Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV and the Boyd School of Law. Hi, I'm

Unknown Speaker 0:07
Ilana weatherald. I'm a third year law student

Unknown Speaker 0:09
and welcome to social justice, social justice, the conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:13
conversation. Hello, my name is Lana Weatherall joined alongside Professor Charles Stanton coming out of the Boyd School of Law here in Las Vegas, Nevada. We're going to be your host of social justice, a conversation airing every Thursday evening at 6:30pm. The goal of this weekly 30 minute program brought to you by k u and v is not only to provide insight and coverage surrounding topical and engaging subjects, but to discuss those subjects in a way that remains sensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized people within our communities. The hope here is that facilitating a more in depth and a less vitriol filled conversation around social justice will help make these topics easier to broach. Of course, social justice is merely an umbrella term used for tackling a myriad of issues within our society. As such, this show expects to showcase conversations surrounding socio economic inequalities, feminism, intersectionality, systemic legislative issues, voting rights, and more. Although portions of these conversations may showcase some uncomfortable realities or truths, this country is in a state of deep and unsettling divide. And in that sense, facilitating an even keeled and non sensationalized conversation surrounding the most pressing issues seems necessary now more than ever, so there will likely be some esteemed guest featured on this program, be sure to stay tuned as updates on guest features will be provided in the coming shows the most sincere gratitude goes out to those taking the time to listen, to learn, and to try to love a little more. And with that, it's time to start a discussion to our first topic.

Unknown Speaker 1:40
Good. Good afternoon. Good evening, everybody. This is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the UNLV Honors College, and the UNLV Boyd law school. I've given a lot of thought to the idea of possibly doing a show like this over the years as a teacher, I do basically with, you know, class individual classes of students. But I've come to realize as time has gone on, that we tried it, we need to try to reach a broader audience. And a lot of what this program is going to be about is myself and Lana, trying to just not only explain certain things, but make people aware of certain facts that they might not be aware of, we want to try to do a show. That is not like a lot of what's on radio today, which is filled with more hate than light. We want to try to have people get into a conversation with us ultimately, about not who's at fault as much as what can we do to make things better. So let me turn this back to lambda now.

Unknown Speaker 2:47
So I think one of the biggest things we're coming on today is a side taking right into divisiveness. And when we do try to broach these very important topics or topics that may have more sensitive nature, it tends to be a I'm writing you're wrong and not a nuanced conversation that sort of gets into the realities of these situations. And I'm just really excited that we're going to be able to facilitate some more interesting conversations. So I think a good first place to start right now is, you know, we're dealing with a an interesting time for individualized power and for looking at authoritarian authoritarianism. And when we think about what's going on with the appointing appointing of a special master and what's going on with Donald Trump today, former President Trump right, I think it's time to think about what we really are doing with positions of power in America and how we view people in positions of power. And I think that this is very scary, oh, we're opening the door for sort of one man can do no wrong. And I worry about the precedent that will be set in the coming weeks with with what happens here.

Unknown Speaker 3:50
Yeah. It was very interesting on Saturday, to hear the Attorney General and the attorney Attorney General's address to those people who are immigrants who were becoming United States citizens at Ellis Island. And what he had to say to them, not only tying in his great appreciation and love of our country, and his wishes for them, but also to try to impress upon them and anyone else who was listening, that our country is a country of laws, and that the law cannot be bent to serve a person because they're wealthy or they have all kinds of other advantages. But justice should be ultimately blind to color, race, ethnicity, and everything else that's related to those things, and a case just judged on its merits. And I think his his words are very powerful today, because so much of the dialogue regarding the situation with the ex President really escapes the true facts of actually what has been happening I think that's the most important thing that we need to look at what those facts were. And I think the other thing that's kind of interesting is the attack on our institutions. The attack on the FBI, the attack on the Justice Department, which is quite interesting, because a lot of the people who were on the Republican Party were always posited as entities that were supporting law enforcement and supporting, basically, the rule of law. And, of course, you know, the FBI and the police and everything. Now, that seems to now that seems to be waning. I think the other interesting thing about that in and people have said, you know, that it's about, you know, every everybody being judged equally that no one is above the law. But I think the extraordinary lengths to which the FBI and the Justice Department had worked to avoid having to actually do a search, that they had made repeated pleas to the President and the President's staff about the return of these documents, of course, yes, they Eric Hirshman, who had been an attorney in the in the White House, had also spoken directly to the president. And he told the president, you know, you really need to return the return these things, so they can be given to the National Archives.

