Social Justice - A Conversation

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. 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.

Charles Stanton 0:15
Good evening. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Honors

Kira Kramer 0:22
College. My name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student.

Charles Stanton 0:28
And this is social justice a conversation, a conversation.

Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome back social justice a conversation. I'm Charles Stanton. I'm here with my cohort, Kira Kramer, and we are going to talk about a few things that are going on in our country. Actually, to be honest with you, we could do this show every night, almost on an hourly basis, would need some kind of scribe to write down all the different crazy things that are happening. But I'm just going to talk about to get the program off on a not such a happy note, but certainly an accurate note. A couple of things that struck me over the last few days. One of those things, of course, is this idea that the President has the uni unilateral right to end birthright citizenship. And of course, we know that he does not have that right, and that the 14th Amendment guarantees that right to to its citizens. And yet, and yet, he keeps making these attempts to circumvent the Constitution and the rule of law. And my question is, number one, where is the Republican Party in all this? What actually is the function of the Republican Party to you know, basically be, be cheerleaders for everything this man does, even though they know that a lot of the stuff that he's doing is patently illegal. So that's so that's one, that's one thing I want to throw out there. Then the second thing which, which happened relatively recently, and really was astonishing to me, was his plan for for Gaza, and the plan for what he wants to do with all the Palestinian refugees, and his idea that he was going to take it over, and all this, all this crazy stuff that, you know is not, is not, you know, based on any kind of facts or knowledge or really a understanding of the dynamic over there. But anyway, as I was looking through the paper, and there were all these statements by, you know, people who were, you know, from different Middle Eastern countries and also from Europe. The most, I thought cogent. I don't even know how to put this destruction of his plan came from Russia, that that Vladimir Putin, spokesperson, who was a Russian Ambassador to the United States, basically said that this was an idea that was like insane, that no one in their right mind who had any knowledge of what was going on in that part of the world would ever agree to this. And considering all the things that had happened, you know, to these people during during the war, it would be, it would be like abominable to now just basically take them off their land and resettle them somewhere. And now, I say somewhere, because I don't think any of the Arab countries are going to be taking any of these people in, so they'll just be a stateless group of people. But again, this is another thing where it's clearly at variance, like with what the rest of the world knows needs to be done, and the Republican Party just goes with it.

Kira Kramer 3:50
Yeah. And honestly, looking historically at foreign politics, this is exactly what the United States has been doing historically for generations. They go in, our tax dollars have been funding Israel's absolute destruction of the region, and now that these people are the Palestinians are displaced, it's the perfect time for the US to step in and to take complete advantage of their vulnerabilities and to exploit the resources of the area, which is exactly what we've been doing for so long. And it's just heinous that he thinks he can step in and do exactly that, and that no one else in our Congress or our representatives are speaking out when we know that this is what's happening, and we know that it doesn't have to be this way. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 4:41
yeah, oh, absolutely. Well, I think it's, I think it's symptomatic of two things, one thing that the Democratic party seems rudderless and that it lacks. It lacks leaders. It lacks. It lacks spokespeople. It lacks. Relax. It lacks a one unified voice as to what's going on vis a vis the things that are doing. And then, of course, you have the you have the Republican Party, who basically is just morally asleep in regards to his actions. I thought it was very interesting, you know, you know, just diverging for a bit about the Pete HEG says nomination, and how Senator Tillis of North Carolina had been informed by this woman as to what his what his liabilities were, and how this guy just folded up like a cheap suit when they started to put pressure on the Republican Party. And, you know, the threat of intimidation that they have now is basically that anybody who's going to be running for office in the near future, they're threatened with being primaried by somebody who's backed by Donald Trump and the people are, you know, afraid to really fulfill their duty of office, basically. And he had even gone Senator Tillis in North Carolina. He had even gone to get this woman who was going to testify against hex it, to actually give a sworn affidavit as to what, what hex it's, you know, background was, etc, etc. And he he up to the two or three hours before they were actually going to have the vote, was going to be a no vote, which would have killed the nomination. And then all of a sudden, you know, that all changes. And you know he just, he just folded up. And I don't see anybody in the Republican Party really, who really is has stood up and said, Listen, you know, we're going down the wrong road here. But we saw, we saw this before, though. We saw this in the Kavanaugh nomination as well, when he was the president, prior to Biden and they and they had a lot of very damning stuff against Kavanaugh. They had other people who were who were ready to come and testify, but they had a conscripted investigation. Basically, that's what happened. The FBI was basically, you know, not allowed to really investigate this guy's background. And that was, that was, and of course, of course, a lot of this too, though, is there's a denialism among the Republican Party, because in the case of Kavanaugh, especially, Kavanaugh supposedly promised Susan Collins that he wasn't going to have anything to do with repealing abortion. And if you knew anything about Kavanaugh and his background and his political stance that you would believe that is really, you know, mind boggling. I don't know. I mean, it's just, it just seems, though, that there's, there's a lack of, there's a lack of moral clarity and a lack of leadership. And the other thing that's that, you know, that's omnipresent about this is, and I think it has a lot to do with why he's acting in the way he is, is because he's been given immunity, basically, he's basically been told he can do whatever he wants to do, and nothing can be done about it. And because imagine, imagine any other person, any other leader, who was actually trying to to enact, by his own word, legislation that was directly abhorrence to what's actually in the actual Constitution itself, and they don't seem to be bothered by it, no. And

