Voices 4 Peace

Making Peace with Your Enemies | Rev. Marshall Mitchell

• Pathways • Season 1 • Episode 6

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In this episode of Voices 4 Peace, Todd Stavrakos sits down with Rev. Marshall Mitchell to explore what it means to be a peacemaker in an increasingly polarized world. Drawing from his experience engaging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Oslo years, Marshall reflects on the importance of hope, courageous leadership, and the difficult work of building trust across deep divides. 

Together they discuss vulnerability, accountability, faith, and why lasting peace requires more than choosing sides. It requires seeing the humanity in those we consider our enemies. 

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Pathways for Middle East Peace is a nonprofit educational organization that works to support collaboration between mainline churches and the Jewish community.

We advocate for peace and reconciliation through dialogue and building relationships. While the world seeks to build walls and silos, we believe that Christ has created a pathway for us through the example of His life, ministry, death and resurrection: to build community by bringing people together.

Visit Pathways4Peace.org for more.

SPEAKER_00

You're listening to Voices Repeats. Pathways for Pete podcast. Without you here on a challenging conversation. It's really paletizing. And all that comes with it. Hi, this is Pastor Todd Stavrakis. I'm the executive director of Pathways for Peace, and I am really happy to be able to introduce my guest uh today, uh, Reverend Marshall Mitchell, who's a good friend of mine, serves in suburban Philadelphia area, has been an innovator and creator when it comes to how do we reach people with the message of the gospel uh and a fantastic thought partner. Uh and I think you're going to be really interested to hear his perspective as we talk about uh the conflict between Israel and Palestine and how we as the faithful can engage in a productive way as opposed to just trying to put our fingers on the lever towards one side or the other. So, Marshall, first and foremost, thank you, man, for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01

It's great seeing you, man. And when you were saying you were really excited about the guest, I was wondering if you'd already booked somebody instead of me.

SPEAKER_00

Just in case you didn't make it, I had a rare, you know, uh uh on tab. But uh that you're here, whatever.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. No, it's great to see you. I'm excited about the work that you do. And Pathways is a uh certainly a necessary partner or piece in a very turbulent world where we're all trying to figure things out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Amen. I mean, it is it is topsy turvy. I mean, I I think one of the problems we have is what's the perspective uh and what's our horizon? Like everybody's horizon seems to be off kilter right now.

SPEAKER_01

Um every everybody's making the horizon themselves. Right.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And right, that's the whole idea of a horizon. It's like very far off. You don't control it. Right. There's mystery to it. There's the unknown. It's not all completely controlled. Everybody wants everything to be curated and controlled for their benefit. That's not what a horizon is.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and and I I think part of that conversation is like everybody's trying to control history. And whose history are you going to buy? You know, and whose history are you going to accept as being real and accurate? Um, you know, we've got some folks in our country who who don't like history because it's not what they thought it was. And people on our left are trying to rewrite it, and people on the right are trying to rewrite it. History's history.

SPEAKER_01

Um one of my dear friends from uh from XIE, or I guess Congo now, used to always say Americans have figured out an unusual way of studying history and doing absolutely nothing to know it. And so I think that is a legitimate critique of who we are. Amen. All of these standards and requirements around teaching Pennsylvania history in fourth grade or Illinois history in fourth grade. And then when you look by eighth grade, ninth grade, 55, the level of illiteracy around history and ignorance around history is stunning for us.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, it's it's mind-boggling. Uh and and you know, that's one of the reasons I was really excited about bringing you off a podcast because you have an interesting history with uh the state of Israel and and some of the work that you've done um working in as a congressional aide for uh representative at towns and kind of the involvement you had. Floyd Flake, Floyd Flake, I'm sorry. My bad. We'll edit that out. So uh the work you did with Congressman Floyd Flake uh around the Oslo agreement. So tell me about that. What was that experience like?

