Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Sometimes the story really is a simple one.

So meet one of Tacoma's good guys.

Kwabi Amoah-Forson.

A force has been plying the streets of Tacoma for years in his unmistakable powder blue peace bus.

Tonight, we sit down with Kobe to learn about a new award he's received and his ongoing plans to take his message of peace and turn it into action.

That's next on Northwest.

Now.

If you spent much time in Tacoma, there's a good chance you've either met Kobe or at least seen his 1998 blue Mitsubishi minivan driving around.

Kobe is fully engaged in feeding children, promoting peace, trying to empower the disenfranchized, and leaning into the centers of power and influence to speak up for those in need.

All from the front seat of a funky old minivan that, when combined with this driver, can do nothing but put a smile on your face.

My name is Kwabi Amoah-Forson and I'm the owner and founder of the Peace Bus here.

It's a local humanitarian aid organization as well as a kids TV show.

Basically, this organization is centered completely on how we can be better towards our fellow man.

If you're into Coleman, you know anyone who needs salt sauce, please let me know in boxes, working in the community, delivering goods to people in need, whether that's socks, the homeless, whether that's a cereal to kids in need, or even always Santa Claus for December.

This last December, delivering presence to kids in need of immigration, getting it done all the time.

Our community to move forward, we're going to have to use this as a tool in order to unlock the door of progress.

Violence.

It inspires more violence.

So what we do is people that are for the betterment of peace.

We have to counteract it.

We have to do our work.

There's so many people that are doing work towards hurting each other.

We have to do the work to in order to bring us together.

And so when I see that on social media, when I see that on the news of homicides and murder and violence, I shake my head to it, but I also lift my head and understanding that I can do something about it.

You see people waving, you wave back and it's it's beautiful to drive the piece past man with serving my community and trying to shine a light for others to see.

You know, when there's no justice, no peace.

If we want to work towards mending the ties and coming together in peace, we're going to have to educate ourselves on our fellow human being and our neighbor, to educate ourselves is to show compassion, is to show love and peace through talking and engaging and being out in the community, to serve.

To serve.

If we're able to understand that our person who's on the street who may be struggling, maybe indulging in crime and things like this because they don't have their needs met.

We have to have empathy for them and to serve them and to help them because they are our neighbors.

We can't forget that violence comes in many forms.

People don't realize it.

You may think like violence is someone killing someone, which it is, or violence is someone punching someone, which it is.

But violence comes in in modes of of of institutions with poverty.

Poverty is violence.

Homelessness is violence.

You think that there are people being deprived of their humanity.

And when that happens, violence ensues.

And we say that there's so much violence.

There's so much crime.

Well, there's inequality.

And I feel that that's the basis in which we have a lot of violence.

The way to mend that violence, the way to end it is by looking at these institutions of violence and cutting them out at the root.

We want to promote goodwill by acknowledging people's humanity.

Once we do that, then we can have peace.

No kid should ever go without food in this entire world.

My work as a humanitarian is based in planting seeds.

Right?

Like Johnny Appleseed.

I've been inspired by Johnny Appleseed.

He went around and planted apple seeds in the Midwest.

And consequently, there's tons of apple trees in the Midwest.

Now, why can't we do the same thing for how we can come together with peace, love, compassion and empathy?

So through my education, through my works and giving to those in need.

I hope that this will transcend and it will plant seeds of goodness in our youth and in our population so that they can do the same.

And it's really simple as far as helping those in need.

It's something simple that we all can do.

And that's how we create a society in a world that's peace and nonviolent and not and not violent, really.

We have to acknowledge that we have a common goal.

Each and every one of us have a common goal of understanding that we want a better future.

It's a basis in which we can we can ground ourselves on.

We want the safety of ourselves and those our loved ones, our family, our friends.

And we also we share this common bond of wanting to have a faith in our humanity.

Why can't we promote goodness, love and compassion?

And that's what the peace process is about.

That's what I want to dedicate my life to.

I might not be an economist.

I'm not necessarily a politician, but I want to get these guys together, have a conversation about what what love means, what that means for our society and hope and peace.

That's my goal.

Abby, thanks so much for coming in Northwest.

Now, I've been wanting to have you on this program for a while.

You are such a force on the streets of Tacoma and now is will get into beyond the boundaries of Tacoma as well, which I think is a great thing.

Let's start from the start, though.

Where are you from?

Where did you get raised and how do you find yourself now driving around the peace bus?

Well, first of all, Tom, I want to thank you for having me.

Come on.

This show I've been watching for a while, absolutely phenomenal content.

I love seeing what you do.

I was born in Reno, Nevada.

I don't remember anything.

I was a little baby.

Shortly after that, we moved to University Place, and that's where I grew up.

So I went to Curtis High School.

And then from then I went to Western Washington University.

And then from there I moved back to Tacoma.

I've been living here ever since.

Talk a little bit about your education and kind of what your original goals were and how that all fits in.

Right.

That's a good that's a good question.

So.

At Western, I was there for communications and then I flunked out.

I was playing too much Reagan music.

I want to be a reggae star.

And so when I flunked out there, it came back to coming to get my GPA back up.

I did that.

In fact, I transferred to the Evergreen State College Tacoma campus.

While there, I was really immersed in the essence of looking at things holistically, subjects holistically.

And then when I graduated from then, I was in grad school for business and I was lost.

I was absolutely lost.

I don't know why I was there.

I mean, I was there to get a degree, but I was surrounded by people who were trying to figure out how they were going to make the most money possible, which I get.

Money is a way in which we can cultivate our potentiality and create things where you can't do everything for free now.

But I did something that a lot of people don't do in our current day and age.

A lot of young folks.

That was I reached out to an old advisor, someone who was an elder in the community for guidance.

So I reached out to Peer Bob, Joe, Peter Boxer from the Evergreen State College, and I asked Peter, Bob Joyce, the doctor, I'm struggling.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life, but I'm in school.

And he said, Crosby, this old stoic voice, the Crosby, you could be anything you want to be.

You could be a lawyer or a doctor, but you need to stop asking yourself, what do you want to be?

And start asking yourself, who do you want to be?

And I thought to myself, Wow, that's profound.

So I took a weekend by myself.

I really thought about Who am I?

And I thought that at my core, at the innermost core of myself.

I love seeing people from different walks of life races, coaches and creeds coming together for a positive cause.

It gives me goosebumps to even think about it.

And to me, that speaks one perspective, a really big perspective of it.

And that's when I started hitting the ground running and promoting peace.

So here's a guy with a business degree graduate studies and a business degree driving around in an old blue Mitsubishi minivan that we showed a piece that we shot with you some time ago just before this interview started.

And you're out doing that.

How did how did that come about?

Did you really that you took your your drive so literally it wasn't.

Well, I'm going to do administrative things to try to promote peace.

No, I'm getting in the dang minivan, driving around talkative people.

I mean, that's really hit the streets.

Right.

Right, right.

Well, the first thing I wanted to do was have a peace plane.

That was my very first idea.

I got it from a gentleman named Abe Nathan.

He was an Israeli humanitarian, and he flew an airplane from Tel Aviv all the way to Egypt to promote better relations between Arabs and Jews.

And he was around his heyday was like the sixties.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to be a peace pilot.

And so I started taking flight lessons back in like 2017, and I was in grad school still, so it clean me out.

I had no money, so I was like, okay, I can't continue with this.

I don't have a pilot's license now, but I do have a driver's license.

So I thought, well, I'm going to make a vehicle for peace.

And it's interesting because it's all an advertisement.

I don't consider myself an activist, more of a campaigner.

We think about something like Coca Cola, right?

It's absolutely everywhere.

You can't go to Miles without seeing some sort of advertisement for Coca Cola.

That's a drink.

Imagine what we could do for peace.

And so when I bought this vehicle, I put the peace bus in the sides as a vehicle to promote the most important thing of all, which is peace.

And then I thought, well, there's space in the bus that is supposed to be seats, but there's nothing.

And I thought about delivering goods to people that need putting peace into action.

And that's where the humanitarianism started.

See, there's layers, though.

Coca-Cola.

Those ads aren't about a drink.

They're about an end to market for the sugar industry.

So there's also.

There's always layers, baby.

Right, right, right, right.

But yeah, you know, and that's amazing in itself.

And I'm trying to figure out I've been on this mission, trying to figure out how can we have peace be with the masses.

We have this essence of activism being sort of like a counterculture against the grain.

What if this essence of togetherness and love and peace could be.

Part of the program?

Part of the process?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, what the heck's wrong with us, then?

It feels to me that peace has been going backwards.

We've done several programs on Northwestern here which are trying to promote peace and and talk about that as an issue.

But, man, I feel like peace has going down.

Not going up.

All right.

We don't know enough about it.

It's not taught.

Right.

Anything you want to learn, it has to be taught to you.

There's three different kinds of peace time.

There's inner peace.

We talk a lot about that woo song.

Right, right, right.

Or maybe a sense of religion.

Or a sense of understanding of self.

But then there's interpersonal peace, which is seldom talked about.

How do we show love, respect and understanding towards our fellow human being?

And then there's diplomatic these how is China faring with Russia, the United States, with Ukraine, this sort of thing?

And I really feel that honing in and learning about interpersonal peace is the way we're going to bridge the gap of understanding and come together.

That's the one that's really missing is that is the middle one.

We're all about ourselves and inner peace.

We're all about introspection, all about, you know, it's all about me.

Well, no, it ain't right.

It's about us.

Right.

Interesting, though, because you would think with as much time and effort we put on inner peace, it would exude from that and we'd have more interpersonal peace.

It really makes me question how much inner peace we actually.

Have right when we're so angry all the time.

You just drive down the road and somebody in a pickup truck, I mean, they're angry.

You can just feel it.

Right.

Right.

There's a lot of anger out there.

Yeah.

So, I don't know, man.

I'm let's talk a little bit about some of the things that have been happening in your life.

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize.

You won that.

Yes.

So what does that do for you?

I'm the youngest person ever to win the award.

And what it means to me is that people understand the importance.

People understand the understanding.

They understand the ability for us to come together.

Right.

I'm 32 years old.

I didn't grow up in the hippie movement.

I didn't grow up in the civil rights movement.

How is it that someone young, like myself, has gathered together this concept and understood that peace is the most important thing?

I think that's progress in itself.

So the people who came together to create the second peace prize, they nominate someone every year that is doing.

Honestly, most people out there a lifetime full of work for peace and they decided to invest.

This is an investment in me.

You send me over there before I've gotten my my my best strides.

I've done some work, but I'm not even near the finish line.

So where do you go for that?

Is there a person in Norway?

Yeah, I was going to say that's over in Norway.

Right.

So talks about that trip and when is that happening?

Right.

So December 5th, I'll leave on a plane and travel all the way to Oslo, Norway.

While there, I will be meeting with constituents and politicians and leaders around the world, having conversations about what I've been doing here in the United States and Tacoma and Washington for peace.

And I'm learning about what they're doing as well.

And then on December 10th, that's when the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony commences.

And I'll be there in full attendance and I'll be able to see that different people receive the award and whatnot.

And then after that, I'll be meeting with constituents throughout the week after, and then I'll go to Iceland for a few days and then I'll go to New York and give a speech at the first Avenue Church in Manhattan about my experience about going to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, my thoughts on peace and things like that.

I see you really do need an airplane.

Yes, I do.

I do.

It's the next step.

The northwest now, airplane, we go in together.

Not because it would be cooler to the peace plane.

And that's my next endeavor.

After the peace bus, the greatest flight in the history of humankind.

I will be in the sky by 2025.

What's that going to look like?

What's what's the purpose of it?

Does it help you go from country to country working on this interpersonal peace?

You're bringing delegates from one group to another.

What's your.

Vision?

I think eventually it will be something like that.

But you got to start small and then build up.

I think at the first moment of creating a peace plane will be a smaller plane, maybe a Cessna 172.

The idea is to get people who have never been interested about peace, people who feel that they're on the fence.

Right.

About whether or not they should get involved and let them understand that peace is for human progress.

Right.

So I want people to see this plane that would be in the sky and think what is so important that this man would make a whole plane dedicated to peace.

Painted powder blue.

Right now.

I don't know if I'm real that way.

Maybe very different kind of way.

Right?

A raise awareness is the major inhibitors of peace.

What is actually preventing us from creating a peaceful society?

And I believe that among most things that poverty, racism and lack of quality education for our children is what's hindering us from creating a base level, peaceful society.

You hit both those points sitting right here in my notes on the role racism plays in the rural poverty place.

So let's take them one at a time.

Racism, you know, Martin Luther King said that, you know, the arc of history bends toward justice.

I keep thinking it's going to happen, but the more I look into it, the more nothing's changed.

And it's very discouraging.

Right.

How do we overcome that?

How do you how do you overcome that sense of discouragement and get people to see each other somehow?

I don't know when it happened or where it happened.

The ideals of progression in regards to diminishing racism have become political.

Yeah.

When in fact the betterment of the African-American or the Native American is really the benefit for all people.

We're together in this.

We've been writing the pages of progress with our hands tied in a certain amount of people have been given all the the potential, the advantages to pursue their goals.

Right.

But imagine if everyone had a seat at the table of opportunity.

This is the essence that we have to gravitate towards.

If we want to diminish racism.

Seeing that when we held back, a group of people were in fact holding ourselves.

For example, Steve Jobs, right.

Brilliant gentleman.

He died of cancer.

And if you want to have known that the cure for cancer was embedded in a black child somewhere in the ghetto, you would have been putting tons and millions of dollars into this child in order to cure him.

But truly, that's the fact that the solutions we desperately need are embedded in those who have been disenfranchized poverty.

Which is a neighbor to that disenfranchisement.

Talk a little bit about that.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Poverty is the bare bones.

We have to work as far as understanding our humanity, the humanism sort of deal.

How can we go about being our best selves if a large quantity of quality of ourselves are held back because of their economic status?

Right.

And education plays a big role in that.

Oh, yeah.

There should be no difference from a school like Lincoln in comparison to a school like Annie.

Right.

When the solutions we need are embedded in any child anywhere, it behooves us to get involved.

Also, the essence of safety, right.

In zip code still determine outcomes.

That's true.

Which is hard to believe.

Right?

But it's.

True.

It's true.

It's true.

It's true.

But I also hone in on the essence of safety as well.

Everyone wants to be safe.

No matter if you're rich or poor, you're black or you're white.

We all feel this sense of wanting to feel safe, and we always go towards band safety.

I like to call it.

So we want more police, we want more guns, more guard dogs, more alarms, more walls.

Right.

When real intrinsic safety is embedded in creating a better quality of life for everyone.

So it behooves those who are rich to invest in those who are disenfranchized for their own benefit.

I'm sure that most people don't want to go up, wake up, leave their door and feel that someone's going to come after them.

Right?

What if we could all live in a society where people's needs are met?

I think it's just a better world.

Talk a little bit about some of your other travels.

You took a trip to Washington, D.C. You took a trip to the Mexican border.

I think both those were in your bus, I think.

Right.

Right.

So talk a little bit.

What were those?

So last summer, I did a trip called Manifest Humanity.

I traveled from Washington State all the way to Washington, D.C., from sea to shining sea in order to meet with the commander in chief himself, Mr. Joe Biden.

Now, on this journey, there were hundreds and hundreds of books about love, peace and empowerment.

The kids, teens and young adults along the way stopping in major cities.

Now, I didn't get to meet with Biden himself, which is fine.

I wrote him actually a very extensive letter.

His last man.

For sure.

I think I want to say maybe you heard about me, but, you know, he's a busy man.

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm not giving up.

I'm sure at some point I'll be able to meet with the gentleman and talk about peace.

But really, the victory wasn't in not meeting with the president or meeting with the president.

The victory was talking with our youth and getting an understanding of their concept of peace.

I brought mainly kids books, write books from, you know, like four years, five, six and seven.

But most of the kids were older that wanted to, you know, get the books and learn about peace.

And a lot of young adults in colleges were interested about the concept, too.

So that was a really good campaign.

And then one of my first campaigns, they were talking about the journey to the Mexican border, right?

That was done right after I bought the peace passed in 2019.

So I took the bus and I don't know if you remember that year.

There's a lot in the media going about going on about the immigration crisis.

Yeah, we're seeing like on the news cages, children in cages and people being torn away from their families.

So I had this crazy idea of trying to go to the border of Mexico to interview Border Patrol agents about the crisis, which is absolutely insane.

TIME Why would I think I could go down there and do that?

It doesn't make any sense, but I'm stubborn, so I was like, I'm going to do it.

So I called San Diego Border Patrol.

I told them I was coming down there like, baby, don't come down.

Yeah, we don't know you.

Like you're not even a news station.

So I was discouraged, but I still went anyway.

And as I started announcing I was doing this trip, fun started coming in, and after a while I realized it was going to actually happen.

So I took the peace bus and a few of my friends, we traveled down the border, down California, stopping in major cities, giving our socks and blankets to people in need.

Same with host families we didn't even know at all.

And that's a testament to love and peace, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We didn't even know at all.

So we actually got to the border.

Mexico met with San Diego Border Patrol.

They came out.

They were amazed that we were even there.

Sure.

Yeah.

They loved the bus and they were like, Well, since they're down here, we'll let you guys ride on patrol with us, huh?

So we got in the patrol car and we're on the border of Mexico, and I asked if I could interview them and we gave them a pretty good interview.

Put that on social media.

And it was a it was a very successful campaign.

Talk a little bit about media.

You have a podcast, right?

I did.

I did.

You did.

Okay.

What are your media plans?

