Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson Junior Welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior
Show on Thursdays and all ways world hopen Johnny Mack.
Johnny Mack is one of my great contributors on the
Jesse Jackson Junior Show, and I'm particularly honored of going
into the new year, doctor Mack has joined us in
his regularly scheduled position on the show. Doctor Mack, welcome
forward to our show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jesse always it's a pleasure happy
news for Johnny and same to you, man.
Speaker 1: And I've missed you man. I know that we've had
some some unnecessary time off during the holidays to have
allowed us the privilege of having a few days off
and playing some of the older shows, but nothing like
Live with Johnny Mack.
Speaker 2: You're kind I'm glad to be back in conversation. There's
so much to talk about, Johnny.
Speaker 1: If I can kick the conversation off with just maybe
two points that we're kind of going to be reflecting
on back and forth over the course of the year,
and that is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence. July fourth, seventeen seventy six. July fourth,
twenty twenty six, we start the new year off and
had a wonderful conversation in the last hour with Atiba
with a woman in Minnesota by the United States of
America getting shot in the face, exercising what there's sufficient
evidence to suggest her constitutional rights to challenge law enforcement
and their behavior in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I'm thinking, and
Atiba reminded us before the last break that the Viola
Luitso turning point and the James Reeb turning point were
significant turning points in nineteen sixty five between Selma and Montgomery.
And even though blacks have been losing their lives in
the South for a number of decades, maybe even a number,
clearly a number of centuries, when white life dies in
this struggle, it tends to be a turning point in
ways that we saw with the example that I gave
about Bobby Kennedy, Johnny, your thoughts on the standard and
your thoughts about you know, where we are in this moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so where we are in this moment first, perhaps Jesse,
and then my thoughts about you know, what essentially is
which lives matter and how much they matter? You know,
where we are in the moment Jesse, is so important
for us all to understand and to understand it in
a very existential way. We've talked to our many conversations
on this show about being in the middle of a
process that is establishing a new world order, and Jesse,
we can't spend enough time on that, in my view
reularly because the average listener on this program, and more broadly,
the average citizen doesn't have the tools, Jesse, or if
we have the tools, we know not how to use
the tools to understand where we are, determine whether that
is where we ought to be, and if not, where
then should we go? And again, the moment that we
are in is not just a moment, it's a process,
and we are going through the process of establishing a
new world order. Who's participating in that? My point is
the average citizen should have us say in what that
new world order is. But if we don't have the tools,
or if we have the tools, then we don't know
how to use them, how then do we participate? And
why then do we allow others to determine what the
trajectory of our lives should be and what the social
order should be. That determines the quality of our lives.
And therein Jesse lies the problem with the poor sister
who lost her life so needlessly. It is in large part,
I argue, because we don't know where we are, We
have forgotten from where we've come, and we have no
no of where we're going.
Speaker 1: Johnny, I know that we're going to be coming forward
in just a moment. But in this moment, I must
admit I feel some kind of way about my existence
being replaced, potentially by artificial intelligence with more efficient systems.
I feel some kind of way about the greedy taking
oil from underneath my feet if I'm a Venezuelan, or
lithium out of the congo. And yet some of the
poorest people box side cobalt are in the congo without
the ability to take their raw materials and turn them
into cell phones, or to computers or to drones. And
somehow the blessed of us get to take advantage of
all of the resources of the world, and the rest
of us become expendable in that process. It's not just
about creating jobs. It's about for me, creating middle class jobs,
jobs where people can pay a mortgage, can put their
children through college, children can look forward to owning the
homes of their parents, or even buying their own homes
as first time home buyer buyers. We're not creating middle
class jobs. In fact, we are replacing the middle class
with artificial means of intelligence. We are taking natural resources
from the poorest of the poor in the world. We
are bullying them, we are bribing them, we are stealing them.
And I'm deeply troubled by the world that we are inheriting.
And it's not the world that Doctor King left us with.
Speaker 2: More.
Speaker 1: When we come forward with Johnny Mack, when we come
forward on the World House on Ka Bi and Ley
Talk fifteen eighty, Jesse l.
Speaker 3: The world, Johnny, the Jesse Gas Brilliants.
Speaker 1: To us, Doctor macw welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson
Junior Show. Thank you, Jesse, doctor Mac. There's a sense
of a sense of loneliness, a sense of alienation in
this particular transformation of the way in which the world
order and the economies of the world are transforming themselves.
And they don't seem to be as human centered as
as they should be. And maybe it was inevitable that
the idea of a human centered ethos driven by a
system that is a profit maximizing never ending combine. That's
operating in the middle of a cornfield with no driver,
but being guided by some kind of satellite for maximum profit.
