Social Justice - A Conversation

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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Good evening. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Honors College. My

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name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student. And this

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is social justice a conversation, a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:42
Well, good evening, everybody. I want to welcome everybody back to social justice conversation. I have the pleasure of being with my regular partner, Kiera Kramer, this evening. And we also have two special guests who are students at UNLV that are going to introduce themselves now.

Unknown Speaker 1:01
Hello. This is hope. I'm a fourth year student at UNLV, studying urban studies and communications, and I'm also a part of the Honors College. I'm happy to be here,

Unknown Speaker 1:11
and I'm Sarah Jane. I'm in my second year at UNLV. I'm a film major, also with the Honors College, and I have a minor in creative writing. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 1:18
well, that's wonderful. Glad to have you with us, and we're going to try to dissect what happened last Tuesday. I don't know how many people on campus thought that this was going to be the outcome when I had gone actually to drop off my mail in vote at the library, I was enormously impressed by how many people were voting and how many people were registering. And I felt, I felt relatively optimistic, at least, about, you know, the state of Nevada, but that, unfortunately, was not to be the case. And I think this program sort of will try to look into what were the reasons for the result that we got. And more importantly than that, though, what is the way forward? What is our response going to be as not just students and faculty, but also with citizens, as to what what we want to do to keep our country the democratic institution that it's always been so

Unknown Speaker 2:29
to kind of move into some of the factors that could have impacted the outcome. I think what we see is that many Americans really felt that the issue of inflation and how much money was in their pockets was going to be a determining factor for them as to who they would vote for over anything else. And of course, while many people were motivated by other issues such as immigration and abortion, ultimately, as we can see through the results, the abortion issue was not enough to get enough women to go out to vote, and ultimately, people are more concerned about the money that's in their pockets, and whether that be just the average middle class American trying to make ends meet, or if that's the rich 1% like 1% of our country, knowing how much they can capitalize off of another Trump presidency, both had the same end goal in mind,

Unknown Speaker 3:32
yeah, yeah. I think, Well, I think that's true to me, and this is just the way I look at it. This is my own personal opinion. The bottom line has to be, when you're voting for someone for such a high office as a person of ethics and character, that's almost a given that so many people accepted the fact that the person who they voted for was a person of neither ethics or character, is an extremely disturbing development. I cannot in my memory ever, and I've worked in politics for a number of years, ever saw a similar situation where a person had basically been convicted of major criminal charges, had been involved in financial fraud, have been had been involved, involved in the systematically abusing women in those days. That was a complete disqualifier. But I think that, I think the society has changed radically. So a lot of the givens that we used to hold faith in that were, you know, what kept the democracy moving forward, even though, haltingly, a lot of the time, they sort of vanished. And I think in many ways, our morality today is anything goes. I.

Unknown Speaker 4:59
Are even more so I think it's this idea that the ends will justify the means, and as long as we get what we want, we don't care how we get what we want, or how many people or how many lives we have to trample over in order to get what we want. And unfortunately, I don't think that's new to American history.

Unknown Speaker 5:18
Yeah, well, I think, you know, and I'm always, I'm always mentioning it, and when I when I teach, sometimes, you know, people might get tired of even hearing it, but there's an indifference with a lot of people. And I always talk about the example of like, a pie or a piece of cake that I think you have, you have a lot of good people in our country who are well intentioned and mean well. And then you have a certain percentage of people that you know, they'll just do whatever they have to do. They don't really have any morality or ethics or anything. But the greatest percentage of the people that you have in the country is neither one of those groups. It's a bunch of people that knew certain, certain things were wrong, but they just didn't care. They didn't have the time. They didn't want to be bothered, whatever, however you want to put it, and they would go along with something that you know they should have, they should have opposed, but it wasn't that important to them. So so if we get this guy, or we get this woman, it's okay, because it really doesn't affect me, because as long as I, as you said, I can get gas from under $3 or, you know, I can go to go to Red Lobster and have a feast and not spend too much money. That's all I care about. But the problem with that is, though, that so many of the things we take for granted, even economically, are based on a democratic system. And once the democratic system falls up, we're in big trouble. And I think, I think that a lot of people don't really want to look at history, the history of our country, and then the history of other countries, particularly when it comes to democratic values. And if you look at we were talking before the program started, Nazi Germany, where you always had a democratic system of government, and then all of a sudden, people come in, and the vast majority of people knew that these people were bringing very bad thoughts and ideas and actions, but they just looked the other way. And eventually, then the democracy that people had always relied on slowly was eradicated, and then tyranny and dictatorship became a norm, and that was the tragedy of it.