SPEAKER_01

Life-changing. It was an opportunity for me to spend a lot of time in Israel over and over again with congressional staff people and people who were largely on the hook from a congressional side, because at some point you build the peace and then you got to pay for it. And as you know, as a student of government, spending begins in the House of Representatives. And so Floyd Blake was one of the chairs of a banking subcommittee. All of the international and foreign aid felt there. So I spent a ton of time looking at ways that World Bank, IMF, and other multilateral development banks could play a role in helped helping to foster a peace in that part of the world with all of its complexity, with all of the multiple sides, and then the sides inside the sides. Right. And so that was a great education for a 24-year-old who fell into the most prominent job you can have on Capitol's chief of staff, made chief of staff by age 24. And so I found myself going back and forth across the seat to Israel with a ton of congressional staffers, with JCRC many years ago in New York City and Michael Miller and others. Uh, and so it was an education. I can remember being a Knesset, I can remember being a 25-year-old and seeing Ariel Sharon there, and then he stopped, then meeting Bibi Netanyahu and said, Hey, I'm a Philly boy just like you. And so, and then going into Ramallah with uh PLO folks. And you had to do that in those days. And you know, I believe this firmly, you don't make peace with your friends.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Make peace with your enemies. Right, right. We don't have much appetite for that any longer. And there there is no ability to kill enough of your enemies to get to peace that way.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

You gotta get you got to get to peace the hard way, which is a meeting of head and heart, and and prayerfully you get that, and then you have to work like hell to hold it.

SPEAKER_00

Amen. So I there's been a lot of sort of like revisionist history about the Oslo Accords, like um, oh, they were never gonna work. They were um the finger was on the scale towards one side or the other. Um, but what was the energy around when when we were beginning to implement them, the the conversations were occurring? Because I can remember, uh, you know, it's like I woke up one day and all of a sudden there was this agreement and there was hope and there was legitimate hope. Uh so what was it like? You know, what was the feeling? What what what was the Israelis thinking? What were the Palestinians thinking? What were their feelings about this, at the time, a historic agreement?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think for me, and I have to back it up even beyond Oslo. Um, I can remember being in third grade at Robert Lamberton Elementary School and reading the weekly reader and the thought that there would finally be peace in Israel. And I was hopeful. I saw General Sadat, President Sadat, I saw Begin and I saw others, and I saw Jimmy Carter, and I was hopeful. That helped to shape my mind. Okay. My dad, who spent a ton of time um as uh helping to build kibbutz and and understanding the kibbutz method and model and hoping to bring it actually back to Philadelphia for African Americans. That's how hopeful people were. So there was hope.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

There was also a ton of hope among the Clinton people, and they were they were thinking that this would be the signature um foreign policy achievement. Um, and that's saying a lot because you had Bosnia and you had everything else going on at the time, but this felt possible. And I think today there is a pall over the world, and I would I would typify those times as a sense that the impossible was possible, that people would try to work with their foes and with their enemies, and there was some honor and decency. Now that does not mean there was um you you would you would talk to some people and you would feel like you had a deal on something, and then you'd go back to uh Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, and by the time you got back there, somebody had changed their mind. And you would pull your hair out and say, What just happened on an hour and a half trip? And those are the sorts of things that we ran into. But I think what what was different about those times is there was a recognition that everything was going to be hard. And hard was okay.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Hard did not mean impossible. And I think people, even in the religious community, they've lost a lot of hope. The number of rabbis and pastors and priests that I hear speak and hear their hopelessness, something different, that something else is in the air right now. And I think we've got, as the faith community, we've got to try to infuse the sense of hope and optimism that did exist during those Clinton days. And look, maybe we were stupid, maybe we were too naive, maybe we're we were too blue skies. But I had a feeling then that people wanted to make this work. And there was muscle, there's muscle memory from from Camp David that this can truly work. I think almost all of that muscle memory now has been lost backwards.