It's a machine that in some ways is out of control,
but it makes mincemeat of people in the process. Johnny,
the ninety seventh birthday of Martin Luther King Junior is
upon us. How would doctor King see the world in
which we presently find ourselves?
Speaker 2: So I think doctor King, well, not the exact details
and probably not the same magnitude that we are realizing
in terms of the quantum leaps. And I use that
word intentionally. The technology has taken that he saw something
like this as he stood on that mountaintop and he
looked over and he saw the promised Land. I'm not
so sure, however, that the promised land as we are
beginning to realize it today, is that land that that
King and vision. So I don't want to mislead our
audience in that regard. I think King would would say,
I told you so, you know, and I warn you
that you should or yes that you remember Jesse King
said I may not get there with you. Well, that
applies not only to the promised land, of his vision,
but it also applies to the land we are in now.
He knew he will not get here with us.
Speaker 1: That's deep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we as a people not only had in
his mind to come together to realize that vision of
the Promised Land. In other spaces and places he talked about,
we as a people had to come together and prepare
for or what would come if we had not reached
yet the promised Land. And that's where we are, Jesse,
to you the question you previously asked, where are we?
And that's where King says, in my mind, See, I
told you so. I warned you that you must mobilize
and organize yourself. I warned you that you must realize
that a new world order is coming, and you must
prepare yourself for it. Not only for what would come
as a new world order, but you must prepare yourself
to be part of the process that determines what that
new world order would be. And Jesse, we simply haven't
done that. And that's why I'm so passionate about this.
His vision, his idea of a world house that we
must we must learn. He didn't say, Jesse, you and
Johnny must learn, and Tom and Fred it must learn,
and Barbara and Bobby must learn learn. He said, we
must all come together, and I'll add the words insolidarity
to determine how we're going to live in the World House.
And that work we have not done, which is why
we are so fragmented today as a people. And when
I say as a people, I don't mean as black
people necessarily and particularly solely. I mean we as global citizens,
as planetizens, as people of the human race. I can
go on, Jesse, but I'll stop and take a breath.
Speaker 1: Well, I go right ahead. I'm a little bit troubled
because I think of one of the most successful models
of a people connected to a land that has actually
become a part of their identity is global Jewelry. Since
the Balfour Agreement, Israel a place of refuge for Jewish people,
with the narrative, of course, of the events of World
War two that led to the prioritization the global community
of the creation of the state, largely with the influence
on the support of the United States given our hegemony
at the time, and what had horrifically happened to the
Jewish people the creation of Israel. But today in modern psychology,
for the world, and for Jewish people alike, they have
a place to go. It's part of their theology, it's
part of their existential reality. It's part of the internalization
of who they are. It's philosophy, it's theology, it's scholastic,
it's academic. It is the core of who they are.
Where are you on Israel and its existence? We still
here in the United States as African Americans are a
people without a land and to take that which they
don't want on the surface, or the concerns for which
doctor King clearly expressed, or terrestrial dwellers, people on top
of the land who need the resources beneath their land
in order to transform their existence from one of poverty,
from one where first fresh water does not exist, from
one where hospitals are not being built, and when they
are being built, they're being built by philanthropists on the
outside of the countries. Because the absence of doctors and
sustainable development make trauma one, drama two, or trauma three
level centers in many of these countries, and impossible reality. Wondering, Johnny,
if this idea of the poor shall be with us always?
It might have been something that was said biblically but
the reality is the organized, industrialized and modernized nations of
the world do have the power to eliminate poverty from
the earth right now. But it's a function of human will,
and I think doctor King understood that, in fact, on
Martin Luther King's ninety seventh birthday. I'm going to be
speaking at Reverend Will Hall's church next weekend and a
weekend after next, and I'll be speaking in Walkeingan, Illinois,
and I'm modeling my speech. I'm going to give away
my title right now, Beyond Venezuela, modeling it after Beyond Vietnam,
delivered by Martin Luther King Junior. Beyond Venezuela. Help me
with that, Johnny, Beyond Venezuela Modern interpretation of a riverside.
