or a baseball game, when all of these schools have coaches and teachers of equal high quality and fields and children during the formative years of their lives are exposed to the great opportunities that are America, we would have a huge pool to choose from to determine who plays for the Chicago Bears, the Green Bay Packers, the LA Rams. We would change the nature of us working together again, guided by the Constitution of the United States. I'm going to close on this quick point. Tavis Smiley once shared with me that he was at a forum for Michael Milkin and Michael Milkin Foundation, and the question was raised after they had met for several days with hundreds of people to discuss the best education ideas. And mister Milkin pulled all of the people into a big auditorium and he said, listen, I've heard everyone's idea, but is there anyone in here who has a grand idea that would solve all things for us? And Tavis said the quiet in the room was ominous. No one raised his hand. He said, he thought for a moment, Let me try some of this, Jesse Jr. Let me Jesse. Tavis raised his hand and he said, and then he looked around. Michael Milkin looked around and said, well, Tavis, what's your great idea? He said, what if we amended the Constitution and all Americans enjoyed the right to a public education of equal high quality, setting in motion the construction of tens of thousands of new, highly competitive public schools across our country, putting people to work. He said, The entire room was quiet, It was ominous for everyone for that moment had an insight in what was possible. But of course the difficulty of mending the Constitution makes it even more difficult. In other words, towards doctor King's Better Society and World House Judge. We are not accidentally dysfunctional. We are systematically dysfunctional. And your suggestion of a men in the Constitution points to that we could if we would, if we had the moral will, if we had the courage, if we had the moral Canada, we could do exactly what you suggest we could produce. We could amend the Constitution so that we would value education and liberation over incarceration. We could value not only the performing art in athletics, but also the performing arts in drama and theater. We met value. We could value science, the conation that produce, that produces the wonderful rappers. Still that also produce Dinah Washington and Duke Ellington and we But if our schools, those schools had music programs in them, were teachers who were inspiring young people. August Wilson's plays could be performed, but also knew August Wilson's could be producing and writing and imagining. This comes out of schools. You don't get this out of AI. You don't get this out of a data center. You know you're preaching right now, Reverend, let me tell you, I'm thinking in this moment that the prophetic vision of the nation the doctor King was struggling with, which was spot on in. The nineteen sixty seven April fourth Speech, is also challenged by the fact that people could not hear him that people were losing faith in America itself. Judge, you've sworn to uphold the Constitution on many different occasions. Your thought about the loyalty oath to making the nation better. The oath is not the problem. It is the oath taker no oath is any better than the person who takes it. People can swear to do something, but their oath is no good if their character is deceitful, if they are hypocrites, if they are ruthless. Then the oath to protect and preserve the constitution, to look out for the least of these and the vulnerable is no good because they will, in their ruthlessness, run over the people they're sworn to protect and to serve. So I'm not concerned about the loyalty oath itself. I'm concerned about the fidelity of people, the faithfulness of people, and I am concerned. Let me just simply say it about the gullibility of an electorate that knowing people who have lived their careers in ruthlessness and greed and self centeredness, would believe that they would somehow become honest, generous, and hospitable because we elect them to the highest office in power. People who are corrupt when given power, use their power in more corrupt ways. Smart liars lie smarter, They don't become more truthful. I just want to add before we come forward. When such a constitutional right is added to the Constitution, it means that three hundred and fifty million Americans have the legal right to take your local jurisdiction, your state, including the federal government, to court to demand the change through the legal system that the constitution forces. If in fact it is not in the constitution, we don't have that right. That is deeply troubling at this hour of the American experiment. It is deeply troubling at democracies around the world who've copied our constitution and in copying our constitution, whether it is in Africa or South America, these constitutions that model themselves after our own do not reflect the human values that we are still fighting for within our own country. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Listening to Jesse Jackson Junior Show. More when we come forward with Judge Wendell Griffin. Right after this message, I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. And just before we continue our discussion with Judge Griffin, I want Judge Griffin to know that at the top three minutes of the show, I always leave it for a word of hope from our very special guest, and I have to prepare you for the idea that after our brief conversation. There will be three minutes at the top of the show for your word of hope. I want to think in a very special way. In the last week, Kamala Harris has visited my father's bedside. We Wonder has also visited my father's bedside, and I'm grateful that I see a picture that our producer Gina Towns has put up of gil Scott Heron, Stevie Wonder, Reverend Jackson and Gladys Knight and some of the earlier times that they all spend together, and I wanted to thank them for those visits. Judge, I want to ask this this final question and leave some room for your thoughts. In your book Parables, Politics and Prophetic Faith, you draw the with I might add Alan