SPEAKER_00

So uh, you know, bringing it current, you know, we're uh both have served in communities of faith. Um, we've seen sort of what the conversation around the conflict has become. Uh, we see how even the Christian world tends to be divided on sides. Um right of the spectrum tends to just view things through the through the lens of of Israel. Uh faith communities on the left tend to view things through the eyes of the Palestinians. Uh, and much like Republicans and Democrats can't talk to each other um these days, we find that the faith community is divided, split. Um, and yet when I think about the gospel message, and when I think about the work of Christ, um there wasn't one side versus the other in Christ's message. It was it was more of a holistic um uh everybody will be held accountable, everybody needs to um roll up their sleeves and do the work of the kingdom, uh, nobody's gonna be left out, nobody's gonna be isolated. Um and yet, as you said, we've we've hit these hardened positions, and we don't seem to have the hope of thinking we can overcome these things. So, so let's talk a little bit about what is it to be a peacemaker in the in this modern world of silos and schisms and hardened talking points.

SPEAKER_01

I think the one thing that is missing from the conversation today, particularly for the Christian world, and let's say Christian leaders, is a willingness to be vulnerable. I do not think one can actually accomplish a remarkable heightened state of love without vulnerability. Jesus Christ became completely vulnerable to our human sin and our human ways, even unto the death on the cross. And today, very few people are willing to be vulnerable because if you're vulnerable and you're wrong, you get canceled. I think that that trend uh decreases the boldness of action and thought into the future that we get accustomed to seeing hearing. Uh and and so I think technology has not served us well in easy. I think technology has not served us well in creating innovative thought and innovative speech and risky sermon. I think people are getting to their audiences, I think it is a lawful thing. I think like what I have to do is tremendous loss of support for Israel and including white conservative, which is a very nude identity. Um what I am hearing conservative and later I don't know. Um but seeing it now happening, the idea of conservative is uh arrested or support as well as for views and in the Western world. So I I think we've got to do some recalibrating, but I think it's gonna require people to be vulnerable, and it's gonna require people to have courageous and bold conversations to respond incidentally to everything that you just you can you can recoil and bristle inside, but you can't signal to people that you're not willing to hear them out. Right. That's something that we're no spirit of let's come, let us consider this together. Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I I mean we we've one w we do forget our own frailty, and we forget human frailty in that we may not be right. You know, we could be wrong. Paul tells us leave room for our own error. The other side could be wrong. We could be wrong. You know, uh, but nobody's willing to admit that they don't have the full picture, they don't have the full grasp, they don't have all the information. Everybody just assumes that they have everything that is absolutely needed. Um but we don't but we also don't, I mean, not only are we missing our own vulnerability, but we're also missing the humanity in the other to accept that they're just as broken as I am. And you know what? That's a big building block right there, if we can understand that that we have that frailty within each of us.

SPEAKER_01

It and I think that's part of the vulnerability, right? If if I allow you to be human, you've got to let me be human when we're human together from a Christian perspective. Christ died for what? Humans.

SPEAKER_00

Correct.

SPEAKER_01

So I think being being vulnerable, um, you know, it's it's it's remarkable. I have my own opinions about President Trump and other things which have happened. But one of the things that I have admired about him is a willingness to meet with people even with whom he has significant disagreements. That's not a small thing. Look how long it took us to meet with the president or or despots of North Korea. It took us from the 1950s until 2017 or 2018, while the world teetered on a on a on a nuclear uh seesaw. And that's not the way to do it. You've got to meet him. Imagine if Roosevelt had not met um with uh Stalin. It would have been really easy for Winston Churchill and Roosevelt to just say, this is Stalin. We don't meet with dictators. That's not a luxury that we have any longer. Um, I think that's where you have got to meet with people with whom you have very serious disagreement, because that's when you get down to the human level.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, and and I think when we're talking about peacemaking in particular, as and as you've already pointed out, you're gonna make peace with somebody you have a problem with, where there's possibility.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01

You are soft sure. You don't make peace with somebody with whom you have a problem. You have a problem with your spouse, you have a problem with your mom. Right. You you make peace with your enemy. Right. That's who you make peace with. You have problems with your friends. With your enemy, you're at war. We gotta get to that place.