Kira Kramer 8:35
not only that, like Democrats have sat idle, it's like Biden had presidential immunity. I'm sure there's plenty of things that he could have done, like, if we're gonna let the Republicans be this radical, why is our party not meeting, like, not meeting that standard, like, if we're gonna let them derail democracy, why are we not being as aggressive in the other direction of protecting it and doing everything in our power? Constitutional or not? Because now I guess that's constitutionality is just a flavor preference. If you want to do that, why are we not going in the opposite direction? Something else I think is really worth mentioning is Elon Musk's department of government efficiency. This week gained control of the Treasury Department's payment system, which pretty much gives him access to sensitive data, including the social security numbers of taxpayers, and this essentially is what this system disperses trillions of dollars of Social Security payments, federal salaries and a lot of Medicare and Medicaid payment information can be found through this system. And all of this is happening and is being conducted by a person that was not directly elected by the American people, and we're giving this corporate interest so much power to halt federal funding and from. Services and programs like Medicare and Social Security and giving a business person our most private information. And none of us elected him, none of us elected him, and he is having access to more private information than most government officials will ever see in their careers, which is unprecedented and extremely inappropriate,

Charles Stanton 10:22
yeah, well, absolutely correct, and there's no doubt about that. But again, there's a lack of there's a lack of courage in the Republican Party. There's a lack of leadership on the Democratic Party. And I really think, I really think what I think should be done, and I don't know how this could be done, because we have such a fractured Congress and a fractured population. If I were, if I were the leader of the minority party, which is the Democratic Party, I would, I would, I would sit down. I would sit down with John Thune, and, you know, with with some of my people and some of his people and have an honest conversation as to what was going on here. Because what's happening, what's happening is an attempt to destroy democracy. This is what we're seeing. It's happening incrementally, but it's happening at the same, at all the same. And it's it's chipping away and our institutions. It's chipping it away our way and our way of life, and it will reach a certain stage where this will become commonplace, and people will will come to normalize all these and incursions into rights that we have guaranteed by our Constitution, but are being taken away from us. That's why, you know, I'll just make this reference about, you know, in the cinema, I think one of the most, one of the most apt pictures you know about this was, was a movie called advice and consent that was made in 1962 where this man, who's, who's reminded me of one of the Trump nominees, he's nominated to be the Secretary of State. And, you know, he seems like he's right off the Wheaties box, and in his in there, you know, in interrogatories with him, he's supposedly progressive, and he says, We've got to change. We've got to change, basically, our values, and a lot of our values, he says are outmoded. Well, anyway, during the movie, of course, they bring somebody out to testify against him, and the man they bring out to testify has none of the Polish and the shine that the nominee has, you know, he's a guy who's, you know, basically, he lost his job and a whole, the whole, whole lot of other negative things, but he knew, he knew the nominee when he was going to go into university, University of Chicago. And there was, as the book describes, there was, there was a cell of people who were in this group of people who were basically not for promoting American idealism of American democracy. And the man, he's asked during the he's asked during the interrogation, what was the view of how America could change? And the man says that, well, he says there were people in the cell they believed that the only way to change America was through violent overthrow. And the senator questions him, and he says, Well, what about that? What about the nominee? And he says, about the nominee? Says, No. He said, laughing, well, was the name of the nominee? He said, No. He says he didn't believe that. He didn't believe that America would fall or change by violence. It would change by the erosion of our values that slowly allowed the rights and liberties that we always took for granted would be chipped away at. And we're seeing that right now. Basically, we're seeing that right now, not just with the birthright thing, but just with, you know, the treatment of transgender people, the fact that they're trying to basically abolish diversity, equity, inclusion, and the fact that a lot of a lot of corporate entities are going along with it. Kira made the very, very good point, and the last broadcast about how Costco has remained strong. And, you know proposing, and you know enthusiastically, the initiatives of Dei, but there's a lot of a lot of businesses, primarily Amazon. But that's not the only one who basically, are basically walking away, or I should say, running away from it, even, even like the National Football League, where they always used to have these banners and everything for the Super Bowl having to do with fighting racism that's disappeared for this game. So we can, we can we can see that and I, and I, and I believe this is what I believe. This is just my own opinion. I believe that he wants to revoke gay rights. I think he wants to take away. By the rights of the LGBT community. I think he wants to end gay marriage, which he can be abetted in by the Supreme Court. And I think what he wants to also do is, as crazy as this sounds, is abrogate the marriages that have already been consummated.