Speaker 2: Well, uh yeah, another of those tall orders. I can't
wait to hear your your speech at Jesse. Remember we
talk about We've talked about understanding where we are what
I like to call both in time and over time,
and I think that that consideration applies here. You know,
there's a certain now not yet tension that human beings
are always confronted with we are Your point about you know,
the existential what is happening to us right now in
our lives. What is happening in Venezuela right now is important,
but let's not let it overwhelm us. So it's that
we don't understand what is not yet. In other words,
is this move strictly about oil or is there something
else going on? Is it about poverty today or is
there something else going on? Again, we're talking about the
now and the not yet. Jesse, I would encourage you
to consider in your speech this now or not yet dilemma,
and in doing so, think about that document we talked
about several weeks ago, called Project twenty twenty five. If
one takes the time to carefully read that document, one
would not be surprised that what's happening in Venezuela is
expressly written about in Project twenty twenty five. Please read
the document. It expressly talks about taking over Venezuela, and
not only Venezuela, but several other countries. It talks about Cuba,
it talks about Nicaragua, it talks about Colombia, it talks
about Magel, It talks about so many other countries, particularly
in the Western Hemisphere. Now remember now I'm asking you
a question about beyond Venezuela. In other words, we're not
stopping we the United States or they those who are
in charge of our state United States today, it does
not stop at Venezuela. So you're beyond Venezuela. Is what next?
Where do they go from here? Well, that's all flagged
in this Project twenty twenty five document. And is this
critically important to what is actually taking place in preparation
for what is yet to come? I can expand on
that a bit more, but again as the outtake of Breath,
and perhaps you may run a weigh in on this idea.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm troubled at the not linear nature of the
progress that we've made since doctor King talked about beyond Vietnam.
But just how much worse it is in terms of
the nation's military spending in the modern era, and how
we've learned nothing that the investments in human capital have
taken a hit. Twenty million peace people are are losing
their their premiums are going to skyrocket this week, and
it doesn't appear that Congress is going to do anything
serious about them, and this very week, by the end
of the week, that SNAP benefits are jeopardized. By the
present congressional and presidential order under the Big so called
Big Beautiful Bill and Doctor King had an emphasis and
a focus on poverty and the elimination of of of
hunger in not only our country but in our world.
And certainly before you can ask a man or a
woman to show concern for civil rights and human rights
of other people, you've got to take starvation out of
their stomach. I mean, a person who's starving doesn't have
much time for philosophy and social adjustment or social adhesion.
They have to make an adjustment that is more reflect
of someone who who can organize reasonable thought, Johnny, that
includes the basic necessities of life for which they can
go forward so beyond Venezuela. With the population of the
world growing at the rate that it's growing, really shares
with me that our priorities for the natural resources, the
critical minerals that we've heard about in almost every venture
that the President of the United States has taken, is
that he and in the final analysis, these natural resources
belong to many unborn generations of people who live in
these countries, and in a global economy of the future,
they will have nothing to negotiate with the means by
which we are extracting minerals and resources from underneath their
feet are so vast and so great that the consequences
I think are are just are just are just amazing.
And I'm stumbling with the speech, but I'm feeling comfortable
that I'm in, I'm in, I'm in the right tradition.
Speaker 2: Yes, Jesse, I think we're probably close to break. If
not now, I sure hope we can pick up this
point after the break, because theres much just say about
what you so you know absolutely framed.
Speaker 1: Here, I'm Jesse Jackson Junior. Listening to Jesse Jackson Junior Show.
We're in thought provoking Thursdays with Johnny Mack on the
World House on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm so grateful
that doctor Mack is with us in the new year.
We're all so blessed to have his presence. My goodness,
we're also blessed to be here ourselves more on KBLA
Talk fifteen eighty. I'm Jesse Jackson Jr. When we come
forward more with doctor Johnny Mack, Hey, doctor Mac. Jesse
Jackson Junior here, welcome forward to the Jesse Jackson Junior
Show on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty Doctor Mack, welcome forward,
Thank you, Jesse.
Speaker 2: Good to be here.
Speaker 1: Hey, Johnny, let me ask you a question. I'm thinking
in this moment that moral voices are being drowned out.
I'm not going to say that they don't exist, but
the overwhelming use of the bully pulpit, the overwhelming use
of the microphone, is stifling our ability to heal, to
hear the moral clarity or the clarion call of righteousness
and justice at this hour we penetrate. How do we
break through with moral clarity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a wonderful question my view, Jesse. And this
is part of what I I research and our work
is about at the World House Project. In today's world,
as you noted when we opened the program, today, we
have a new technological framework. We have AI, we have
quantum computing, blockchain technology, and so much more. And we
have this phenomena called social media, something we did not
have it certainly in the mid twentieth century. New technologies
have put literally the entire world, literally, Jesse, the entire
world in the palm of the hand of even some
of the poorest people in the world. If you let
that sync in we didn't have that kind of technology.
Among the things that type of technology does is it
diffuses not only information, but it also diffuses attention. And
in the mid twentieth century, particularly during Martin Luther King
Junior's time, a speech on that the Lincoln Memorial had
the opportunity to be broadcasted on a very narrow set of.