SPEAKER_00

So so as so as peacemakers from a uh Christian perspective, and and view just taking this conflict between Israel, Israelis, and Palestinians, you know, I it hurts when I see one when I see the church just taking one side versus the other. Because uh you you've spent a lot of time Israel and Palestine, I've spent a lot of time in Israel and Palestine, and I've got to say I've met some of the greatest people on on those visits and on those trips. Um good people. Um and I know there are negative actors on both sides, and and and I know that, but I also know that there's a lot of good people on both sides. And the the question to me is if I'm going to be a peacemaker, is how do I make sure that that that I'm speaking up for those good people who are desperately trying to live in peace with one another and isolating the bad actors who are causing problems on both sides. And you know, as a peacemaker, it's how do we hold the good people together so that we can kind of filter out the evil.

SPEAKER_01

Trust. You gotta build trust. Yeah. When you when you say you're going to do something, or when you say you're gonna hold and and uh make your side right accountable, you've got to punish people on your side when they're wrong. Right. There are some small issues. This is a this is a it's a it's a small issue until you're the person on the receiving end. This issue, which we're seeing over and over again, which is very real, of people spitting on priests and nuns in Israel, our Jewish brothers and sisters need to be speaking up very vocally and unapologetically on that issue, because that is wrong. And you can't say, oh, this is the action of some, you know, some 25-year-old kids at a seminary. If it is, call them to account. Because if they're 25-year-olds and that that 25-year-old and 25-year-old, 25 years is going to be a 50-year-old rabbi or leader in his or her community.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And so now you have the opportunity to correct that person so that person truly becomes righteous. And we don't call people on our teams to account. And I have said this over and over again. I've said to many of my Jewish friends in America who don't like what uh Stephen Miller has done in this administration. It's like he's Jewish, call him out. You expect me to call out Lewis Farrakhan, which I do, right? And which I will. So when you see people who are on your own quote unquote team, call them out. Stop the bad behavior because it builds trust with the people with whom you're trying to make peace. Well, that's right. It says, I I show up, I don't do a nod and win because it's my team. All right, stripes. And I think that's the boldness, that's the vulnerability which we have to do, but that's the righteous work.

SPEAKER_00

And and I I think you're dead on. I mean, the example of what's happening with some of the the Jewish extremists, the, you know, the abuse, the spitting on on uh Christians, and uh particularly in Jerusalem. And on the same side in Bethlehem, we have Christian communities that are under siege from from their Muslim neighbors. And we find that particularly those churches who are view everything from the Palestinian lens, there's that reluctance to criticize anything in the Palestinian community. And yet, you're right, how do we engender um the right trust and feelings if we're not gonna call out the behavior that nobody agrees is appropriate?

SPEAKER_01

Things change when Rabin was killed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Things really changed. Um I worry about societies when they begin to kill their leaders. Think about what happened to the United States of America in 63 and then 65 and then two in 68. When people begin to kill the bold leaders, because leaders are built to take us across generations. Martin Luther King dies as a 39-year-old. Imagine had he lived to be 79, what good could have gotten done? And that's why I've always said you can't continue to kill leaders. That's not the way to build peace. In fact, if you want peace, you have to build leaders, you have to cultivate leaders, you have to stoke leaders to greater and higher moral ground. Um, and and and I think that's what's missing. And I say that to people often. I say that as I'm known as somebody who is right of center, moderate. Um, but just because somebody is a leftist doesn't mean I can't sit with them and try to figure out a way to build community and compromise. I must do that. And you're I I think the younger generation is crying out for it. My fear is we're creating this bipolar world where people in the middle don't have any home any longer. And and that frightens me on a long term for a long-term basis, at least.

SPEAKER_00

And and you know, we're talking about leaders. I this continual bloodshed on both sides and the future leaders who were losing because of this bloodshed. You know, you know, people sometimes wonder um, you know, going back to the original uh conversation about two states and partition and so forth and um you know the horrendous riots that that occurred in the thirties and how the the Brits brutally put down, particularly the Arab uh uprising. They lost a generation of leaders. And so when it came to like 48, there weren't good leaders.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