Kira Kramer 15:19
And I would even say even more than that, just to circle back to like, what he's currently doing, he has sent, he sent emails for federal and, like, essentially, there is a deadline or an offer for federal workers to resign from their jobs. And I think that's also just part of the fear tactics that he's using that he's threatening people's place of work as a part of these fear tactics that he's using to keep all of America afraid about what he's doing. But we cannot succumb to that. I just want to point out that 2% which is 40,000 federal employees, have already stepped down really, as a result of his threat, and they however, this is still being met with lawsuits that's being filed by one group in particular, democracy forward, which is a union that's representing 800,000 civil servants, stating that his administration's demand for the resignation is unlawful and arbitrary, and it just goes to show that he is going to try to upend our democracy and our rights and securities as much as he can without being stopped. And ultimately, we have to stand up to him. We have to unionize and support these lawsuits and donate to the organizations that are pursuing these lawsuits. These lawsuits will take many years and are extremely expensive, and one way for people to actually make a difference is to support these lawsuits monetarily or with your actionable support through their websites and doing anything you can to mobilize support for these efforts. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 17:12
well, I think that's, that's absolutely correct. I think that, I think that in a lot of these cases, a lot of these people are civil service people, so the idea that you can just, you know, automatically fire them is not lawful.

Kira Kramer 17:27
And my own family members have received these letters themselves. They receive them once in the morning and once in the evening, asking them to resign. It's actually unfathomable. Well,

Charles Stanton 17:39
the question, the question, though, that I don't think that's been really addressed, though, which is very fascinating to me, is, what is his purpose in doing this? Now, on the one hand, on the one hand, you could say it's a financial purpose that He wants to cut waste and all the rest of that stuff,

Kira Kramer 18:01
but he can just reappoint yes man in every position that these government agencies hold,

Charles Stanton 18:06
or maybe not appoint anybody, and maybe just leave all those jobs vacant, and all those agencies basically corrode because they have no they have no workers. Which is, which is another problem, the other interesting thing about it, which I think ties into the nominations that he's made, and it has, it has been, it has, we'll just put it as this. It has not been a distinguished lot of nominees. And I was, I've been giving this a lot of thought. I've been giving this a lot of thought, because you could put, I mean, there's a whole bunch of people he could have nominated, and I'm sure a lot of them would have pretty much done pretty much what the nominees are going to be doing if they get these jobs. Now, anyway, but I was thinking about, I said to myself, you know, he nominated Kennedy, Tulsi, Garrett, Hex with all the rest of that stuff, and they wanted expedited, you know, hearings and, you know, a minimal FBI check and everything. And I'm saying to myself, well, that's really, really not what should be going on. Because you want to, you want to have people who, number one, have character, and you also need to have people who have experience. And obviously, if people have things against them that are, you know, morally, you know, bankrupt, you wouldn't want them either. But so let's say he appoints all these people. But the my thought was, okay, these people have these jobs now, but if you didn't do the investigations that you're supposed to do, and they didn't really vet these people as they're supposed to. You could have a whole bunch of people in the Cabinet who are who are compromised, and particularly in the case of somebody like the Secretary of Defense, hexes. He's running. And one of the there was a four star general, on the other hand, was saying he runs one of the most important cabinet positions. And suppose, suppose what they know about him, suppose what they know about him is is far from all that they know about him, or they don't know a lot about and the reason I say that is because it's very naive to believe that the Russians or our enemies don't have a complete dossier and file on all these different people. And if it comes to a point where they hold information that we don't know about, they can make these people blackmailable, and they might have to do whatever they're told to do, they wouldn't have a choice. So it really doesn't make any sense to me why he's not picking people who are more, you know, more, vetted, more, but also of a higher stature. I don't get that. I