Speaker 1: Channels.
Speaker 2: Today there's an infinite literally number of channels where people
can get information. Remember in our last segment, we talked
about King saying I warned you. I warned you that
you had to study nonviolence and you had to prepare
and mobilize and organize yourself because again I believe he
saw that those tactics, those strategies and methodologies that were
pertident and irrelevant for that time would not be sufficient.
And Jesse King says almost the as exact words, that
they would not be sufficient for our time. And so
one of the reasons we don't hear moral voices, we
haven't learned to use our platforms of technology today that
we're so effectively used in his time, including the speech
in nineteen sixty three at the Lincoln Memorial. And so
I think that's one of the challenges It is also
one of the opportunities we spend more time. Now Your
very radio program, in my judgment, is one of those opportunities,
and so many more programs like it. We simply have
to study more carefully and make opportunities available to so
many more voices because we are looking for, in my judgment,
that one voice that will be the clarion voice that
everyone listens to. Those days are gone, Jesse. In this
same way that building automobiles manually by human hands are
gone forever. Manufacturing jobs of automobiles, no matter what anybody says,
will never come back. Our mail is going to be
delivered by robots. Why would manufacturing a car if indeed
we have that type of mail? I get most of
my mail as most of the rest of us do, electronically.
Speaker 1: So what's left force, Johnny, I mean, what's left force?
If everything is automated, What is that left for us
to do? What pride should I have in my work,
something that I built with my hands. What is left
for humanity to do? If that's the direction of humanity, But.
Speaker 2: There's so much more for humanity to do. Remember that
not only is there a challenge, but Jesse, it's an opportunity.
Remember that said in the last segment that we are
not using the tool at our disposal. We hardly know
that the tools are available, and so what's left is
to take the time follow King's admonition to study how
we can come together to keep ourselves informed and instructed
in solidarity with one another. There are several books now
I'm meeting one now called The Space of the World.
I would really encourage our audience to read the book
The Space of the World, that talks about how new
technologies is breaking us up into fragmented, balkanized groups. Well,
we don't work together, we don't collaborate together, we don't
see ourselves in solidarity.
Speaker 1: Rather, we see.
Speaker 2: Ourselves atomistically individually and all against all world rather than
an all four all world. And so we must all
be that clarion voice and not ask ourselves where will
the next Martin Luther King Junior come from? We each
one of us is that person.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think that's right. But I
also think that there are, as you correctly acknowledge, so
many voices, so many different modes and means of communication,
that I think the distinguishing factors going forward will be action.
Everybody's talking, Yes, everybody's talking. Barbar On Wine's doing the work.
William Barber's doing the work. I see Reverend Sharpton out
here doing the work, I think. And I see Jamal
Bryant out here doing the work, right. I see Freddie
Haynes out here doing the work. I see people beyond
the pullpit or beyond the microphone doing the work. And
I'm reminded in this moment that the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference in Atlanta, George had a radio station right next
to it. When Doctor King exited his office, he had
as to a radio station and a microphone right there.
But given the nature of how we used to gather
around a radio or a rabbity or television set, you know,
sixty five seventy years ago, it's fundamentally different than this
powerful little device that has more technology in it than
someone I heard the other day say the Space Shuttle,
that the technology has moved on in twenty years, far
faster than the technology that existed in the last Space
Shuttle and the last journey of the Space Shuttle correct,
which is you know, quite astounding and quite amazing. Hard
to imagine where it's going to be in twenty years
from now. What we do know is it is exacerbating
the space between haves and the have nots.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Jesse. And you know it's the point we were
making earlier. Yes, that little phone, that little technology does
have more power than the entire space program of the
mid twentieth century, that one little phone. And so how
do we use it effectively? That is the question. And
how do we use it in anticipation of what is
to come? Yes, we must be concerned, and everyone is
concerned about what I will eat today, But Jesse, we
must be reminded. You know, I often use this framework
that I hope will be helpful. A person who is
hungry and has no means is worried about her next meal.
The person without a job is worried about his next paycheck.
Speaker 1: And the person with a.
Speaker 2: Job is worried about his or her next vacation or retirement.
And those with a little bit more means who have
their retirement secure, is worried about their children's future.
Speaker 1: Johnny, let me come forward. I'm Jesse Jackson, Junior on
KBLA talk fifteen eighty more with Johnny Mack. When we
come forward, Jackson twenty six, we're back in the World
Pass with doctor Johnny Mack, one of our most prolific contributors.
Doctor Mac, welcome forward to the show.
Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm glad to be here, Jesse, thank you.