On a Palestinian side. And it's continuing. Yes. You know, the number of young people who are either being lost through the bloodshed or lost because they're becoming radicalized. And we wonder where the leadership is. You know, who is going to be that statesman who's going to reach across?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. We you, you know, growing leaders is like having a good garden. You got to fertilize the soil. You got to put all the nutrients in there. People have to have a sense that a society can win. And the exact same thing can happen on the very far fringe right in Israel, where you convince people that there's no way forward. Right. And when you when young men who are in their teens and twenties hear there's no way forward, it almost doesn't matter what race, religion, what ideology, they become dead enders. And we're seeing too much of the rise of dead enders, even globally, where you've seen people lose hope. And I'm I'm really worried about the two countries that I consider and think about the two most in the world are America and Israel. And I feel like we are engendering too much of a dead ender cult of people who are not hopeful, who don't dream about peace, who don't dream about prosperity. Or to use your first illustration, they don't dream about the horizon. The horizon almost always welcoming and positive.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and and that's that's why I'm highly critical of my bone domin denomination in Presbyterian Church USA, because we continually put out rhetoric that says things like the two state scenario is dead. Well, if the two states are dead, then the only avenue forward is violence. That's it. Because there's because because it means that one side or the other has to win.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. But you got to be bold. And again, I'll hearken back to Rabin. You had to be bold the way Rabin was. You had to be bold the way others once you once you lose that boldness, that's not you don't have any of the elements of leadership. But like if you're not going to be bold, you don't need leaders. You know, you chat GPT. We believe what ChatGPT tells us, but we actually need bold leaders. Right. And then you also have to bet on, I'm a Christian, I'm Baptist, as you know. I believe in the transformation of human beings. That the intersection of your life and the Holy Spirit creates something that we probably didn't see. Many people thought Mandela was a communist. Many people thought Mandela was a terrorist. Many of those same people, 35, 40 years later, thought Mandela was almost the savior. Right? I was in a large gathering of chiefs of police from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania last night. They installed one of my dear friends, Chief Pat Malloy, as the president of the chief of the chiefs. The cops were there, and one cop who was an eloquent speaker used Nelson Mandela as his illustration for a hope in America. Here I am, right? Hardcore right guys, law enforcement. And his speaking illustration is Nelson Mandela. Right? That shows the transformation possible in people. We were in a room of 400 people. There were five black people in there. This did not look like an NAACP convention, right? But the speaker of the hour is quoting Nelson Mandela and talking about a belief in the possibility of an American society. That's transformation. And sometimes we've got to allow this organic, innovative God who moves as he chooses to move, through whom he chooses to move. And then if we just allow ourselves, again, to be vulnerable. Listen, I was sitting front and center there last night, sitting right closest table to that speaker. And I heard that and I said, you know what? Nelson Mandela is looking down, as old folks used to say, looking down over Heaven's balcony and winking his eye at that gathering.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, that's it. Tells you a little bit about uh the reality of that transformation, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01

It is. And and and Tom, I don't understand how religious people don't leave room for that transformation.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we that's a whole nother conversation that we can get into about why faith leaders and those people sitting in the pew feel a need to put handcuffs on God so God can only act in certain ways. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you and I both know that God, you know, God's gonna do what God's gonna do. And we can either be a part of it or not. But we need to stop acting like God is only gonna act like a rational human being.

SPEAKER_01

And and God is not our runner boy. He doesn't like do our stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Right? We, I believe we're his hands and feet, right? And so uh, but but again, a Christian, so much of the Christian community wants God to be an errand boy for them.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

It won't work out well.

SPEAKER_00

No, it won't. I mean, because it's the because again, if the idea is that we need transformation, you you can't shackle the entity that leads transformation and expect transformation.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. That's right. And and you know, the other thing that I think about all the time is I ask God in my conversations with God, what part of me has to die to myself? Like, where am I in error? What what part of me is getting in the way of my relationship with God and with others? Um, and and that requires critical self-reflection. Again, which we don't do. And I can you can see that in the leadership, the global leadership today. There's no critical self-reflection.

