In this episode, Aran Shetterly talks about his upcoming book, Morningside, which details the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. Then, Rev. Dr. Chris Jones, the 2022 Democratic nominee for Governor of Arkansas, discusses what is happening in his state for the 2024 election.
[00:00:00] Welcome, I'm Erik Fleming host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time. I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast. If you like what you're hearing, then I need you to do a few things. First, I need subscribers. I'm on Patreon at patreon.com slash a moment with Erik Fleming. Your subscription allows an independent podcaster like me the freedom to speak truth to power and to expand and improve the show.
[00:00:29] Second, leave a five-star review for the podcast on the streaming service you listen to it. That will help the podcast tremendously. Third, go to the website momenterik.com. There you can subscribe to the podcast, leave reviews and comments, listen to past episodes, and even learn a little bit about your host. Lastly, don't keep this a secret like it's your own personal guilty pleasure. Tell someone else about the podcast. Encourage others to listen to the podcast.
[00:00:57] And share the podcast on your social media platforms because it is time to make this moment of movement. Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.
[00:01:16] The following program is hosted by the NVG Podcast Network.
[00:01:21] And welcome to another moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming.
[00:02:09] So today I have two gentlemen on.
[00:02:13] One has written a very, very powerful historical narrative.
[00:02:18] And one made history as the first African American in his state to run for governor.
[00:02:30] And I'm really honored to have both of them.
[00:02:35] And I look forward to sharing those interviews with you.
[00:02:43] And I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did talking to them.
[00:02:50] Again, ladies and gentlemen, another hurricane has hit in the mainland United States.
[00:03:03] Hurricane Milton primarily, well, only hit the state of Florida.
[00:03:13] And but for those folks who are just who are still in recovery from a lean.
[00:03:22] Then Milton hit them.
[00:03:24] And the dangerous part about Milton was that it spawned several tornadoes.
[00:03:32] And it seemed like the tornadoes did more damage than anything else.
[00:03:36] It was damaged from the hurricane because it had hurricane force straight across the central part of the state of Florida before it went out into the Atlantic Ocean.
[00:03:50] And it was one of those rare hurricanes that started.
[00:03:55] In the Gulf and went east as opposed to it starting in the Atlantic and going west.
[00:04:04] So it was something that they were, you know, meteorologists were really, really paying attention to.
[00:04:11] And again, you know, but people listened because of a lean.
[00:04:20] The majority of the people that were in the affected areas got out.
[00:04:24] And so the fatality numbers are not going to be as high.
[00:04:32] So, you know, we're thankful to that.
[00:04:38] But just like I did last week, I'm going to encourage you all to go to FEMA.gov.
[00:04:46] And figure out, you know, where you can send donations, figure out what groups you want to volunteer with to help those people out.
[00:04:56] And it's going to be a long process.
[00:05:02] Listening to meteorologists, they feel that there's nothing in the horizon for a while.
[00:05:10] So that'll give time for first responders and other folks to be able to help kind of clean up and set up a foundation for a rebuild.
[00:05:25] And get people back in their respective communities to start to rebuild, to assess whatever damage they've got to deal with.
[00:05:36] But but it's going to take a minute.
[00:05:40] And there's a whole lot of other issues tied into that with Florida as far as insurance rates and everything else.
[00:05:47] So it's going to be a mess.
[00:05:51] And I hate that it, you know, from the political sense, it kind of.
[00:05:57] This can vibrate some people as far as the elections go.
[00:06:03] You know, when Katrina hit.
[00:06:06] It was an odd number year.
[00:06:09] So I think, you know, there might have been some local elections that were impacting Louisiana, but it wasn't a congressional or federal or their state legislature.
[00:06:19] I can't remember.
[00:06:20] It's been that long.
[00:06:22] But.
[00:06:25] And it definitely, you know, didn't impact us in Mississippi like that politically.
[00:06:30] A few elections.
[00:06:31] So this one's going to be tough for some of those folks.
[00:06:35] But, you know, they'll they'll have accommodations and they'll be able to vote.
[00:06:42] But the most important thing is for them to rebuild their lives.
[00:06:47] So, again, go to FEMA dot gov.
[00:06:51] And do what you can with that.
[00:06:56] Don't listen to.
[00:06:59] The lies.
[00:07:01] Just go directly to FEMA dot gov and get the information you need.
[00:07:10] With that, ladies and gentlemen, we can go ahead and get this program started.
[00:07:14] And as always, we're going to start it with a moment of news.
[00:07:18] With Grace G.
[00:07:27] Thanks, Eric.
[00:07:28] Hurricane Milton struck central Florida, causing widespread destruction with tornadoes, heavy rain and power outages affecting three million customers, while resulting in at least 13 fatalities.
[00:07:41] Vice President Kamala Harris holds a slim 46 to 43 percent lead over Donald Trump in a close race for the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Reuters Ipsos poll.
[00:07:53] The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a record federal deficit of one point eight three four trillion dollars for fiscal 2024, marking an 11 percent increase from the previous year.
[00:08:06] The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an Alabama fertility clinics appeal to evade a wrongful death claim related to the destruction of a couple's frozen embryo.
[00:08:16] The Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal from President Biden's administration aimed at enforcing federal guidance for hospitals in Texas to perform necessary abortions.
[00:08:27] Tensions escalated as Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel's Haifa and other cities, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks.
[00:08:36] Georgia Supreme Court reinstated a nearly total ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy while reviewing a lower court's ruling that had blocked the law.
[00:08:47] The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that election officials can notify voters about errors on mail-in ballots, allowing them to correct mistakes.
[00:08:56] Tunisian President Kaye Saeed won a second term with 90.69 percent of the vote in the recent election, although voter turnout was as low as 28.8 percent.
[00:09:09] A 65-year-old Illinois man has been indicted on five federal charges for making violent threats against U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon of Florida.
[00:09:18] And a New Mexico man has accepted a plea deal for shooting a Native American activist during a statue protest, resulting in a four-year prison sentence.
[00:09:30] I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.
[00:09:42] All right. Thank you, Grace, for that Moment of News.
[00:09:45] And now it is time for my guest, Aaron Shetterly.
[00:09:52] Aaron Shetterly's first book, The Americano Fighting with Castro for Cuba's Freedom, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from Carlos Iyer, the National Book Award winner for Waiting for Snow in Havana.
[00:10:11] Shetterly grew up in rural Maine, studied English literature and Spanish language and culture at Harvard College and earned an M.A.
[00:10:19] in American and New England studies from the University of Southern Maine.
[00:10:23] He has worked in media, publishing and as a writing instructor, has collaborated with his father's arts and education organization,
[00:10:33] Americans Who Tell the Truth, since 2003.
[00:10:37] After living in Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico, Shetterly now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
[00:10:45] His new book is Morningside, the 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City Soul.
[00:10:53] And we will be discussing that book in this interview.
[00:10:58] Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Aaron Shetterly.
[00:11:17] All right.
[00:11:18] Aaron Shetterly.
[00:11:20] How are you doing, sir?
[00:11:22] Doing great.
[00:11:23] Great to be with you here, Eric.
[00:11:24] Thanks for having me.
[00:11:25] Well, I'm honored to have you on.
[00:11:30] You are a narrative historical writer, which is a very fascinating way to.
[00:11:43] You.
[00:11:44] Uh.
[00:11:46] Describe what you do.
[00:11:48] Uh.
[00:11:49] It's like when you tell a story.
[00:11:53] It's it's like it's it's it's it's a total immersion for the reader as opposed to, you know, some historical most most historical writing, especially if it's true events.
[00:12:06] It's they kind of get you in the mindset of what's going on and all that.
[00:12:11] But you're you're the way that you do it.
[00:12:14] It's almost like you you you were in the room.
[00:12:19] Uh, the way that you describe like the opening scene, for example, in this book and the name of the book, by the way, is called Morningside.
[00:12:26] The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for for an American City Soul.
[00:12:34] Uh.
[00:12:35] Just the way that you the detail about.
[00:12:38] About.
[00:12:39] The lady sewing clothes for the kids and and the one lady passing out berets to the children.
[00:12:47] I mean, that's the kind of intricate detail that makes you feel like you're right there.
[00:12:53] And that's so that's that's that's an that's an incredible talent.
[00:12:56] So I commend you on that.
[00:12:57] Um, so let's go ahead and get into it.