Unknown Speaker 7:33
And we see this trend happening across the world. It's not just in America that we are seeing a rise of totalitarianism and dictatorship, and when looking back at World War Two, who would be the America that would step in for us, like America at the time, had the values of freedom and democracy that they held, at least strongly enough that they were able, granted a little bit too late to really make a profound impact, but they stepped in soon enough to at least stop Hitler and to save however countless lives that they did. But when looking at the world today, with many of the major world powers being infiltrated by dictatorship, I wonder if America goes in that direction, who is going to be the America that saves the day? Is it the American people? Is it someone else? And I think that has to be one of the thoughts that we consider when we look at depending on how this goes, How are we going to dig ourselves out of this?

Unknown Speaker 8:39
Yeah, well, I think, from a foreign policy perspective, I'm sure the European countries that are belong, that belong to NATO, and of course, the people who live in the Ukraine are extremely concerned about where we're going to go, because I think that his idea basically is basically to blow out NATO and to basically abandon the Ukraine. And I think that has everything to do with his relationship with Vladimir Putin. I think that his campaign was aided enormously, both in the year that he got elected, even in 20 when he lost and and in our current campaign by misinformation and disinformation that was promoted exploited by Russia that flooded that flooded social media, that flooded a lot of the major communication websites. I think we make a mistake in our country to believe that we can get pure information and pure truth. I think those days, in many ways, are over. When I was growing up, there were just three major television networks, and basically you got the information from them and you got the information from whatever newspapers you read today. That's completely wrong. The major. Networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, they're basically minor players. Now, even even CNN and the MSNBC are minor players, because so much of the information is communicated in other ways. And you can go on social media and you can, you can basically plug into whatever information you're comfortable with, so it discourages people from wanting to find out what the real truth is, and they're lulled into a habit, or a pattern of behavior, where I can only go to this one station. This is the only station that's telling the truth. And as a result, the real truth was actually going on that an independent observer would be looking at and saying, Well, you know, all these things have happened with the President, or whatever it is, and we have to, we have to look into this. I mean, it was like, it was like the campaign rallies. The campaign rallies were a complete contrast. She comes out there, she presents herself beautifully. She lays out her plans for what the future should be. Her plan is inclusive. She wants to have all people to meet with her at the table all the things that you would want in the candidate. The other rallies were completely different than that. But when the rallies were shown, when the rallies were shown on, say, like the Fox network. It was completely reprogrammed, so people didn't really see how out of whack that was from anything that's normal, while, on the other hand, they would selectively pick, like, one thing maybe Kamala Harris said, and said, you know, this proves that, you know, she's not worthy to be the president, or or what have you the other thing, of course, which is certainly not laudable from the point of view of our country, as I was thinking, you know this this morning, about, you know, all the countries in the world, Mexico, Japan, England, Germany, New Zealand, that have had Women in charge of Scotland, that we had women in charge of the government, and we're supposed to be the beacon of democracy and innovation and stuff like that, and we're like, like, incapable of being able to do it. Somehow, I think