Speaker 1: Doctor Mac. Shared with us how we can continue to
support your work.
Speaker 2: I would welcome visiting our website. It's a bit long.
It's the World House Project, the World Houseproject dot org.
There you'll find more about our work and how you
can make a contribution to that work, how you can
join our global network and contribute to our work around
the globe.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, Johnny, let me ask a question. I
know that we have a word of hope coming from
you shortly. It seems to me that all of the
factors since beyond Vietnam have essentially come together for voices
of moral authority to emerge. Yes, I'm for the advocation
of multiple voices emerging in this context and with moral clarity.
I see more people running for office than have ever
run before, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are
from what Reverend Sharpton calls the tradition. From the tradition,
there is a tradition, doctor Mac, that you are rooted
in that this movement is rooted in. That serves as
the foundation for motivation. How the more young people get
rooted in the tradition.
Speaker 2: Well, they get involved, as John Lewis would have encouraged them,
another great champion of our movement. They get into good trouble,
as John Lewis admonage them. That does require some discipline,
Jesse and new technologies tend to make us lazy, sedendary,
spending hours upon hours upon hours with our faces in
our hands. It's not because we're looking at the lines
in our hands, but the lines of text in our
phones and games that we play. We knew we need
a a revolution of values, as King said, a reordering
of our priorities. That doesn't come easily. That's that's hard work,
and we have to teach it. I I'm really please
to hear Tavis talk about his class on how to
hold a conversation. We've we've stopped talking to each other,
How to engage in dialogue, how to listen to each
other and share our feelings and our thoughts, and how
to build solidarity around our human dignity and our freedom
to express that dignity. We have to relearn some things
that came naturally to I would argue many of us
growing up during the modern civil rights movement, it was
taught to us in church, taught to us and our
social gatherings, it was taught to us at home. Now
much of that teaching takes place through what we call
social media, online, through technology, and so we've abdicated our roles,
I would argue, in many cases to technology and just
think about it.
Speaker 1: Jesse.
Speaker 2: Again, you started the show by talking about AI and
what a by I might do two jobs and the
loss of those. You know, we now have AI babysitting
our children. There's something wrong there. I mean, we must
question ourselves and the priorities that we've set for ourselves
and think about what we owe to our children and
our children's children.
Speaker 1: You know, our.
Speaker 2: Children and our children's children, Jesse. Have a right to
the future. Let me let me say that again. I
hope it doesn't pass.
Speaker 1: I like to like that right to the future, some
some fidelity that we owe to the future generations.
Speaker 2: They listen. We talk about civil rights, we talk about
human rights. I did some work with Columbia professor on
this very subject of a right to the future. We
owe generations to come a chance for the future, and
we must work on ensuring that we give them that
right preserve that right for a just and peaceful world
in the future.
Speaker 1: Johnny, A word of hope.
Speaker 2: Well, the word of hope is that we still have
an opportunity to work on that future, to pass on
to our children and their children a hopeful, peaceful and
just world. I believe that programs like your own, Jesse,
in the work of the persons you mentioned before, our Arnwine,
Jesse Jackson, Junior, Revenue, Sharpton, and so many others, but
not only them, Jesse, each and every one of us.
I believe in each and every one of us. But
I also believe in the hope that we will all
realize that we should focus on and we should do.
Follow me carefully, if you would please. We should do
the thing that must be done, that only we can do,
and that won't get done unless we do it.
Speaker 1: Jesse.
Speaker 2: Yes, you may we individually and collectively, but let's think
about it individually. Let's work on doing that thing that
must be done that we can do and won't get
done unless we do it.
Speaker 1: I I can't think of more profounder words that have
been stated than what Johnny Mack has just shared with us.
We hear it in different forms that we are the
leaders that we are looking for. Fanny Buhamer said, we
can pray until we faint, but if we don't get
up and do something, it ain't just gonna drop out
the sky in our lap. We got to do something. Yes.
Doctor King went on to say that that faith without
works is dead. But to pray without ceasingly, without engagement
in humanity and the work in front of us, you're
engaging in a form of superstition. And one of our
great philosophers Thinkers also said that the Negro in America
must give up on the silly idea of waiting for
everything to happen for us from the sky, that we're
going to have to engage right here on earth for
the freedom that we believe we deserve and the kind
of world that we think we need to build. I'm
Jesse Jackson Junior listening to the Jesse Jackson Junior Show. Johnny,
thank you for being on the program today.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jesse.
Speaker 1: Look forward to our time together next week. More on
KBLA talk fifteen to eighty on the Jesse Jackson Junior show,
but more specifically on the KBLA station when we come
forward right after the break