[00:13:01] What I normally do with a guest, I give him a quote.
[00:13:05] And your quote is nations real and stagger on their way.
[00:13:11] They make hideous mistakes.
[00:13:14] They commit frightful wrongs.
[00:13:17] They do great and beautiful things.
[00:13:19] And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all of this so far as the truth is ascertainable?
[00:13:29] What does that quote mean to you?
[00:13:31] Wow.
[00:13:32] You know.
[00:13:34] One of my heroes is W.E.B. Du Bois.
[00:13:38] And it seems to me that if anyone wants to read a foundational text about this country and where it's come from and where it's going, read his 1935 masterpiece on reconstruction.
[00:13:58] And it is just a magnificent epic of a book.
[00:14:02] And so when he speaks or writes, I listen and that quote you read is his.
[00:14:08] And the thing is, is.
[00:14:12] When I set out to write this story and thank you for the.
[00:14:18] The noticing the language in the way I approached it, because I want it to feel like a novel for people.
[00:14:24] I want to come in through characters and scenes.
[00:14:26] But what I really wanted to do by doing that is immerse people in this world and try to figure out the closest thing to the truth about what happened, the core event at the center of my book and how it came to be.
[00:14:42] And.
[00:14:43] The beauty of the Du Bois quote.
[00:14:47] You know, you can't go to a political rally without saying the greatest nation in the world or we're a good nation.
[00:14:56] But gosh darn it.
[00:14:58] Every nation is everything.
[00:15:00] We're good.
[00:15:01] We're bad.
[00:15:01] We've done bad things.
[00:15:03] We've done great things.
[00:15:04] Why can't we have both those things and be a have an identity that is complete and full like each one of us?
[00:15:11] And I, I cringe at having to insist that everything we do is good or that we're always great.
[00:15:21] I feel like it's incomplete and untrue.
[00:15:26] And when I feel like I'm being asked to participate in something that is incomplete and untrue, I don't feel comfortable.
[00:15:33] I feel much better accepting an identity of a person or a country that tells, tries to tell the whole truth.
[00:15:41] Now, the truth is hard to get to sometimes, you know, and I found that in this book.
[00:15:48] There were things I will never know.
[00:15:50] But there are enough things I know to have a pretty good sense of what happened in Greensboro in 1979.
[00:15:58] Yeah.
[00:15:59] And I'll kind of get into kind of the struggle a little bit as far as what you were trying to do.
[00:16:09] But talk about the significance of the title and its connection to the event surrounding the Greensboro massacre, which is something that happened.
[00:16:20] I guess I was like 13 years old when this happened.
[00:16:24] And so growing up in Chicago, it got some play, you know, but not, you know, in this day and age, it would have been like just all over the place.
[00:16:40] But back then it may have gotten mentioned and then it just faded away.
[00:16:45] Okay. So talk about the event and why did you use the morning side as the title?
[00:16:52] Okay.
[00:16:52] Okay. So at the heart of the book is a group of labor and racial justice activists led by a man in Greensboro named Nelson Johnson, who's an extremely talented organizer and recognized at different points in his career nationally for his organizing capability.
[00:17:20] He's the kind of person that people made pilgrimages to Greensboro to find out how Nelson thought things should be done in order to, you know, work for housing or health care or just deeper equality, better wages in their communities.
[00:17:35] And so he and the group of people working with him in Greensboro were organizing in the textile mills in 1979 and were encountering trouble bringing black people and white people together.
[00:17:51] And they felt that there was Klan manipulation behind that, possibly even Klan manipulation fueled by management who didn't want the workers to come together and ask for higher wages.
[00:18:02] And so they were trying to educate people in the mills about, well, if we come together, we can make a better demand.
[00:18:09] And so they decided as part of this, you know, and this is something that Du Bois writes about right in the 19th century and early 20th century is, you know, the way that manipulations are used to keep poor white people and poor black people apart.
[00:18:24] So they don't come together and present a unified voice.
[00:18:27] And so they decide to have a conference, a march and a conference to talk about this in Greensboro.
[00:18:36] And they call it provocatively death to the Klan on the posters.
[00:18:43] And as they're setting up on November 3rd, 1979, a Saturday morning, a beautiful morning after a cold snap and rain, the sky's broken and the sun's out and they're setting up.
[00:18:56] And all of a sudden, a caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis shows up and starts a fight, starts shooting.
[00:19:06] All of a sudden, five people are dead and 10 injured.
[00:19:08] Now, where they are when this happens is at a housing development, public housing development called Morningside Homes that was built in 1954, opened in 1954 for African-American residents of Greensboro.
[00:19:25] Working class people to get a first step.
[00:19:28] And it was hopeful.
[00:19:29] It was like here, you're going to have this place to live, a dignified place to live.
[00:19:33] Move out of these, you know, shacks without sewage and dirt roads and parts of the city.
[00:19:41] Come in here, get a start, go to school and work your way into the middle class.
[00:19:45] By the late 70s, this dream had become more complicated.
[00:19:50] And people were talking about Morningside Homes more in terms of drugs and crime than in terms of, you know, school board meetings and library association and the gardening club, which is what had been there before.
[00:20:04] It's not to say there wasn't a good place to raise a kid still because there were a lot of brilliant kids that came out of there that were nurtured there.
[00:20:12] But the tone had changed.
[00:20:14] And this became another stigma.
[00:20:16] And so when I thought about the title of this book, Morningside seems so evocative.
[00:20:24] And it also hinted at hope, you know, because I don't want to just leave the reader in the hardness of this tragic event, but take them through it and beyond it to see where we can go with this and how we can actually use this event.
[00:20:41] And so these people didn't die in vain in order to make a better future for people.
[00:20:47] And in other words, the world keeps turning.
[00:20:49] The sun comes up again.
[00:20:50] And Nelson and Nelson and his wife, Joyce Johnson, have kept struggling without cynicism for a better future for people in Greensboro.
[00:21:00] And they're still doing it today.
[00:21:01] And that their spirit gave me so much hope.
[00:21:05] And I felt like that word Morningside really captured that.
[00:21:11] Yeah.
[00:21:11] Yeah.
[00:21:12] Um, and so you, you were kind of inspired to, to pursue this story.
[00:21:21] By two events, you moved in the Charlottesville about a year before the Unite the Right rally.
[00:21:28] And then, um, um, the, uh, the shooting in, in, in Charleston, South Carolina at the, and I can't remember the name of the church now.
[00:21:41] Forgive me for that, but, uh, Mother Emanuel.
[00:21:44] Mother Emanuel.
[00:21:45] Yeah.
[00:21:46] Um, you, you, you, you basically said those two events kind of sparked you to, to write this story.
[00:21:55] Well, one of the things that drew me to the story in the first place was the idea, this wasn't happy in 1939.
[00:22:03] This wasn't happening in 1949.
[00:22:05] This was happening, as you said, in our lifetimes.
[00:22:09] After the Civil Rights Act, after the Voting Rights Act, you know, and we like to tell ourselves in this country a story of progress that, you know, we're putting these things behind us.
[00:22:20] And it's not that improvements haven't happened, but the legacy and the, and the, and the, um, not just the legacy, but the, the ideas that fuel events like this continue to persist.
[00:22:34] So, uh, when I saw what happened in Charlottesville and what happened in Charleston, I thought, wow, you know, we like to talk about these as isolated events, but they're connected.
[00:22:50] And they're connected also to Greensboro.
[00:22:53] And when I found out about Greensboro and did not know until I really started researching, but it really inspired Dylan Roof.
[00:23:02] Dylan Roof knew about Greensboro, you know, when he walked into the Mother Emanuel Church.
[00:23:06] It was an inspiration.
[00:23:08] And, and those Unite the Right guys, you know, David Duke knew about Greensboro.
[00:23:14] You know, these guys knew about it.
[00:23:17] It's a, it's a seminal moment in the white power and white supremacist, white nationalist movement.
[00:23:23] And so, you know, I thought, well, then we need to go back to that moment and really understand it.
[00:23:31] Yeah.
[00:23:32] As a matter of fact, there was an article by Politico and they describe it as the, they describe that event as the massacre that spawned the modern alt-right as we know it.
[00:23:48] Um, so let me ask you this.
[00:23:51] You interviewed about 70 people to, to put this together, including the Johnsons.
[00:23:59] Um, what was, what was your approach in researching and, and putting all the stuff together before, after, during and after?