Unknown Speaker 12:14
in every single way, America wants to think and believe that we are the innovators and that we are at the top of the food chain, but in every way, when you look at health care spending, when you look at maternal mortality, when you look at education and developmental milestones in children, we fall below the developed nations on every single line item. And I don't know how long our government can keep lying to the American people, and how long we'll keep taking it that we're the best nation. But if you're able to look at global politics on any scale, you'll realize very quickly that we talk the big talk, but we don't walk the walk, and ultimately, our citizens suffer because of that greatly and because when you're lied to about an American Dream that really purports everything that a person could want, but all you feed them is capitalism. Ultimately, none of their Maslow's hierarchy of needs can really get met. Maybe you've got the first two tiers, food, shelter, water, but millions of Americans don't even have that, and if they do, there many more are one paycheck away from losing it. Yeah, all of it. And I think that type of lie is and that that is what we should be striving for as Americans, ultimately undermines our ability to progress.

Unknown Speaker 13:39
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I think, I think there's a lot of disillusionment in the country. And we discussed this, you know, for a number of occasions, on a number of occasions, this the system of justice. I can see a lot of people who might have wanted to go vote, but they're disillusioned with the system of justice. Now, a perfect example is the soon to be president again. His case, the man was accused of two state charges and two federal charges. In the case of the one state charge, the case was basically obstructed by the Republican majority in the in the assembly of the Georgia legislature that basically stopped the case from going forward. However, in the second case, the case went to trial, and the verdict was rendered by the jury, a jury of his peers, guilty in all counts of 34 felonies. Now, if you take any person sitting in this room now, or any person on this campus, or pretty much any person in the in the in the length and breadth of this country, if you are convicted of 34 felonies, you are going to prison. That is where you are going. And this was a case that was decided in May, and for whatever reason, we can all speculate on what the reason was it. Was never a sentence passed on what this man did. So you're observing that as an individual citizen, voter, what have you, and you say, Wow, this is what is this? This man's been convicted of all these charges, and nothing is done. Then, then you have, of course, the other two, the most serious charges, which were the documents case in which, in which case, the woman who was the judge in that case was basically, you know, going along with whatever Trump said, and his lawyer said as to what was going on, and she dismissed the case. Okay, which, which I found very interesting. And again, another case of people being disillusioned. There's a movie, you know, I'm, I'm being, I'm being, I'm surrounded here today by three undergraduate students. And I don't know if any of the grad undergraduate students have seen this movie called Reality. There's a movie called reality, and it's about this woman who worked for the, you know, the government. She was, she was in the military and everything. She had one document in her house, and she got five years in prison for having the one document. And this guy, he's got a library in his house. He's got stuff all over the place. It's top secret, extra secret, nothing is done about it. So when people see all these things that people say, well, what's the point? What's the point? Because the system of justice doesn't work. And the other thing, of course, which was interesting in the Times had a big article, is about it. If you have the money and the power and influence, you can actually be guilty of a whole bunch of things, but you never go to trial. But you keep delaying, you keep delaying. And some of these cases go on for years now, if it's the regular person, if it's a regular person who's living here, and you get arrested, all you wind up with is, if you're poor, you can't make bail, and you wind up in jail, and you're there for years before the case is even tried. So the whole system of justice is turned upside down. The the promise of American justice, you know, from from being a Law School professor is that you get justice. In other words, you get impartial justice, but you also have the right to a speedy trial. Here it's the exact opposite. You don't want a speedy trial, you don't want any trial, and you have the power and the influence not to get it. Ultimately,

