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. Thank you so much, Jesse always it's a pleasure happy news for Johnny and same to you, man. 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. You're kind I'm glad to be back in conversation. There's so much to talk about, Johnny. 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? 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. 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. More. 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. The world, Johnny, the Jesse Gas Brilliants. 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? 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. That's deep. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Good to be here. 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? 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. Channels. 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. 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. 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. Rather, we see. 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. 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. 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. And the person with a. 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. 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. I'm good, I'm glad to be here, Jesse, thank you. Doctor Mac. Shared with us how we can continue to support your work. 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. 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. 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. Jesse. 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. You know, our. 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. I like to like that right to the future, some some fidelity that we owe to the future generations. 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. Johnny, A word of hope. 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. Jesse. 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. 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. Thank you, Jesse. 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