Kira Kramer 20:52
genuinely don't think he cares. I think he personally thinks, with his ego that they're not going to blackmail him because he's gonna threaten them in some way, and they're just going to listen to him. And I think it's his own blindness, megalomania, yeah, that eludes him to thinking that he can just do whatever he wants, something else that I wanted to cover in this episode I personally study public health and the CDC and the World Health Organizations, organizations that I have used throughout and accessed as resources throughout my degree, have been threatened by the Trump administration. The Trump administration has removed pretty much all documents on reproductive rights issues, sexual health, intimate partner violence and more from the CDC. And I want to share that these documents, however, can be found at a website called CDC guidelines.com where former employees of the CDC are amassing as many of these documents as they can. And if you or anyone you know has published research on these topics, please reach out to the team at CDC guidelines.com so that you can have your research preserved and you can share the message and the knowledge that you have procured through your research. And additionally, just a small example of this erosion of the field of public health, there is a there was a database called burfis, which is the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This was used to monitor a variety of behaviors in the United States that pertain to all types of health issues, from smoking to cancer to sexual health. It was expansive, and throughout my degree, I was tasked with using this system to monitor chronic health and prevention services, and it was a major part of my own curriculum at UNLV, and now it's gone. And so it's just shocking that something from my own curriculum is just non existent anymore, and that's terrifying. And if you really care about health, not just or being the healthiest nation in the world, or being number one, this absolutely obliterates any idea of us being able to be well informed about what people need to be healthy in this country. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 23:40
yeah. Well, of course, of course, all these things, you know, the who, the CDC, they're all contrary to any basic principles of what, of what a president or a leader was supposed to do that you, when you, when you take the older office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution above the above all of that is that you're supposed to be basically a shepherd for the people. You're supposed to be looking after the public interest. I mean, it's interesting that our that our our bird that represents our country is the eagle, and the eagle, of course, is a bird of protection for all those that are in the nest of the eagle. And there doesn't seem to be any, there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of that. I think what, what also needs to be done, though, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give him a boost, because I think he's, he's a truly honest guy is, I think the Democratic Party has to really start looking at Bernie Sanders as somebody to be a leader in the party. I think Chuck Schumer, he's not doing it. And they need, we need a very aggressive, active, constant voice as to what's happening in our country. And he. One of those voices, along with AOC as well, and people like that absolutely no, because it seems like that we're lacking the we're lacking the fire

Kira Kramer 25:12
Absolutely and we desperately need it. In the last few minutes of the podcast we have today, I do want to share some resources that can provide you protection and the information you need to make informed decisions about you and your loved ones and your health. Today, I want to talk more about reproductive rights and resources in order to access more information about news regarding reproductive resources, there is gut marker. It's a German name, so that's spelled, G, U, T, T, M, A, C, H, E, r.org, they do a significant amount of work for reproductive health and safety, and you can find many resources related to policy, health care information and they are doing and you can also donate, if you want to help make an impact to keep these resources accessible to people. Additionally, sicus is a organization run out of Washington, DC, and they provide sexual education for social change, and they also have many different ways to get involved. They share their publications, and they do many different policy advocacy and reproductive health care rights advocacy for gender, race and more. Additionally, you can go to Advocates for youth.org. This is another organization that has many resources. They have fact sheets, newsletters, policy and advocacy, and they cover a variety of issues, including abortion access, contraceptive access, HIV, sexual violence, reproductive justice and more. Furthermore, there's also the Williams Institute coming out of the UCLA School of Law, and they focus more specifically on LGBTQ, plus resources, publications and more. Also, there's the Trevor Project, and the Southern Nevada Health District is providing free and low cost sexual health services. So please make sure to access those services if you need them, and to spread the word as well as donate or see what you can do to get involved in these organizations and the advocacy work they're doing. Thank

Charles Stanton 27:34
you for that. As we prepare to sign off, I just want to say one thing that I think we would all be wise to remember the words of Benjamin Franklin. Now, when Benjamin Franklin was leaving the constitutional Hall, he was asked by a gentleman what had happened inside constitutional Hall, what had the founders created? And Franklin said, we have created a republic, if we can keep it, and that is on all of us now to lend our voices, to lend our energies, to lend our efforts to preserve our democracy, because once the democracy erodes, so will all the rights and freedoms and liberties that we've taken for granted for over 200 years. Yes.

Kira Kramer 28:18
Thank you very much for that incentive, and we hope that you all will find a way to express your voice and

Charles Stanton 28:25
with that good night, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.

Kira Kramer 28:38
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

Charles Stanton 29:07
we look forward to it. You.