Aubrey Bozak, written also with Judge Wendell Griffin. Judge Reverend Bozak is, as everyone knows, a champion of ending the apartheid regime in South Africa. You make this connection between our politics, the parables themselves, and the prophetic nature of our faith. Help restore our faith and our energy as we move forward during these very difficult and challenging times. We do not choose the time in which we live. We choose the conduct we use in those times, and part of that choice involves choosing whether to have life with a kind of as doctor King said, fierce hope, a hope that is that transcends our situations. I like to remind us that the African American national anthem lift every voice and sing ends with a reminder that we have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come through bad times, or as one of our wonderful artists, that life for me ain't been no crystal chair. Ah. We have come through the and every generation has a moment that we have to declare ourselves who we are. Are we people of desperation or inspiration? Are we people of frustration, of ferocity, ferocious ferocious hope? Are we people who are determined to overcome? Are we people who are simply going to be confined to our sense of misery because of the difficulty we face? Those choices are ours, But we are come from a people who are inspired by a faith that is bigger than the situations of our time. Our struggle is defined by our faith and our hope. And I have I got to be a preacher come on, I've got to say that trouble has never been God for us. Injustice has never been God for us. In humanity has never been God for us. We know who our God is, we know on what we stand, and we know that just as we have known that Hitler was not God in the twenty in the nineteen, in the nineteen hundreds, Trump is not God in the twenty first century, injustice is not God anytime. We have to remember that the justice in our life is depend upon the God of our lives, the Biji God. And that is what your father inspired in you and your siblings. That is what doctor King demonstrated. That is what we have to pass on the business generation. There's gonna be two words of hope, because that's the first one I'm thinking in this moment that Doctor King also talked about how often the policymakers and the liberal thinkers always come with the policy prescriptions, but their policies prescriptions are not necessarily tied to the parables or tied to the prophetic faith. They are great on paper, stand for this program, stand for that program, but what propels them through time is their faith. You wove that together in parables, politics and prophetic faith suggesting that it is okay to engage the present hour. Woe, may all our powers be engaged to do the Master's will. Judge Wendell Griffin. A final thought, a word of hope. You got a few more minutes this time to take you time and take us to that place. I am seventy three years old, like your father, I'm part of the like your parents, I'm part of the last generation of Africans Americans who lived and have first hand knowledge of Jim Crow. Separate bathrooms and water fountains that didn't work, schools that didn't have the right books. I went through the whole ninth grade without an algebra book. How do you learn algebra two if you don't have an algebra for Algerie one? And my parents were laborers and they've paid the same taxes the white people did. But the white parents had children with algeerie books and teachers who didn't have better education, because our black teachers often had master's degrees and the white teachers only had bachelors degrees. But the white teachers got better facilities. But our parents sent us to schools with an inspiration. You are not less than your God has put you here for a purpose, and you are being prepared for a future that is bigger than this predicament. I still remember seeing the images of doctor King. I still remember seeing images of your father. I still remember hearing the voices. Not only have those televised, but those old saints of Pike County, Arkansas and Harrison Chapel Baptist Church who picked cotton in the fall so we could have some money to have. And when I went to college, told me to come to church and they would give me a piece of money. That's what they called it, a piece of money, so I could go back to school. They didn't know what I was studying, but they believed in us. I say all that to say that our people, and I'm talking about black people. Our people have lived the parable of the scriptures of people who were faced with trials and left trials and triumphed, transscended trials and made triumph. Made them triumphant not because they were given more opportunities, but because their God gave them a powerful sense of their identity that saw opportunity where other people gave them only opposition. We will not always be favorite, but we will always have favor with God. And we will not always be favorites in the society, but we will always have a favorite outcome if we will simply remember that there is, as doctor King said, a message truth knockdown does rise. I'm a Christian. My religion doesn't stop on Good Friday. It goes to the Easter Sunday morning. I have an Easter religion, an East assist justice, and I have an Eastern faith. If I didn't have that, I'd put my Bible down, take up rock thowing. But I am not. I am not gonna lay my legiend down because I'm not gonna let my people down. Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. Yet it is the scaffold that sways the future. For behind the dim unknown stand it God keeping watch above his own. Amen, Judge Griffin, thank you very much for participating in our show today. Thank you so much. God bless you. Please give my glove to your father and tell him, hey, folks, he doesn't know the lawyer he used to talk to at the Baptist mention is still praying born. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. I'm particularly grateful for that, for that word of hope, and for that prayer from my father. I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. More on k BLA Talk fifteen eighty. When we come forward, it's Tenation's Tuesdays with Attorney Barbara Arnwine. Think you judge,