[00:24:14] And, and what, what challenges did you face in gathering this information?
[00:24:24] Well, there were some sort of three distinct challenges I talk about.
[00:24:31] One is the sheer amount of material, of documents.
[00:24:36] Now, when this was, uh, happened, the FBI investigated their operation.
[00:24:46] Their investigation was called Green Kill.
[00:24:49] It was, it was at that time, the third largest FBI investigation in our nation's history.
[00:24:54] So you can imagine the amount of paper that was created there.
[00:24:58] Then there were three trials that came out of this, a state trial, a federal criminal trial, and then a federal civil rights trial.
[00:25:05] So all those documents.
[00:25:06] And then personal collections of the Johnsons and other people, um, that I tried to go through.
[00:25:14] So one was just the volume of information and knowing that I actually couldn't read every page, but I had to have a plan so I could figure out what to read and what not to read.
[00:25:24] And try to get a sense of the shape of this enough to say, well, this person I'm not going to focus on, but this one I am.
[00:25:32] So that's one, one big challenge that was just, uh, you know, to put together this puzzle in my head and then figure out where to go.
[00:25:40] Um, another challenge was how high the passions run on different sides of this issue, you know, in various sides.
[00:25:48] So when I'm interviewing, you know, one of the lawyers who prosecuted the Klansmen and neo-Nazis for the shooting and lost, right?
[00:25:56] Because these guys were acquitted, uh, in their murder trial and then in their civil rights trial.
[00:26:03] Um, you know, those lawyers wanted to blame their loss on Nelson and Joyce Johnson and their allies and the communist workers party that they were part of.
[00:26:14] Um, and say that their, the lack of their cooperation was what caused this.
[00:26:19] Well, then I listened to that story and then I go over and talk to the Johnsons and I talk to their lawyers and there's a very different story being told.
[00:26:26] Right.
[00:26:27] And so I had to find my way into this, you know, because I didn't want to, I needed to be sure going back to the Du Bois quote that I was telling the closest thing to the truth as I understood.
[00:26:40] You know, and pick my way through this.
[00:26:42] So that was a big challenge.
[00:26:44] The passions, you know, I had, I was talking to a former mayor.
[00:26:49] Um, on the phone who said, first of all, he didn't want to talk to former mayor of Greensboro.
[00:26:55] And then he started yelling at me for 20 minutes and he wouldn't say the name Nelson Johnson, but he yelled at me.
[00:27:02] And that jackass is still down there trying to tear the system down.
[00:27:07] You know, that's some serious stuff.
[00:27:09] I mean, I was shocked that he would refer to a citizen that way, no matter how he felt.
[00:27:15] This was a former mayor.
[00:27:18] Um, and then the third real challenge was the blue wall of silence, man.
[00:27:21] The, uh, the, the cops in Greensboro for the most part did not want to talk about this and were parrot the sort of the official, um, story that was incomplete or misleading in a lot of cases.
[00:27:39] Um, but I did, uh, get, uh, get one cop to sort of talk to me deeply about the culture of the police in Greensboro during that time.
[00:27:50] And that was extremely helpful.
[00:27:53] And then I had another policeman sort of brag to me about his policing abilities, uh, in a way that made my jaw drop, you know, um, but gave me a very clear window into, uh, just how racist some of the police people were in Greensboro during that time.
[00:28:14] I mean, he told me that he could drive around in his cop car.
[00:28:19] And just by the way, a black man walked, tell the difference between a good black man and a bad black man.
[00:28:26] And if he thought it was a bad black man, he would just follow him until they did something wrong and pick him up.
[00:28:30] Now imagine that.
[00:28:32] This is in 2018 in Greensboro.
[00:28:34] And he's bragging to me in a bar.
[00:28:37] I, um, I'd never heard anything quite like that before being told to me direct, you know, offered to me, but it helped me be able to present the context and the culture, uh, in which this story takes place.
[00:28:53] Yeah.
[00:28:54] I, you know, and it is somebody with a law enforcement background that, that is not surprising to me, but it's still disturbing when I hear that.
[00:29:03] Uh, cause we're, we're supposed to be trained better than that.
[00:29:08] Um, so when you, when you're putting all this together, um, well, let me ask you this.
[00:29:19] Cause one of the things you highlight is, you know, you follow Nelson and, and his wife Joyce through this, through this tragedy and a journey afterwards.
[00:29:33] Um, um, what did, um, and they, they were involved with the communist, uh, workers party and they were not, they were a part of the movement, but really not favorably accepted.
[00:29:55] Even though they were still doing the work in organizing and everything.
[00:30:01] Talk about that tension that was there.
[00:30:06] And, and have you in putting this together, did you see anything where that tension ever went away?
[00:33:32] Yeah.
[00:33:34] Yeah.
[00:33:34] Um, as a matter of fact, his, his continuing activism led to, uh, the creation of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
[00:33:47] Um, and you, and you, and you, you know, that's kind of at the tail end of the book, of course, cause it's an evolutionary piece as far as, you know, from, from, from the, from the day before until, uh, you, you close out, uh, close out the book.
[00:34:10] But I wanted to read this.
[00:34:12] They, they came out with nine recommendations.
[00:34:16] So the ninth and arguably the most important recommendation of the commission was a call for active and vigilant citizen engagement.
[00:34:25] Examples provided included attending education programs that focus on anti-racism and diversity.
[00:34:31] So the community can be well-versed on a range of subjects, including privilege, oppression, and economic and social justice.
[00:34:40] The community was recommended to work together to find solutions to everyday problems coupled with a need for study and dialogue groups aimed at examining the beliefs and ideologies held by the Greensboro community.
[00:34:56] As you were doing your research and your interviews and stuff for the book, was there any evidence that any of the recommendations, let alone that one from the commission was being followed?
[00:37:25] Yeah.
[00:37:26] So considering what we're dealing, the climate that we're dealing with now, what do you want people to take away from this book?
[00:37:38] When they read it in, in dealing with what they're seeing, what they're experiencing here in America in 2024.
[00:40:14] Yeah.
[00:40:15] So I want to close out with this, uh, as far as the question on the website for Americans who tell the truth, it says, knowing our own history sheds light on how we need to act in the present.
[00:40:31] Um, how do you see the legacy of the Greensboro massacre influencing those discussions that you say that we need to have?
[00:42:19] Yeah.
[00:42:20] Amen on that.
[00:42:21] Um, all right.
[00:42:23] So Aaron, tell us how people can get ahold of this book.
[00:42:28] When's the book coming out?
[00:42:29] And, um, you know, and just, and if people want to reach out to you for further discussion, how can they do that?
[00:43:25] All right.
[00:43:26] Well, Aaron Shetterly, uh, thank you for writing the book.
[00:43:31] Uh, I mentioned Americans who tell the truth.
[00:43:34] That's, uh, another group that your dad has started that you're involved in.
[00:43:39] Uh, I'd like to get to know a little bit more about that.
[00:43:43] Uh, maybe next time we come on, we'll talk about that and some other things.
[00:43:48] Um, but thank you for coming on the podcast.
[00:43:51] Appreciate it.
[00:43:52] And, uh, uh, good luck.
[00:43:54] Good luck on the sales.
[00:43:56] It's, it's a, it's a good read and people need to get it.
[00:44:05] I definitely understand that.
[00:44:07] All right, guys, we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
[00:44:09] Right.
[00:44:30] And we are back.
[00:44:31] So now it is time for my next guest, the Reverend Dr. Chris Jones.
[00:44:41] Chris Jones is one of the few people who can talk as fluently about biblical theology and Christian principles as he can about quantum mechanical states and differential equations.
[00:44:55] He is among an even smaller set of people who can do that while recalling stories of fishing, playing sports, organizing in urban and rural communities, being a military spouse and doing his girl dad thing.
[00:45:11] He brings all of this to bear in quantum pearls.
[00:45:14] A native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
[00:45:18] Chris was the first African-American major party nominee for governor in his state's history.
[00:45:24] His love for science took him to Morehouse, where he earned physics and math degrees to NASA, where he interned with a NASA astronaut and to MIT, where he earned two master's degrees and a PhD.
[00:45:40] His love for community opened the door for him to serve as an assistant dean for graduate education at MIT, run the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and lead the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub.
[00:46:01] More than anything, Chris loves his wife of 20 years, Dr.