SPEAKER_00

No. No, we, you know, those of us who are a little older kind of laugh at this idea that there are safe spaces and places that we can go to. You know, it's uh the the most dangerous place for each of us is spending time on our own thinking about who we are and what we're doing. Um because if we're honest, we know that we are falling short of Christ's example and parts of us that we need to die to. That's right. And it might be those words that someone else says that challenges us that we think is offensive. They might be speaking to that which needs to die within us. Well said. And uh so, you know, as we're talking about faithful, and you've already sort of mentioned like the relationship that's occurring um in our own society, US society, between Christians and Jews. Um, and in in particular, you know, I wanted to get your opinion as an African American. How do you see the relationship between the Christian African African American community uh and the Jewish community? I mean, uh the civil rights movement, we know, is Jews and the African-American community walking side by side. And it was most of us white Protestants who were basically uh calling for law and order. Um so uh what's that relationship like today?

SPEAKER_01

Almost totally lost, except in the spaces where so many people are being performative or being compensated by grants uh pay. So it's uh very little of it is organic, very little of it is helmed by significant leaders, right? You find people who generally their leadership role will come in leading this, right? And so I, you know, I've said we've got to make sure we are never seduced by people who are looking for extra work, and that happens way too much in this space. Um, again, I think you've got to get people to spend time. I I am I'm completely vigilant about making sure that I spend time with my rabbi friends. I am very clear that I spend time with my Jewish lay brothers and sisters. Um, you know, I uh you gotta invest the time. The sense of support in the black church for black Jewish dialogue right now is almost non-existent. Nonexistent because a lot of people are not working at it. Um the congregations of scale uh are not invested in it. Um so for me, it happens very organically, it happens very naturally. Um, in my church about four weeks ago at Salem, um, because of my my my closest my closest clergy colleague is Robert Leed uh at Temple Betham, um Old York Road Synagogue. And uh we had about 300 people, we expected a hundred. It was black Christians, white Jews, uh Bangladeshi Muslims, um, a choir from Ukraine, tap dancers from dancers from um Ireland, and shofar is being blown in our sanctuary. I'm doing an invocation, the call to prayer from an imam is going for in the same service. Right? Now I could have taken the cowardly approach and have forgotten my house shall be a called house of prayer for all people. Right. You can't do that Muslim stuff in here. No, you can't do that Jewish stuff in here. God won't like it. And I can find 13 scriptures, I can look at some other scriptures and find the reasons why I shouldn't do it.

SPEAKER_02

I said, you know what?

SPEAKER_01

My house should be helpful for all people. Some people were visibly moved that this would happen. Some people who I thought were more conservative than I were thankful that there was exposure. And so again, it would be risky taking. But I can tell you right now, people are not taking those risks. They feel like there's too much at stake inside. And and so the black Jewish dialogue right now is like support. Um, there are very few people who are making sure it stays alive because more people return to the funeral than you do try to keep alive. And that's gonna be that's gonna require. And it's gonna require some suffering. Um, if you look at anybody whose name is indelibly catch in the absence of history, they took some chances, they took some slingshots, and some brick hats, and some arrows, they have to take that for leadership and me look at the only indicates of their hands. We've got to make sure that we are not securing a group of 75 to 90 year olds who are frustrated and agree. We gotta get the kids in early. We gotta let them get out, we gotta also let them date, we gotta also let them find out that they like each other and never fire from this city.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I mean I I think that's you know, we're wondering why we're seeing increase in racism, anti-Semitism, uh, and any other ism out there. It's because we don't have those relationships anymore. We we don't have those connections. We are too isolated unto ourselves. We don't know the other anymore. Um, we're we don't know the human on the other side anymore because we we've gotten lazy and we don't want to do that hard stuff of leaving our community and talking to another.