Unknown Speaker 6:22
Right. And this was late last year that Eric Hirshman had had given these warnings. And I think you bring up a great point, you know, what is so interesting you you have these sort of subsection of the Republican Party and a large actually will go a large portion of the Republican Party espouse the beliefs that we have to back the blue when these are the people that are working on the ground. And these are the people that demand respect in our country. And then, you know, the second unsavory news or the second, it does not go their way all the sudden, they don't espouse that same respect for our law enforcement, like sort of the point you made. I don't know how we reckon with that, right. When we no longer believe our institutions, when they were the thing that quite frankly, won one of the election is this belief in, you know, a greater power and belief in Trump and belief in law enforcement, and then it it wanes the second, it doesn't go your way. I think that that is frightening. And I think it speaks to the larger issue where if you're not right, you're wrong. There's no nuance in conversation. If the Justice Department and to a lesser extent the FBI does not cooperate in the way we deem necessary, well, then screw the FBI. You know, that just does not seem when we're getting to that point, I think we're no longer having realistic conversations about what's going on here. And like you say them, we're not talking about the facts, we're talking about the choice to demonize an entire institution just because they do not, not even necessarily rule in the favor because the Special Master has made no rulings but threatened the position that Trump is in. It's just very, it's frightening.

Unknown Speaker 7:44
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, our institutions have been under attack for a long time. And some of the some of those wounds were self inflicted. If you look at the FBI, in the case of Larry Nasser, the doctor who abused so many children and young women out in Michigan, you can look at, you can look at other other mistakes that the FBI made. It's also come from a lot of forces in the country, who really don't believe in law as being applied fairly to everybody. And I think that's one of the issues that America has never faced. As far as the treatment of minorities, the treatment of women is not really following the dictates that every person should be judged equally. There was a recently the the news that the Justice Department is going to be investigating the New York City Police Department for its lack of response in sexual abuse cases where women were coming to complain about the misdeeds of perpetrators. And basically, their their complaints were not heard, or they were put on the shelf, or they weren't even investigated. You have all these different things, you know, the killings of motorists that were stopped for minor infractions. So those are things that obviously has lessons, support for the police lesson support for, you know, the courts when you have disparities of sentence and sentencing. But right now, I think we're at the point regarding regarding the ex President, we're really is a test of our whole system of law. And I think we would be very mistaken if we did not look back at what the Founders intended and what the Founders intended, was, there was no king there was no sovereign. There was the people themselves deciding the future of their of their of their land. I'm reminded of what Franklin said when he was leaving convention hall and he was asked by a gentleman, what have you done in there, what have you created and Franklin said, we've created A Republican if we can keep it?

Unknown Speaker 10:02
No, I think that's a very astute observation. You know, I do agree with you that the mistrust in our institutions that a lot of people do have is well founded. It's just not how that argument is articulated. You know, I don't think when these, the FBI and the DOJ are subject to criticism, it's usually around their mistreatment of minorities or the mistreatment. And that's not usually what the the conversation centers around, right. It's about misappropriating funds, or it's about, you know, they're all it's never about what the real issues are. So I think you make a great point, when you bring up what's going on in New York, or what happened with Larry net when you attack, I think, more of the systemic issues that start small, right, one individual guy when it shows that individuals in these institutions are susceptible to punishment and can be but that's obviously when we're doing this in such a large scale with this special master. I don't know if that's, that's the truth. But yeah, I think you make a great point that trust in our institutions has eroded and rightfully so. But it's how we critique I think, those flaws within the institution that comes comes with problems. I don't think we critique these institutions properly. I don't think we hold these institutions accountable properly. And it's how do we how do we do that beyond just You're wrong? I'm right. I don't certainly have an answer presently. But I think that yeah, you make a great point that this, that trust in the institutions is unfounded for a good reason.

Unknown Speaker 11:18
I find it interesting, too, that the Republican Party was always the party, not only of law and water, but have a very strong defense, very supportive of NATO, very wary of Russia, you know, for a balanced budget for all those things. And in a matter of a few years, all that disappeared, the biggest tax cut in history. Basically, some were supportive, but not the whole chorus of Republicans, for our aides to the Ukraine, also having to do with the fact that we're NATO was very, very preeminent in our foreign policy, a diminishment and enthusiasm for NATO. And one can only wonder if the election results had been different in November of 2020, or whether we would still be in NATO. And certainly I don't think it's a wild thing to say that. I don't see it that we would have done anything for the Ukraine. Oh, absolutely

Unknown Speaker 12:26
not. If anything, I would have venture to guess we would have been supportive of Russia's endeavors. You know, hard to say now, but it certainly seemed that way. And, you know, President Biden came under some strict scrutiny. I mean, some real harsh criticism came his way about this aid sending to Ukraine, and look where we are now, you know, I think he caught a lot of flack that was completely unnecessary for sending that aid. And, you know, hindsight is 2020. Right, but look at how successful their military operations have been. It's been nothing short of, you know, extraordinary. And if you asked, I think almost anybody three months ago, I think there would have even been hesitancy in the Democratic Party for the amount of aid we were sending. But I mean, democracy rules the day, I suppose.