Unknown Speaker 17:14
I think that's just a reflection of the fact that, over time, because we have put capitalism before Justice, and the fact that we've let money into our politics undermines every attempt to reinstate justice, especially reinstated above capitalism. Ultimately, the dollar is what drives everything in this nation, and justice is second to that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 17:40
Well, sure. Well, Citizens United was a disastrous, disastrous decision, because now, basically, you have unlimited money. Not not just that. You have unlimited money. You don't even know where the money comes from. There's no sourcing of it. I could, I could give you $100 million tomorrow and nobody would know I gave it to you. And then, you know, you We saw what happened in this particular election, that the money spent there was, there's money that that's countable. So they said that, you know, Kamala Harris spent a billion dollars, the Democratic Party spent a billion dollars, and the other side spent a billion dollars. But the other side spent a lot more than a billion dollars, because they had so many of these private donors who probably are unknown to 99.9% of the people in the world, but they here's $70 million here's $80 million and the problem there is, the problem there is that once you take that kind of money, you are not independent anymore. It wouldn't even matter if Donald Trump wasn't running. It could be somebody else who was running, and somebody, you know, gives you $80 million you're not a free soul. I mean, you have to pay your debt, and you don't know what that debt could be, and you don't know what they would be asking you to do, you know,

Unknown Speaker 18:52
no, you work for them now. And so they bought the price, yeah, of your campaign and of your identity, essentially. And they are putting forth your livelihood, or your, like, luxurious way of living, right, right? And so even more than livelihood, but ultimately, they're buying the American choice, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 19:16
Well, and what I thought it was interesting when we had talked, I guess it was the last broadcast about, you know, the whole thing with the Washington Post, how the guy that owns the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, he the the newspaper of itself, even though it's looked upon as a beacon of truth and everything, that's just a sideline for him. His business is Amazon, and Amazon has a lot of contracts with the government. Now he's he's thinking like, you know, maybe I, maybe I could back Kamala Harris, and I should back Kamala Harris, but let's say Kamala Harris doesn't win, then I got to deal with the other guy, and the other guy remembers that I didn't help him out, and I got all these government contracts, and maybe some of those government contracts don't get. Filled, and I'm out of luck, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna lose money on it. So he says, better just to be quiet. It doesn't benefit me. Look at the guy who's the head of Chase Bank, billionaire figure. He's got a lot of influence, but, you know, there's, there's something called the Board of Governors, the Treasury Department, there's all these things that can regulate banks, so he's able to say to the guy who's, you know, the Council of Economic Advisers, yeah, I don't like, I don't like Chase Bank, you know, I think they're like, they they weren't fair to me. What can we do to make life difficult for them? And that's how it works. That's how it works, you know, it's, it's not, it's not really that complicated. It's not really that complicated. But what it also does is it diminishes people's value of the news that they're getting. So so many people that that, like I subscribe to The Washington Post, so many people left. 1000s of people literally canceled their subscriptions. And not only that, but the newspaper stood for something. It stood for the, you know, the Watergate, reporting, Iran Contra, all these things, and now, basically, when they've had so many investigations of the ex president, and all these reporters worked on this, and they knew all the stuff he was involved in, and then they're not going to, they're not going to endorse a candidate, and the people are saying, What's going on here? I mean, they did all these investigations of this man, they it resulted in criminal charges, and they can't back Kamala Harris, that's running against them. So it's a bad it's a bad recipe. It's a bad recipe, you know? And I don't, I don't, honestly know where we go, go from from here on. I really don't,