SPEAKER_01

And you can't do the kumbaya dance. Like just don't look, I I I enjoy the the Martin Luther King services are fantastic.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. But you can't, that's not foundation enough to build the future. And so so what I have said and and have tried to do here in the city of Philadelphia, and I've got some folks who are listening and paying attention, the number one issue for African Americans losing hope in America is lack of economic opportunity. No community in the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding community could help to restore the Horatio Alger sense that you two can make it in America. That if you brought together the innovative capacity and capital of the black community and the financial heft and capital of the Jewish community, and talked about building opportunity societies.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I became a Republican as a child because I believe Republicans stood for more personal, economic, financial opportunity than Democrats. I was attracted to the to the ideology of Jack Kim, who talked about an opportunity society.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Right? There's none of that talk anymore. All of that has been replaced by M D E I. It's just like, come on. That's that is such softballish and sophomorish approach to building a society. China. I said that like China, China, segue. China has lifted 450 million people out of poverty since 1982. 450 million. You know what we do in America? We punish poor people. Even though all of us, if you were Greek, if you were black, if you're Jewish, if you're Irish, you're Polish, you're German, West Indian, go down the list. Guess what everybody came to America as? Poor. Some of us were so poor, you didn't even say poor, you said po because you couldn't afford the O R on the end.

SPEAKER_02

We were Poe.

SPEAKER_01

And we but we believed in an opportunity society. And when you believe in an opportunity society, you invest your psychic capital in that society. And when somebody believes and invests psychic capital in something, it can be bad or it can be good, but it's catalyzed and has this supernatural life because of the power of the spirit and the mind and hope. And we're doing a tremendously bad job of engendering that kind of hope and optimism across society. And so I'm saying don't just get together and do the church chase, church swap and the synagogue swap. Get together and start thinking about economic opportunity right here in Pennsylvania. We've got a governor who's wide open to it. The problem, the problem that this governor has more often than not is there aren't enough bold people here in the Commonwealth to do it. Everybody creates an excuse and looks for the cop-out so they don't have to do any of the hard work. You got billionaires worried about investing a million dollars in somebody who's gonna make them even more rich. Right? And and so that instead the conversation becomes DEI. And you know, and and it's it's it's such a ridiculous conversation. In many ways, look, black people are actually laughing at a little bit of the DEI conversation because you know what? The folks who think this is gonna benefit white men are sadly mistaken. You know who the seats are going to, the seats are gonna be going to Asian Americans, right? It's just the math, right? And so it's like, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, you know what I'm I'm working on right now? This you'll like this. I'm working to end affirmative action in collegiate sports. Because you know what I think you'd have to do to this country, fortunately, you got to start punishing this country. And when you take those black football players who don't have good grade point averages and good SATs, and when you take them off the field at Notre Dame and Alabama and Georgia and LSU and Ole Miss and all of these great bastions of equality of opportunity, guess what's gonna happen? The running back is now gonna run a 4.740-yard dash and let those black kids go to black colleges. Watch what happens to NIA.

SPEAKER_00

Why are you belittling my people's athletic prowess?

SPEAKER_01

Hey, listen, everybody has their own skills. But when you when a society does not have an appetite to create black engineers, right? Why should we have an appetite to create black running backs?

SPEAKER_00

Right. Right. No, it's because people have to fit into what we want them to fit into. You know, we're perfectly we're perfectly happy having a black running back. Evidently, we've become okay with even having black quarterbacks these days. These days. Um but we don't, but heaven forbid that black athlete have an opinion.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Oh I mean, you know, then he then he becomes a thug or a holigan. Correct. But what I'm saying, I'm saying yes, but what I'm saying is let's take a look at that running back's grade point average and SAT scores. And if they don't measure up to the the median of the previous year's class, why should they be admitted because they're a good football player? That doesn't seem like that jibes well with the mission, the educational academic mission of the university. And what what's amazing and spectacular black people is they see people screaming and hollering for black football players and basketball actors. But then we see no body cheering from black engineers. So what what is it about? But look, and I have encouraged every black federal member of our national legislature economy to offer up amendment and take affirmative action. Watch what happens.

SPEAKER_02

So we've covered a gamut here.

SPEAKER_00

So somehow we started with the Yaslo Accords, and now we've ended with how you're gonna fix you know college athletics.

SPEAKER_01

Um no no I'm not gonna fix it. I was just gonna No, you know, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna punish places that punish us. Amen. Amen. You you you if you can figure out how to redraw congressional maps overnight, we're gonna help you redraw football championships over a couple of seasons. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

SPEAKER_02

Amen. Amen. So I I believe in having call to action.