[00:46:06] Geraldine Jones, who is an emergency medical physician and veteran of the United States Air Force.
[00:46:12] Together, they have three beautiful dollars.
[00:46:16] Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, the Reverend Dr. Chris Jones.
[00:46:37] All right.
[00:46:39] Reverend Dr. Chris Jones.
[00:46:42] How are you doing, brother?
[00:46:42] You doing good?
[00:46:44] Brother Eric, I'm great, man.
[00:46:45] I'm blessed.
[00:46:46] I'm blessed.
[00:46:47] And I'm excited to be talking to you.
[00:46:49] Well, I'm happy to be talking to you.
[00:46:52] I've been, like I said, I've been trying to get you on for a little bit.
[00:46:55] I'm glad we ran into each other at the convention at a happy spot.
[00:46:59] And I'm glad that we're going to make this happen.
[00:47:02] I followed you from afar.
[00:47:05] Even though I'm in Georgia, I spent most of my political teeth getting cut in Mississippi.
[00:47:12] Mississippi.
[00:47:14] So I'm very aware, very aware we're Arkansas politics a little bit.
[00:47:18] And I'm even an Arkansas traveler.
[00:47:24] Oh, nice.
[00:47:26] Yeah.
[00:47:27] So when I saw you was out there running, I said, surely, surely this brother is going to get elected compared to the opposition.
[00:47:39] But we'll get into that in a minute.
[00:47:43] What I'd like to do with guests to start off is I throw a quote at them.
[00:47:49] And your quote is, I'm a firm believer that as a Christian, as a person of faith, as an ordained minister, that I should stand on my faith and live out my values.
[00:48:03] And I can do that without turning the state into a church.
[00:48:09] What does that quote mean to you?
[00:48:12] Man, you know, I think it means a lot.
[00:48:16] It comes from a place of my upbringing and that my parents, both ministers, taught us to study the show that I self-approved workmen, rightly divided the word and truth, right?
[00:48:29] So they taught us to know the word ourselves and live out the word ourselves.
[00:48:34] But they also were very embracive of other people.
[00:48:38] And it comes from a place of understanding that if I put my minister hat on, which I can't take off, we are instructed to lift our savior up and then others will be drawn to him.
[00:48:50] Now, when I marry that with my political hat, I think one of our greatest values as a country is making space for those that differ from us.
[00:49:04] Now, we don't always live out that value, but our founders are pretty clear.
[00:49:08] We will not have a state-mandated religion.
[00:49:13] And far too often, the right, particularly the extreme right and the evangelical Christians, white evangelical Christians, particularly, births from the Southern Baptist movement, have said that the state should be church.
[00:49:31] And they beat that so hard that it's actually pushed people away from both politics and from the church.
[00:49:38] And so my statement is saying, no, be who you are and make space for others to be who they are.
[00:49:45] So let me see if I got this right.
[00:49:46] You've got a physics degree from Morehouse.
[00:49:50] So you're a Morehouse man.
[00:49:52] Yeah, physics and math.
[00:49:53] Okay.
[00:49:54] You got two degrees from MIT and you're an ordained minister.
[00:50:00] Why did you say that?
[00:50:02] Say it again.
[00:50:03] Three degrees from MIT.
[00:50:04] Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:50:05] Three degrees from MIT and you're an ordained minister.
[00:50:08] Even more so.
[00:50:09] Why did you decide to get into politics?
[00:50:13] Man, I've always loved serving other people.
[00:50:18] And the spark was lit when I was eight years old.
[00:50:24] My dad took me from my hometown of Pine Bluff up to Little Rock, big city.
[00:50:29] And we were in the mall.
[00:50:30] And at eight, I bumped into none other than then Governor Bill Clinton.
[00:50:37] And I was fascinated by this guy.
[00:50:39] I was impressed by this guy.
[00:50:40] I was inspired by this guy.
[00:50:42] And I asked my dad, well, what does he do?
[00:50:44] And my dad said he's a governor.
[00:50:46] And I said, what's a governor?
[00:50:47] And he said, let's go look it up.
[00:50:49] So we drove back home because we didn't have cell phones and Google and Wikipedia and all that.
[00:50:53] You know, there was no chat GPT.
[00:50:57] We went old school to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
[00:51:01] And, you know, look, we grew up kind of on shaky ground in the middle class.
[00:51:09] Oh, there were some months that were good.
[00:51:11] There were some months that were not.
[00:51:14] And I knew what food stamps looked like.
[00:51:16] So I say that to say we had the encyclopedia, but we didn't have every letter.
[00:51:22] But we did have G.
[00:51:23] And so I looked at what a governor could do.
[00:51:26] And I found out that a governor could solve problems.
[00:51:29] I love solving problems and make a difference in people's lives.
[00:51:32] I cared about people.
[00:51:33] So that was where the spark lied.
[00:51:34] And I always knew that my life would be a life of service to others.
[00:51:38] And I always had a desire to do that service in the political sphere, in the public space.
[00:51:45] And for me, it was a journey that allowed me to think about a video game.
[00:51:49] I picked up tools along the way in different places and put them in my backpack,
[00:51:56] ultimately leading towards this level where I am in politics.
[00:52:00] And I'm using all of my tools in this level.
[00:52:03] Yeah, I can relate to you about the tools.
[00:52:05] I've had so many jobs, man, to support my political habit.
[00:52:10] But everywhere that I journeyed and every place that I worked helped me.
[00:52:19] I felt, I feel to be a better person when I was in public service.
[00:52:26] You know, just taking all those experiences.
[00:52:31] Why do you think it's imperative that academics get more engaged in community and politics?
[00:52:40] Ooh, man, if you had asked me that question five years ago,
[00:52:47] if you had asked me that question when I was in grad school at MIT,
[00:52:50] I would have had a different, slightly different answer.
[00:52:56] You know, and I'll say different, same answer, but different passion.
[00:52:59] Here's what I mean.
[00:53:01] When I was in grad school, one of my degrees is in technology and policy.
[00:53:06] The premise behind that is teaching scientists and engineers how to understand policy and how to implement policy.
[00:53:15] And that was important because you can have the best solutions,
[00:53:19] but if the policy and the politics don't open and make space, then you're in trouble.
[00:53:24] So I always knew that it was important for scientists and engineers to be into politics to help policymakers understand the best solutions.
[00:53:33] And now in this divided environment, in this environment of misinformation, in this environment of lies and disinformation,
[00:53:40] we need folks who are trained to find the truth and who are bold enough to speak that truth.
[00:53:48] And I think academics are trained to find the truth.
[00:53:52] And they're, they generally are bold enough to speak that truth.
[00:53:58] So you are a seventh generation Arkansan, right?
[00:54:04] Yes. Yes.
[00:54:07] Love Arkansas.
[00:54:08] 200, over 200 years, my family has been in this state.
[00:54:14] So what did you learn about your state when you ran for governor?
[00:54:20] Hmm.
[00:54:22] You know, interestingly, I, when I ran for governor, I, we have 75 counties in Arkansas.
[00:54:30] And I made a commitment from the beginning to make sure I traveled to every county in the state.
[00:54:35] And I actually did it multiple times.
[00:54:38] On one of my tours, I went and met with people in each county.
[00:54:43] On the second tour, I did a walk a mile in the county.
[00:54:46] So I walked a mile, literally, with Arkansans and had conversations with them.
[00:54:52] What I learned was an affirmation of what I believed.
[00:54:56] Because of how I grew up and my memories, my nostalgia of the place,
[00:55:01] I always felt like Arkansas was a place where, regardless of who you were,
[00:55:08] if you respectfully and authentically engage with someone, they will return that back to you.
[00:55:14] That, that's, that was my, generally speaking, that was my growing up experience.
[00:55:19] Now, I will say, I grew up in the sort of post, the post Brown versus Board Education era,
[00:55:27] the post Little Rock Nine era.
[00:55:29] And my generation, we were the first ones to where mixed students started out in pre-K and kindergarten.
[00:55:41] The first ones.
[00:55:43] So we, we, we engaged throughout.
[00:55:46] Now, I say all that to say that I felt like if I engaged Arkansans,
[00:55:51] then they would give me a chance.
[00:55:53] And true to form, I'll tell you a quick story.
[00:55:57] We went to a place called Harrison, Arkansas.
[00:56:00] Harrison, Arkansas is in north central Arkansas.