Unknown Speaker 21:38
I think transitioning into what we do now. I was listening to a speech issued the night after the election, I believe was Wednesday evening from AOC, and I really want to voice what she discussed as next steps for the country. As hard as it may be currently for us to look at our neighbor who may have voted for Trump, and as you're discussing before this podcast, we have the people who are the die hards who will love Trump no matter what, who puts who puts him on the same pedestal as God. But there's the people who are just complacent, who think I'll make a buck or two more, or maybe even more under a Trump presidency, and that's enough for me to be able to overlook anyone else's equity in this country, but overall, I think the majority is going to be those that are complacent, and that complacency is poisoning our nation. And what AOC really urged from us was to get to know your neighbors. It's so easy right now. We see so much of this, just I need. If you believe X, Y, Z, you gotta go and like, I'm gonna ostracize you. And honestly, perhaps right now, that might be what we need. Maybe we do need some space from some people that are causing us emotional harm. And I think it's okay to take that time, but when he takes office in a few months from now, the real work of building community needs to commence. We are never going to get anywhere as a nation if we continue to take this path of it's us versus them. So AOC urged you get to know your neighbor down the street, your classmates, your co workers, and you gently begin to befriend these people, and you talk to them, and you invite them into your circle and into your lives, no matter how hard it is, because you cannot mobilize when you're fragmented, true and we can't, ultimately, And I've seen it in my own life. People are willing to talk to and like even though there's a lot of people that aren't, don't worry about them. There's enough people, especially young people, as well as we start to take over and become leaders in our own communities, we need to be the trendsetters that are preserving the right to speech, community shared ideas, and rebuilding this nation after what is about to happen, and we need to be the ones that when people are suffering because of everything that Trump is going to do, when people are going to not be able to afford groceries After his tax policy and tariff policy with China, we need to mobilize to make it so that people can afford to live, ultimately, when they're when people are unable to access health care as a group, we need to mobilize to provide those resources. Is it going to make it difficult? Is is the path for us as community workers, as members of the community who want to see the betterment of everyone's lives. Is this going to make our lives a lot harder and our work harder? Yes, but regardless, that is the work that needs to be done, the outreach and the community needs to be built, and it needs to be uplifted. By those who really care about other people, because it is that kindness and that consideration that opens people's eyes. Yeah, and ultimately, I believe extending that to every single person we can without persecuting them is going to be the only way out of this situation.

Unknown Speaker 25:19
Well, I agree with that. I agree with that completely. The the the impediment to, the impediment to getting there, though, is a certain set of very basic values. And, you know, I agree, you know, in outreach where I live, I'm outreaching all the time. It's, it's, difficult. It's difficult because people just are that way. And I try to be as diplomatic as I can be, but certain things about this particular election were very concerning. There are certain basic moral principles that people have to be possessed with, and it doesn't seem like a lot of people are possessed with them,

Unknown Speaker 26:02
no. And not many of them have been on the short end of the stick. Yeah, that's true too. Of course, sure. And so yeah, with this, with the next four years, the amount of people who may end up in that place, and I surely hope that they don't, yeah, but forever, who does as a result of Trump's policies and his administration's policies. I think that when you realize that your ignorance has led you to a place where it no longer doesn't apply to you, the situation that you could overlook because it didn't apply to you, it now does, yeah, and that is eye opening for people, and when it happens to your best friend, when it happens to your parents, that is when people start to open their eyes and when they can say, you know, this has affected me too, yeah, and that is when the politics and the heart of the nation changes.

Unknown Speaker 26:57
I agree, and I think that that is what needs to happen. It's going to be interesting to see how people are going to react when very basic things that have taken for granted, like Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare, are going to be taken away. And I don't, I don't think it's going to go well, no,

Unknown Speaker 27:18
but we the people who support those things. We have to be there. No,

Unknown Speaker 27:24
I need to prepare. I don't mean it even in that sense. I don't think it's going to go well. As a reaction from the people who were supporting him and they find out that all the stuff is gone, it could get very ugly very, very quickly,

Unknown Speaker 27:38
through the spirit of our revolution, our revolutionary spirit. I think we need to just remember. And I'll leave the podcast with this. This is a moment in which we can't lose hope. We can't lose sight of the work that Kamala Harris started on this campaign. And as she said, We are the light that has to continue to shine in the darkness. We can't forget about that. And so for anyone listening, just remember that be the good that you want to see in the world. That's all I can say.

Unknown Speaker 28:06
Well said. Thank you all for listening, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Good night, good night.

Unknown Speaker 28:21
Thank you for listening to this broadcast, and if you have any questions or ideas for future discussion topics, please contact myself at K, R, A, M, E, k two@unlv.nevada.edu or Professor Charles Stanton at C, H, A R, L, E, S, dot, S, T, A N, T, O n@unlv.edu, see you next time

Unknown Speaker 28:50
we look forward to it. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai