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STANDING TALL AND SPEAKING OUT Erwin Jackson believes in the power of truth by STEVE BORNHOFT
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rwin Jackson recalls the approach he took 10 years ago in teaching, as a volunteer instructor, a business class at Florida State University made up of students pursuing master’s degrees in business administration. “I said to the class, ‘I assume you are all here to get rich,’ and everyone said yes, they were,” Jackson said. Hearing that, Jackson, who earned a doctorate in counseling psychology at FSU, told the students that it is important to have goals but pressed them for specifics. “When will you know you are rich?” he’d asked. One student equated being rich with earning a million dollars. Another said he would want to have sufficient millions such that the annual interest on his money would total a million bucks. Then, as Jackson anticipated would happen, a “wise guy kid in the back” asked him what he considered rich to be. “When I can tell anyone I want to kiss my ass and I can easily live with the consequences, that’s rich,” Jackson readily replied. “So, I’m pretty rich.” He did add, in the course of a recent interview, one exception. “I would bite my tongue if I were speaking to the IRS during an audit,” he said. Jackson grew up on a farm outside Decatur, Illinois. He recalls arriving in Tallahassee to check out the doctoral program
30 January-February 2024 TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM
↗ Erwin Jackson at Tallahassee City Hall. For decades, he has worked to hold city officials accountable, at times at considerable personal expense. The FBI once investigated him, trying to discover if he had any untoward motivations. They found none.
photography by THE WORKMANS