[00:56:05] It's in the Ozarks, hillbilly country.
[00:56:08] The Grand Wizard of the Klan of the Klan used to live in Harrison, Arkansas.
[00:56:12] The Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
[00:56:14] It is branded as a very racist place.
[00:56:19] It was a sundown town where we, we, people that look like you and I couldn't be there after the sun went down.
[00:56:25] Well, I wanted to travel everywhere.
[00:56:27] So I made a commitment to go to Harrison.
[00:56:28] I set up a meeting, a meeting greet in Harrison.
[00:56:32] We reserved a room in the back of a restaurant.
[00:56:34] Figured maybe we'd get about half a dozen people.
[00:56:37] I show up.
[00:56:38] It's a glass window.
[00:56:39] I'm walking up to the restaurant.
[00:56:41] I see the place is packed.
[00:56:43] So I'm thinking in my head, I'll kind of weave my way through the crowd and get to the back room.
[00:56:50] Well, Eric, as soon as I opened the door and walked in, I got a standing ovation.
[00:56:55] In Harrison, Arkansas.
[00:56:57] They were all there to engage with me because I was willing to show up.
[00:57:03] And so it affirmed my belief that if you show up for Arkansans, then they will give you respect in return.
[00:57:12] And it was great.
[00:57:16] Yeah, I had a similar experience in Mississippi, man.
[00:57:20] It was like, you know, I went to, Mississippi has 82 counties.
[00:57:26] And when I ran for the U.S. Senate, it's pretty much the same thing.
[00:57:30] Everywhere I went, people were very responsive.
[00:57:37] And my story similar to that is like I went to this town called Stonewall, Mississippi.
[00:57:44] And I got invited by a lady who was.
[00:57:47] I know Stonewall.
[00:57:47] Yeah.
[00:57:48] It was like they were.
[00:57:49] She was running for judge.
[00:57:52] And she heard me speak in another city that was in that same judicial district.
[00:57:57] And she asked me to come down to her fundraiser.
[00:58:00] So I show up in Stonewall.
[00:58:02] And it's like the weekly newspaper was there.
[00:58:06] It was like it was it was like a big deal.
[00:58:11] And because they had converted one of the mills into like a shopping, you know, a little business incubator for lack of a better term.
[00:58:20] So, yeah, it was like they said I was the first person ever to run for the U.S. Senate to show up in their town and campaign.
[00:58:30] So, you know, so it means something regardless of what party you're in, what what you look like.
[00:58:39] People want to be engaged if and it means something to them.
[00:58:44] So I'm glad that you had that similar experience.
[00:58:48] And unfortunately, you also had a similar experience.
[00:58:51] You didn't win.
[00:58:52] But I think, you know, it just reaffirmed.
[00:58:59] Before you jump, let me ask.
[00:59:01] Let me answer the question that maybe some of your listeners are asking themselves.
[00:59:05] And I think you're going there.
[00:59:08] And if that's OK.
[00:59:10] Yeah.
[00:59:10] All right. So so the question is, well, if you did that and if I engage with folks in rural areas and it was a great engagement, why didn't I win?
[00:59:22] You know, because here's the other thing I learned that the machine matters.
[00:59:28] The machinery matters.
[00:59:30] And so I was facing someone who had 100 percent name recognition and 20 million dollars to my four million dollars and not having a name recognition.
[00:59:41] So the degree to which we were able to get our our message out for me to show up, we won people over.
[00:59:49] But we were unable to get our message out and show up in every corner, in every place that we were in multiple times where we should have.
[00:59:57] So I say that to say the more we invest in places like Mississippi and Arkansas and the more we invest in candidates like in Eric or Chris, the more they we are able to then show up and actually win.
[01:00:13] Yeah. And I'm glad you interrupted me for that point, because that kind of leads to the next question is that you started this pack called Vortex.
[01:00:26] Kind of talk about.
[01:00:29] Why you decided to start that pack and there's some other stuff that you're involved in, too.
[01:00:37] So just kind of talk about about that.
[01:00:40] Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up, Eric.
[01:00:43] And I'll say I'm an engineer and to kind of build on what I learned, I reflect on things and I want to figure out where the gaps are, the holes are.
[01:00:53] Now, after the race in reflection, one of the things that we realized was that we needed.
[01:01:01] Quality candidates at the federal level to we realize that we needed to figure out a way to engage people in the political process earlier.
[01:01:13] The majority of the people that engage in the political process.
[01:01:16] Do it on election day and in the election window.
[01:01:20] Then there's a smaller set of people who who actually volunteer for campaigns.
[01:01:27] There's a smaller set of people who donate to campaigns.
[01:01:31] Then there's a tiny group of people.
[01:01:34] Who helped make the decision as to who's going to actually run.
[01:01:38] So we wanted to figure out a way to expand the universe of the people that are engaged in the political process.
[01:01:45] So here's what Vortex decided to do.
[01:01:47] We focused on the four congressional seats in Arkansas.
[01:01:51] We have four districts.
[01:01:52] And we said we wanted to field a strong candidate in each of those districts.
[01:01:57] But the way we want to do it, we went around and we asked Arkansans to nominate their neighbor.
[01:02:04] We took the smoke filled room and brought it to Main Street.
[01:02:09] And in doing so, we got a slew of nominations.
[01:02:13] We vetted those those nominees.
[01:02:16] We call them up and say, hey, you've been nominated, Eric.
[01:02:20] One of your neighbors believes that you would be great to represent them in Congress.
[01:02:26] And so we talked with you.
[01:02:28] We'd engage with you.
[01:02:28] We do our background check.
[01:02:30] And we ended up nominating four candidates.
[01:02:32] All four of those candidates became the actual.
[01:02:35] So we endorsed four.
[01:02:37] All four of those candidates became the formal nominee for Democrat.
[01:02:40] And just this past week, all four of them did a debate against the four incumbents.
[01:02:48] And so I'd encourage anyone to go to YouTube, Arkansas PBS, and look at those debates.
[01:02:53] Because the four candidates running for Arkansas congressional districts on the Democratic side put the Republican incumbents on their heels.
[01:03:03] So that's what Vortex was about.
[01:03:05] And what it allowed us to do then is if you nominate your neighbor, you're more likely to get in to stay involved in a political process.
[01:03:13] So now we have more volunteers across the state.
[01:03:17] But here's one thing that was interesting, Eric.
[01:03:19] There was an unintended consequence that came out of that.
[01:03:23] When I ran for governor in 22, we had the fewest number of state legislative candidates running in probably 15 years.
[01:03:36] This cycle, because we engaged people earlier in the process, because we talked about the congressional districts, but then that allowed us to talk about the down ballot.
[01:03:44] Because if you want, if we didn't, for the folks we didn't endorse, we encouraged them to run for state ledger.
[01:03:50] We encouraged them to run for school board.
[01:03:51] We encouraged them to run for JP.
[01:03:53] This year, we have the highest number of state legislative candidates to run on the Democratic side in 20 years.
[01:04:02] So that's an altitude.
[01:04:04] And the other thing I'll quickly say, Vortex is doing that.
[01:04:06] We're supporting those candidates.
[01:04:08] I'm also involved at the national level in the dirt road Democrats.
[01:04:11] So that's Jamie Harrison's PAC.
[01:04:14] He's a chair of the DNC.
[01:04:16] My co-chair, you'll appreciate this, is Brandon Presley, who ran for governor of Mississippi.
[01:04:21] So you got Mississippi and Arkansas.
[01:04:24] We came together.
[01:04:26] And our belief is if Democrats just performed 5% better in rural areas, we would fundamentally transform the political landscape.
[01:04:36] So dirt road Democrats is going out there and finding candidates, finding organizations, finding state parties in rural areas, and we're providing support.
[01:04:46] In the previous election, we supported Virginia and Georgia.
[01:04:49] This cycle, we're supporting Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina.
[01:04:54] So we're putting money and resources on the ground in these places that actually matter across rural America.
[01:05:03] Yeah, and Brandon is a good dude.
[01:05:05] When I was in the state legislature, Brandon was the mayor of Nettleton, Mississippi.
[01:05:11] Yeah.
[01:05:12] And then he got elected public service commissioner.
[01:05:16] And then I think he was like the last Democrat standing when he decided to run for governor.
[01:05:23] But he almost won.
[01:05:25] Yeah, yeah.