SPEAKER_00

So as we wrap up, and I think about call to action in terms of what we've spoken about. First is we're calling people to do to do the hard work.

SPEAKER_02

Don't don't accept the simple that's presented to you. Do the hard work. Next is we gotta live in hope.

SPEAKER_00

Because if we're not gonna live in hope, we're we're not offering any affirmative vision out there. And so what do people have to gravitate to if we're just telling them this is it? This is all you're gonna get.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and three, get out of your silo. Yeah. You know, be be adventurous, be courageous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You you know, you know this about me. I don't have a team. Right. I'm not black enough, I'm not Jewish enough, I'm not Christian enough. And I love being kind of left out because it allows me to look over the fence, see other people, connect with them where we agree, learn from them in places where we disagree, you know, the proverbial eat the meat and spit out the bones. And so I think not having a hard and fast home is good for me. Um, for most black Christians, I'm not black enough, I'm not Christian-y enough. You get in my car, I don't even know what the gospel music station is in the city of Philadelphia. I don't know, I literally don't know. People always wonder like, you don't live, I was like, I don't know what it is. I'm a jazz, I like jazz. Right? I like classical music, I like country, I like rap. Those are my kind of four go-to genres. And so I big try to make myself vulnerable. Um, I've made myself vulnerable being your friend because I know there's reward in that.

SPEAKER_02

Amen.

SPEAKER_00

Now I I I get and I'm look, it I'm so happy to be able to call you a friend and a collie because it it's we need Some courageous people who who are are gonna go against the grain or are gonna do something different, who are gonna who will have the courage to reach out to somebody even if even if it hurts you because your community says you shouldn't. I those that's where that that's where there's energy, that's where there's life. If you're doing the same thing day in, day out, God bless you, but uh you're not gonna go anywhere. You're not gonna go anywhere emotionally, spiritually, or physically.

SPEAKER_01

Can you imagine if Isaiah went with the community and the prevailing mindset that were Hosea? I mean, give I mean those two in particular stand out to me as poop people who are like, are you kidding me? You think I'm going for that garbage when when God's calling us to something better? Right. And you do that knowing it's not gonna be comfortable. And it usually doesn't even work out well for you. No, but it's worth it that people will remember your name.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's it. I and that's your analogy of the story about Nelson Mandela. I mean if you if you want to be somebody who who's going to be remembered, because evidently that's what we want, then staying in your silo and not talking to anybody you might disagree with is not the way to do it. No way.

SPEAKER_02

So you know, and if we're bringing it back to being a peacemaker, that's what it's about. Agree. All right, man.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I gotta say, this has been good. It's been fun. Um, we didn't even get into the NBA finals tonight, you know. We didn't get, you know, didn't get I didn't get a chance to rip the Redskins, you know. Uh we'll have to do it again. But hey, I really appreciate you joining me on on our podcast today uh for your thoughts, uh, for your commitment, um, and for your heart. I I thanks. I really appreciate that. So it's it's mutual. And uh Spurs and five. Spurs and five? Yeah. That see, that hurts my Nova sensibilities. It really hurts my uh I know. See, it's gonna go uh it's gonna go six. I just don't know who's winning it in six.

SPEAKER_01

That's my then then you have not been watching the transformation of this game, and it's global.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's you're you're you're you're looking at one of the greats.

SPEAKER_00

I I I am, and I keep and here's I'm gonna date myself. I keep waiting for Charles Oakley to come off the bench and putting an elbow right into Wimby's chest and say, you're not coming in here again. The game has completely changed, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. No, nobody posts up. No. Right? And and now you're allowed to take four steps before you shoot the ball. That's right.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. It's crazy. I do the these old folks like pondering for the days beyond. Uh Marshall blessings. Uh, thank you again for joining me. And uh we'll uh hopefully uh we'll have you back on just shortly. Love you back. God bless everybody. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you again on our next podcast, Voices for Peace. Thank you for listening to Voices for Peace. If this conversation challenged you, that's the point. If you believe peace begins with listening, following for more. Until next time. This is Voices for Peace.