Because the media is such a big piece of this to get the message out.

Right.

What are you thinking about in terms of media?

Media and duplicating the Quibi message?

Right.

Right.

Well, it's not necessarily a quality message, though.

I'm applying a vital part in it.

Right.

I think that I'm a pretty good speaker.

I think that I'm pretty handsome.

And so these couple together, we're talking about the most important thing are going to propel peace to a whole new level.

But I would say for as far as media is concerned, I'm creating a new talk show.

It's called The Last two Years The Peace Bus.

The Last two years I'm getting local celebrities, people who are involved, as far as influence is concerned, getting them together in the room to have the most important discussion about peace, raising awareness of things that are hindering us from creating a peaceful society.

And I'll be shooting this next month, November 16th, at the Washington State History Museum.

And hopefully, hopefully, I want to be on your network.

I want to be on PBS.

I don't see why a gentleman like myself, right, as handsome as I am and talking about the most important thing, shouldn't be on PBS, right?

Nor do I.

And I think that this discussion needs to be at the highest level.

We talk about our war.

We talk about our health care.

We talk about all these different things that are very important.

We're talking about going to the moon.

Talk about space now that we're talking about these important things.

Peace needs to be on the same level, right?

How do they how does this tie in to us coming together as a as a civil society?

Right.

And the thing about it is, you know, there's there's a lot of shows with politicians on it talking about things that are, you know, raised and things.

Like that, mostly about their power.

Right.

Right.

Tom Right.

And it's always polarized, right?

We don't talk about the nuances of these subjects.

So this November, I want to have a conversation about race and racism, the nuances of it.

And a more relaxed and honest conversation.

So hopefully, you know, I'm going to have Nate Jackson, the comedian on there, and another Travis Thompson, who's a local rapper.

And hopefully I can get Miesha Tate, who's an athlete from this area who was in the UFC.

What about cancel culture?

Are you scared of that.

Escape culture you.

Get?

You're scared of people saying the wrong things are getting people to say what they really think or mean because they're so afraid.

I think that's a big piece of this.

I hope to create an atmosphere in the show to have people be able to speak their mind.

Right.

How else are we going to create a peaceful society if everyone's scared to speak up?

We have to get real, really real about the conversation.

That is the only way we're going to be able to create a more peaceful society is if we're honest and open.

How do people get involved with you and your efforts at this time?

Right now, they can message me.

Message me.

Reach out to me on Instagram at the Peace Bus and let's have a conversation.

It can be monetary.

You can become a donor and donate every month.

But even even other than that, I think having a conversation about, you know, where you can fit in by talking with me would be the best way.

And to some of that feed into the Every Kid Eats program, I mean, that's where some of the funding is needed for some of these things you're doing, right?

Right.

It's been sort of like a I don't want to say gambling, but it's sort of been a crapshoot.

Every time I have this idea I want to put out.

And hope it comes.

It right.

And the people, it always resonates with the people and I think that's because I have this connection with the people.

Because I'm on the ground.

I'm on the ground.

Yes.

Literally, I'm driving around seeing the community.

Yeah.

They'll run India in Tacoma.

Right.

Right, exactly.

So the every kid in each campaign, when I announced that I was going to be linking up with local restaurants, kids would be able to eat for free.

In Tacoma automatically, funds started coming in.

And my next campaign, which I haven't announced yet, my my next humanitarian patrol.

Breaks a little news here.

Go ahead.

Just give us a hint.

Well, I've already done efforts in regards to poverty that I've done efforts in regards to hunger.

Well, the next one is going to be health care.

And there's a lot of people, a lot of elderly folks that have some really big medical bills.

You're not I think that the peace bus could help alleviate it, alleviating some of that stress, because health is something that's a necessity.

That being the case, I don't think any elderly person or any kids to be worrying about their funds in regards to being healthy.

Kobe, I appreciate you coming to Northwest now.

We've been want to hear from you for a long time.

And I do wish you the best of luck, man.

Thank you so much, Tom.

Appreciate you.

Everybody is trying to sell something.

The bottom line, I can't imagine a more difficult or more important product to sell right now than peace.

And that's why we're so glad to have Kobe, my Air Force, at zigzagging around Tacoma and now reaching out to a wider world with a message of reconciliation and understanding.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at cutesy dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now a streamable podcast of this program is available under the Northwest Now tab at KBTC.org and on Apple Podcasts by searching Northwest.

Now that's going to do it for this edition of Northwest.

Now it's up next time.

I'm Tom Layson and thanks for watching.