[01:05:26] He did really, really well.
[01:05:27] And we knew that he was going to do well.
[01:05:29] Yeah.
[01:05:30] You know, it doesn't hurt to be Elvis Presley's cousin.
[01:05:32] That doesn't hurt.
[01:05:34] Yeah.
[01:05:35] But, you know, he ran a stronger campaign.
[01:05:38] And Tate Reeves, I've known Tate for a long time, and Tate was a hard person to beat.
[01:05:47] Even his own fellow Republicans don't understand his magic as far as elections go, but he's won.
[01:05:56] But that's good to hear that there's an effort in states that they normally write off, right?
[01:06:04] Right.
[01:06:04] To get those people engaged.
[01:06:08] And I don't have time to give you all the war stories, brother, but we'll talk another time about that.
[01:06:14] Talk to me about the person that won, Governor Sanders.
[01:06:23] She's kind of got on the national news trying to talk about humility.
[01:06:30] What has been going on in Arkansas?
[01:06:35] And do you think that what she's been doing in Arkansas will help energize people that you're trying to get to vote?
[01:06:48] So what she is doing in Arkansas is absolutely helping energize the people that we are trying to get to vote.
[01:06:58] Absolutely.
[01:06:59] Absolutely.
[01:06:59] She, we knew her from her time in the White House.
[01:07:04] And Sarah Tuckabee Sanders was a straight-up liar.
[01:07:08] You know, she lied consistently.
[01:07:10] Now, to be clear, she did not have a record.
[01:07:15] All she had was she shared what Trump was doing.
[01:07:21] But now she has a record.
[01:07:23] She came out of the blocks after she won.
[01:07:26] And keep in mind, she had 100% name recognition, a ton of money.
[01:07:33] She won the race in large part because we couldn't get our message out.
[01:07:38] It's fine.
[01:07:39] It is what it is.
[01:07:40] She came out of the blocks changing child labor laws to where now 13-year-olds can work in factories without their parents' approval.
[01:07:49] She came out of the blocks banning DEI and diversity and attacking AP courses to where now schools across our state cannot teach African-American AP history.
[01:08:04] She came out of the blocks and put forth one of the wildest education bills that she got from ALEC and some of the other national groups.
[01:08:13] And it basically took public school dollars and put them into private schools to the point to where when they started the program, out of all the participants, 95% of the folks who used these vouchers were already in private school.
[01:08:32] And it was supposed to help the public school students.
[01:08:35] So it didn't work.
[01:08:37] She has since done things like use public money to buy a $19,000 lectern.
[01:08:44] She has gone on trips to Europe to go to Disney World.
[01:08:48] She's changed the FOIA laws, Freedom of Information Act laws, so you can't see and understand what actually is happening, government transparency.
[01:08:57] She's put money to push back on ballot initiatives so that citizens in Arkansas, one of the few states where citizens can put forth a ballot initiative on the November ballot.
[01:09:07] She has put her campaign money and her money down to stop those initiatives.
[01:09:12] And now she's gone on stage and said, which has layers of problems, that one, she's humble.
[01:09:23] That dog won't hunt.
[01:09:25] And that two, she's trying to tell a Black woman who has fought against all odds, who has achieved the first in terms of whether it's DA or AG for a state or VP in VP Kamala Harris.
[01:09:44] She's trying to tell her how she should act.
[01:09:46] And she got a Sarah got a lot of backlash from that.
[01:09:51] So that's a long way of saying I am surprised at how well she is doing at making people dislike her.
[01:10:03] I did not think she would do it that well.
[01:10:05] And she has.
[01:10:06] So she set us up.
[01:10:11] Well, I had never underestimated her potential to do that.
[01:10:16] I, you know, following her on the national stage and then knowing who her dad was, it didn't surprise me at all.
[01:10:25] And like I said, when you ran, I was like, surely the folks are going to give this, this, this brilliant Black man a chance as opposed to the sideshow.
[01:10:39] Now, like you said, she had the name ID and all that stuff.
[01:10:44] One of the questions that's always asked of me, a political scientist, is about Black turnout.
[01:10:54] And I've got many friends that believe that, well, if every Black person showed up to vote, every Black candidate would win an election.
[01:11:04] And the only reason why I dispute that is when I ran for U.S. Senate in 08, everybody was running.
[01:11:13] I mean, everybody was voting.
[01:11:15] And I had more votes than any other Black person in the history of the state of Mississippi ever.
[01:11:24] But my opponent, the incumbent, Thad Cochran, he got more votes than he ever got in his life.
[01:11:32] I got almost 500,000 votes.
[01:11:35] He got 700,000 votes.
[01:11:37] And you could basically look and see that that Gulf Coast area was the difference.
[01:11:43] What our fourth district.
[01:11:45] Yeah.
[01:11:45] So, but then Gary Chambers was running for the U.S. Senate, I believe the same year you were running.
[01:11:54] Was.
[01:11:54] For governor.
[01:11:57] Governor.
[01:11:58] And, and he was running Louisiana.
[01:12:01] And when he, when the election was over, he was really, really upset about Black turnout.
[01:12:06] Yes.
[01:12:07] So what is, in Arkansas, you've got Philander Smith, you've got UAPB.
[01:12:15] You've got some solid hotbeds, you know, Little Rock and, and, and all that.
[01:12:21] What is the biggest challenge in getting Black, Black turnout to be, well, Black people to be engaged.
[01:12:34] And do you think that this election will be different?
[01:12:39] I do think this election will be different.
[01:12:41] I think this election will be different because folks have addressed some of the structural barriers, some of the, some of the things that get in the way of us being able to vote.
[01:12:51] Right.
[01:12:52] And, and, and I'll respond to that, but let me, let me pivot and talk about the other piece of what you said.
[01:12:59] And that is that what we absolutely need the highest Black voter turnout ever.
[01:13:06] And, and, and right after Reconstruction, Black voter turnout in like the, in 1870, in 1870, I think it was the 1870 election.
[01:13:15] Maybe the 18, one of those, 1870, 1880, one of those.
[01:13:19] But the Black turnout across the nation was 80%.
[01:13:24] At that time it was Black males because females couldn't vote.
[01:13:27] Black turnout in Arkansas was 90%.
[01:13:30] So we know how to do it.
[01:13:32] We have done it before.
[01:13:33] As a result though, barriers get put up in place.
[01:13:37] We need to go back to that.
[01:13:38] Cause I do know that there are a number of candidates that if Black turnout increased significantly, then they would win.
[01:13:45] In my case, Black turnout was not enough for me to win.
[01:13:49] We needed it, but we needed more.
[01:13:52] And we, there were generally three buckets.
[01:13:55] We needed our base to turn out, our traditional base.
[01:13:57] We need our Black folks, Black turnout in the Delta and South Arkansas to overperform.
[01:14:01] And we needed to shore up the floor.
[01:14:04] The areas where, where, you know, normally a Democrat would lose by 80%, you know, we need to make sure that we made it 70%.
[01:14:13] We did that.
[01:14:15] We shorted our base to some degree.
[01:14:18] We didn't have the machine.
[01:14:19] And so now I'll go back to your question.
[01:14:21] What does that mean?
[01:14:22] Are organizations that are doing voter registration or have been active for the last three and a half to four years now?
[01:14:29] We didn't have that before.
[01:14:32] Organizations that are, that are, that are collaborating to do voter turnout are now active again.
[01:14:39] We had this back in the Bill Clinton days where people in the Delta knew how to turn folks out.
[01:14:48] And, and some of this comes from the party, national and state, making investments in turnout.
[01:14:56] We are now making investments in turnout.
[01:14:58] We got money for the, from the national party.
[01:15:01] We got the state investing.
[01:15:02] The, one of the counties in Arkansas with the highest percentage of African American voters, I lost by one vote.
[01:15:13] One vote.
[01:15:14] One vote.
[01:15:14] Now, some of that is because the machine wasn't there.
[01:15:19] Some of that is because they are actively suppressing the vote.
[01:15:24] When you take a county and you reduce the number of polling locations by 75%, that's suppressing the vote.
[01:15:31] When you take a county and at the last minute, you change the early voting location from a traditionally black area and church to an area where that's 25 miles away, that suppresses the vote.
[01:15:44] So these are things that now we have groups that are actively pushing back against that.
[01:15:49] And the last thing I'll say is that when folks see somebody that looks like them and that represents them, they're more likely to turn out.
[01:15:57] And now we have more folks that are representative and more likely to turn out.
[01:16:04] Well, let me just say this before we close.
[01:16:07] I am really glad that you stayed with it.
[01:16:13] A lot of times brothers and sisters will run for these offices and they'll put their heart and soul into it.
[01:16:22] And then if they don't win, especially in these southern states, if they don't win, then they just kind of fall off into the sunset.
[01:16:35] You know, they'll tell their grandkids, yeah, I ran for this, I ran for that or whatever.
[01:16:39] And they might be engaged individually, but they don't organize.
[01:16:44] See, what you're doing is very similar to what Stacey Abrams has done.
[01:16:49] The reason why Georgia is in play is because of her.
[01:16:55] And because of the work she did before she ran and the result, even though she did not win because it was so close, she knew she had unlocked that door.
[01:17:09] And that's why in a southern state, there's a black man and a Jewish man representing them in the United States Senate.
[01:17:17] And so.
[01:17:21] What you're doing in Arkansas and combining with the National Party, with the Dirt Road Pack is is really dirt road Democrats, I'm sorry, is really, really important.
[01:17:34] So I'm glad that you stayed engaged.
[01:17:35] Now, how can people help you out?
[01:17:39] How can people donate to Vortex?
[01:17:43] How can they get involved with the dirt road Democrats with these few days left?
[01:17:48] And how can people get in touch with you?
[01:17:51] Yeah.
[01:17:52] So let me I'll answer that.
[01:17:54] Let me let me say this, too.
[01:17:56] One, I want to thank you for your appreciation, your acknowledgement, because that that means a lot.
[01:18:02] And that's the that helps me to keep going.
[01:18:04] It was clear to me from the beginning that this the race I ran, I was going to need to catch lightning in the ball.
[01:18:14] Clear.
[01:18:15] I knew it.
[01:18:15] It's fine.
[01:18:16] I had my best friend asked me whose birthday is is October 10th.
[01:18:21] So just happened.
[01:18:23] And he asked me a question before I ran.
[01:18:27] He said, what does success look like?
[01:18:28] And I told him three things.
[01:18:30] One, I wanted 50 plus one.
[01:18:32] I wanted to win.
[01:18:32] This was not a vanity project.
[01:18:34] I wanted to win because I wanted to govern.
[01:18:36] Two, I wanted to begin to build an infrastructure that would outlast me.
[01:18:44] And three, I wanted to reframe and rebrand what it means for a black man and a black family to run in the south, particularly in Arkansas.
[01:18:55] And so so I knew at the time I could control number two and number three.
[01:18:59] I control the infrastructure.
[01:19:01] I can control the brand.
[01:19:02] I could only influence number one.
[01:19:04] I could only influence 50 plus one.
[01:19:06] So from the beginning, I knew that was going to be the case.
[01:19:08] And I said to myself that win or lose, the other two things matter a lot.
[01:19:15] And win or lose, what we did, you know, we're agricultural state.
[01:19:20] When the ground is hard, you got to break ground first.
[01:19:24] And sometimes you got to go through a season of breaking the ground before you can get to the next season of planting and something actually growing.
[01:19:32] We had to break ground.
[01:19:33] We had to rebuild hope.
[01:19:35] We had to get people engaged.
[01:19:36] And so now when you ask how could folks, you know, continue to support, you can follow me on social media.
[01:19:42] I'm on LinkedIn, Christopher Jones.
[01:19:45] I'm on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok as Jones4AR.
[01:19:52] So Jones4AR.
[01:19:54] Follow me, you know, amplify what we're talking about.
[01:19:59] If you want to support the Dirt Road Democrats PAC work, here's what I would say.
[01:20:05] For those who have the capacity to write big checks, reach out to me and let's talk.
[01:20:13] Because we're going to take that money and put it on the ground in specific areas that will lead to flipping a congressional seat.
[01:20:21] And lead to breaking a state legislative supermajority.
[01:20:25] And that's going to help VP Harris.
[01:20:27] So if you have the capacity to write a big check, do it.
[01:20:29] For everyone else, it's fine.
[01:20:31] Here's what I'm saying.
[01:20:32] Instead of supporting Dirt Road Democrats, find a local candidate that you can support.
[01:20:38] We got four great candidates in Arkansas running for Congress.
[01:20:43] Rodney Govins is running for Congress in the first congressional.
[01:20:47] Marcus Jones is running for Congress in the second congressional.
[01:20:51] Caitlin Draper is running for Congress in the third congressional in Arkansas.
[01:20:54] And Recy Howard is running for Congress in the fourth congressional.
[01:20:57] Drop a small donation to them.
[01:21:00] Drop a support note to them.
[01:21:03] Support them.
[01:21:05] Because unless you're going to write a big, big check, then put your money on the ground there.
[01:21:10] Now, having said that, for Vortex, I would say the same thing.
[01:21:16] Because we want to really, at this moment, in the last 20 days, we got to get money and resources directly to candidates.
[01:21:24] Because they are the ones that are going to do the work to get it done.
[01:21:28] Now, after the election, let's also talk.
[01:21:31] And we can build.
[01:21:33] I'm traveling the country.
[01:21:35] Get built, generating support.
[01:21:37] But know that we are continuing this fight, Eric.
[01:21:40] Know that there's a lot of hope.
[01:21:42] I believe that we can break the state legislative supermajority in Arkansas.
[01:21:46] We only need eight seats to do it.
[01:21:48] I believe that we can flip a congressional seat.
[01:21:50] And I'm going to tell you this as a piece of encouragement.
[01:21:55] Donald Trump won Arkansas by 30 points.
[01:21:59] VP Harris has already cut that lead in half.
[01:22:04] And in two of our four congressional districts, VP Harris is leading Donald Trump.
[01:22:10] So while it's important to know about swing states, it's also important to think about swing districts.
[01:22:16] Because the swing districts matter as well.
[01:22:20] And I am encouraged and I'm excited.
[01:22:22] And I'm going to work nonstop until the election to get VP Harris and Tim Walls elected.
[01:22:29] And I'm also encouraging people to make sure you vote, have a plan to vote, and take a friend to vote.
[01:22:35] Those three things.
[01:22:36] The only thing I would add is just to make sure because you made that strong emphasis.
[01:22:42] Is that I remember on election night in 08, a white guy was so excited he had voted for Barack Obama.
[01:22:54] And it was apparent he didn't know who I was.
[01:22:56] And so I asked him, I said, well, who else did you vote for in the race?
[01:23:01] He said, I didn't vote for nothing else but president.
[01:23:05] So one of the things I want to tell people, you know, while we're having this conversation is that it is important to vote all the way down the ticket.
[01:23:16] Because all the things that Vice President Harris wants to do as president, she cannot do if she doesn't have a majority in the House and she doesn't have a majority in the Senate.
[01:23:28] That's just the way it goes.
[01:23:30] And then if you can flip that Arkansas legislature, that'll be a state that'll be more receptive to getting monies that the federal government is going to send them and can override any kind of Republican governor, including Ms. Sanders, in order to do what needs to be done for our Kansas.
[01:23:52] So I wanted to make sure I got that in, too.
[01:23:55] Well, let me let me also kind of double click on what you said, because because you are 100 percent right.
[01:24:01] And just one other example of why what you said is so critical is that the reason breaking the state supermajority, state legislative supermajority is so important is because then you can pump the brakes on some of the insane legislation that's coming out of these deep red control state.
[01:24:22] These mega extremist control states. And so if you can pump the brakes on on these heartbeat bills, if you can pump the brakes on these anti-diversity bills, if you can pump the brakes on these child labor law bills that are coming out of the state.
[01:24:37] And why is that important? If you don't live in Arkansas and you don't live in Mississippi, why is it important for you to still help support to make that happen?
[01:24:44] Because if it passes in Arkansas. Then it can work its way up to the Supreme Court and that Supreme Court could codify it for the whole country.
[01:24:55] So that's why we got to stop it at its lowest place. And that's at the state level.
[01:25:00] And that's to your point. That's why we need people voting all the way up and down the ballot.
[01:25:05] And because we need to put an end to this extreme and this madness.
[01:25:10] So do y'all have early voting in Arkansas?
[01:25:14] We do. Early voting starts on October 21st.
[01:25:18] Voter registration is done for now, but early voting starts on October 21st.
[01:25:22] And I and I'm encouraging people vote early and then go help someone.
[01:25:28] We just had storms, Milton and Helen and on the East Coast.
[01:25:33] It reminded me of Katrina and we're coming up on Katrina's anniversary next year.
[01:25:39] There are a bunch of horrific images for Katrina.
[01:25:42] One of the images that sticks in my mind is the flyover of a parking lot and the parking lot was full of buses.
[01:25:51] People wanted to evacuate, but there was no way out.
[01:25:55] The buses that could get them out were sitting in a parking lot.
[01:25:58] So when I think about October 21st to November 5th, we shouldn't have any empty buses or vans in parking lots on churches or community organizations because people need to get to the polls.
[01:26:12] It's a matter of life and death for a lot of folks.
[01:26:15] So let's get these buses moving.
[01:26:17] And that's what I'm encouraging people to do.
[01:26:19] Ladies and gentlemen, that was the good Reverend Dr.
[01:26:23] Chris Jones from the great state of Arkansas.
[01:26:27] Brother Jones, thank you, man, for coming on.
[01:26:31] And you do know now that once you've been on, you have an open invitation to come on anytime you want.
[01:26:36] And we'll definitely keep in touch because I want to see you succeed in Arkansas and, you know, and just and just keep everything going.
[01:26:49] So, again, thank you for coming on the podcast.
[01:26:51] I appreciate you.
[01:26:53] My honor, my honor, brother.
[01:26:54] All right, guys.
[01:26:55] And we'll catch y'all on the other side.
[01:27:09] All right.
[01:27:10] We are back.
[01:27:11] So I want to thank Aaron Shetterly and the Reverend Dr.
[01:27:18] Chris Jones for coming on the podcast.
[01:27:25] When Aaron's book comes out, please get it.
[01:27:31] And, you know, with the Vortex Pack and Dirt Road Democrats,
[01:27:39] I encourage y'all to do what you can to help out not only for the remaining days of this election, but to make the long-term investment to build the infrastructure that needs to be done.
[01:27:59] And because it's time to get back to government.
[01:28:08] That's about people.
[01:28:11] Right.
[01:28:12] It's one thing to say government.
[01:28:15] By the people.
[01:28:18] But it actually has to be for the people as well.
[01:28:22] And so I encourage y'all to stay engaged.
[01:28:30] And if you listen to this podcast, I'll provide you as many opportunities as you need to be engaged and to be informed, if nothing else.
[01:28:45] One of the things that Dr. Jones brought up was making a plan.
[01:28:54] Most of the states that are that have early voting have already started over half of the country so far.
[01:29:04] And there's a couple more states.
[01:29:06] I know that's getting ready to get online pretty soon as we get closer.
[01:29:14] So I would encourage people to early vote because this when we have a historic election like this, it tends to be crowded if everybody waits till election day.
[01:29:31] So the early vote.
[01:29:35] You know, the quicker you can get in and get out, take your time, pay attention, go to your local secretaries of states websites to see what is going to be on the ballot in your district.
[01:29:51] And especially these referendums in your respective states, pay attention to those.
[01:30:00] So you can make an informed decision.
[01:30:03] There's going to be a number of states that's going to have the abortion issue on the ballot.
[01:30:11] Most of them are going to be constitutional provisions to guarantee rights for women in reproductive care.
[01:30:21] There will be some that are worded a little different, maybe lifting a ban or.
[01:30:30] For prohibiting the state from taking away those rights as was the situation in Kansas.
[01:30:39] So pay attention because folks that don't want you to have their rights have been trying to do their best to play with the language.
[01:30:51] So pay attention.
[01:30:54] And I know it seems like we ask a lot, but.
[01:30:59] It's your right and your power.
[01:31:03] Right.
[01:31:04] And, you know, to coin the phrase from Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility and your power is that vote.
[01:31:14] So you need to be educated.
[01:31:17] When you when you make that vote, you need to make an informed decision.
[01:31:21] And like I tell people, I understand that everybody agrees with me.
[01:31:28] But the one thing we should agree on is that your vote is your voice.
[01:31:34] And you need to exercise your voice every time.
[01:31:38] Not just when it's just all national attention, but every time.
[01:31:46] If you want to make the argument, the highest turnout in any municipality should be the local election because it's the mayor and that city council or board of aldermen or whatever you call them.
[01:32:00] It's going to determine if you're going to get a traffic light or a stop sign in your community.
[01:32:05] There are ones that's going to put speed bumps on the road near schools.
[01:32:09] There's the ones that's going to fill the potholes.
[01:32:11] There's the ones that are going to determine when the trash is going to get picked up.
[01:32:15] So you definitely need to know these people.
[01:32:19] And vote for the folks you think will make your city or town run smooth.
[01:32:25] But it's also important to vote for everything going up.
[01:32:31] Because the state legislature determines not only what laws, but determines what agencies get money to help in the state.
[01:32:45] You have to have a governor, right?
[01:32:48] You have to have attorney general.
[01:32:50] You got to elect Supreme Court judges, all that stuff.
[01:32:53] And then when you get to the national level, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, President of the United States.
[01:33:03] You got to vote for that, too.
[01:33:05] So, you know, I know people get frustrated and they want to demonstrate and not vote or write in dead people or cartoon characters.
[01:33:16] You know, I just need y'all to take it serious.
[01:33:23] Right?
[01:33:26] Because regardless of who wins, that person is going to make a decision.
[01:33:35] And I've always have been of the belief that even if my candidate doesn't win because I voted, I feel that I can still hold that person accountable.
[01:33:49] Right?
[01:33:50] Because it's understood when they look at the voter rolls, they say, oh, yeah, this person votes every election.
[01:33:56] I might want to take this call.
[01:33:58] I might want to read that email.
[01:34:00] Right?
[01:34:04] Because, of course, that's the other point that we didn't get into in the interviews, but that voting is not the only thing you can do.
[01:34:15] In between elections, you can pick up your phone.
[01:34:23] You can email on your phone.
[01:34:26] You can email.
[01:34:28] They even have apps where you can email your members of Congress.
[01:34:34] Used to be we used to tell people to write letters, but because of the crazy folks that want to put anthrax and fentanyl in envelopes, it may not be timely if you send a letter.
[01:34:49] But now with the email or just dial the number directly, you can get your voice heard that way in between elections.
[01:35:04] Right?
[01:35:06] If it's an issue that's important to you in your community, show up at your local school board or show up at your local city council meeting.
[01:35:14] Show up at the Capitol.
[01:35:16] Just to see how it works.
[01:35:19] If nothing else.
[01:35:21] Right?
[01:35:22] So you have a better understanding.
[01:35:24] It's all about us being better informed so we can get people in and stop electing people that say stupid stuff like the government can control the weather.
[01:35:37] Right?
[01:35:39] We got to get these people out of office.
[01:35:41] I don't care what party you're in.
[01:35:43] Those people can't be in office no more.
[01:35:46] They can't.
[01:35:50] Because this is serious business.
[01:35:53] This is not a game.
[01:35:55] It's a sport.
[01:35:57] But it's not a game.
[01:35:59] Right?
[01:36:00] It's competitive.
[01:36:02] But it's not a game.
[01:36:03] Because even when you say stupid stuff, that's going to impact somebody's life.
[01:36:12] So you got to be about truth and you got to be about facts.
[01:36:19] And now, if you operate on truth and facts and it takes you in a different direction than where I see it going, that's fine.
[01:36:27] We can have a discussion.
[01:36:29] We can have a debate.
[01:36:31] And it will be easier for us to reach common ground.
[01:36:37] But if I'm based in truth and fact and you're based on fantasy, myth, and lies, we'll never meet in the middle.
[01:36:45] Because you're on shaky ground.
[01:36:49] You're on a false premise.
[01:36:51] Right?
[01:36:52] And that's the main reason why we have discord instead of discourse in the United States.
[01:37:02] In politics.
[01:37:05] It's time for the sideshow to end.
[01:37:07] On the first Tuesday of November in 2024, let that be the declaration.
[01:37:15] That the sideshow has to end.
[01:37:17] And it's time to build a democracy in America based on truth and facts.
[01:37:26] And let's get back on the mission of building a more perfect union.
[01:37:34] Thank you for listening.
[01:37:36] Until next time.
[01:38:17] NBG Podcast Network.