Unknown Speaker 13:06
Yeah. And you know, what's interesting, too, is that recent events have shown us that we were right in supporting the Ukraine, the discovery of the mass graves, the murder of innocent people, the torturing of people reminded me It reminded me actually, of some of the things that went on in the Holocaust. They've been running this program on PBS, it's going to be on tonight, it's going to be on Tuesday, it's going to be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But Ken Burns, the documentarian has done this documentary about the Holocaust. And you see a lot of the same things that were happening in the countries that were controlled by Nazi Germany, you're seeing the same thing now and what the Russians are doing, which is basically a genocide against people who are otherwise innocent people. And as the more we, the more we learn about that, we know that we were trying to act on the side of good,

Unknown Speaker 14:16
right. And as a whole, I think, in our country, too, you know, Ukraine aside, I think, the more we move away from authority, authoritarianism, and we speak loudly and proudly that authoritarian authoritarianism is not only where we're headed, but where we need to avoid. I think people are scared to use that word. And people are scared to have that conversation or a dictatorship because then it sort of all melds together into one very scary proposition. Right? But that is the reality. We're starting to have people that individual rulers right that believe they're above the rule of law, and for us to ascend aid to a country that believes in many of the same principles that we believe in. Should have never been a question in my mind should have never been. Do we help our allies defend the rights that we have fought so hard for for 200? I just mind boggling I think is the Best term for, for what we have sort of allowed a hint of authorial authoritarianism to become normalized. We've never seen this sort of Putin, like Trump like regime in many, many years, like you say, since since basically Hitler. And I know that seems like a far stretch. But that's if we don't start noticing and making these comments. Now, this is we could lead to those type of situations. And we're already seen hints, and it's still levels of threats that that should make us wary that we could repeat history.

Unknown Speaker 15:31
Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, a number of years ago, auto permanenter, had made a movie called advise and consent. And it was about this man who wants to become Secretary of State. And, of course, in his testimony, before the committee, he perjured himself, which, you know, sort of some allusion can be made to some of the testimonies of people who appear before judicial committees, and whether they're being fully truthful. But but in the movie, a man comes to testify about this about the nominees past. And he says, you know, he said, I listened to what this man had to say. And he said, he said that our country will not be overthrown by violence. He said, our country will be overthrown by a weathering of the institutions. So weathering from within that basically, our our values, our our set of standards, or rules or laws will become eroded and outdated. When that vacuum is created, then it's easy for some person to come in. If you look at what happened in Nazi Germany. That's how Hitler, Hitler came to power, that well, the established norms were thrown out. And you got basically a whole bunch of people following this guy, without even thinking of the consequences of what he was going to do.

Unknown Speaker 16:54
Yeah, no, I 100%. And I think you see that not only here in here at home, but abroad as well. I think it ties back to our earlier conversation, where if, you know, we allow these institutions to be viewed as sinister, we allowed these institutions to not be subjected to proper criticism, the rest will crumble. And so you know, maybe the conversation starts with what can we do to help facilitate not only growth, not only change, but sort of a rewriting of where the errors came within our institutions. And I'm not just talking, you know, in Congress, I'm talking, you know, we're starting at as small as the DMV all the way up to, you know, there are just problems, whether that be socio economic problems, whether that be, you know, problems of gender, whether that'd be it's just numerous, and it starts at the smallest institution and goes all the way up. So I think you make a great point that if we strengthen our institutions, again, from as small the DMV to your local tax collector's office, all the way up to, you know, the massive body of Congress. I think that and this also sounds I think very broad are all very, you know, I'm using flowery academic language to try to describe a problem that's very complex, and we just need to look at the but but it's, it's it's true. And I don't, I don't think we can have a world in which we view institutions as one set, historical figure body and we don't adapt, and we don't, these institutions need to be viewed as malleable again, from the bottom up. And when we don't have conversations about institutions, they become conversations about people within those institutions, problems arise.

Unknown Speaker 18:26
I think, I think one of the things we have not done in our country, pretty much over the full length of our country's existence, is really have honest conversations about a lot of the problems that bedevil us, the treatment of the treatment of minorities, the treatment of women, the the cycle, the almost endless cycle of poverty, we've really never talked about it, we've never really come to terms with it. And we believe a lot of us that these problems are going to go away on their own. And of course, that's not what happens in the life of any nation, that problems only are eradicated. If people of good have good will come together and try to work together. I think that one of the tragedies in our country today is how divided we are as groups as ethnicities as minorities as reasons a gender without realizing a course that you know unto God, everybody's the same. And we should be more like we should be looking more for the similarities and things that we can agree on as people and start from there. And then from there, start to get to know one another as people because we in many ways, just as we still have segregation in many cities, we have segregated systems of thought, where everything is kept away from us. every source of news or information that doesn't agree with our preconceived notion of what, you know, the truth is,

Unknown Speaker 20:08
right. And a lot of the times, the way these algorithms are set up on many massive social media platforms will prevent you from seeing opposite news, as it's as it starts, you know, opposing viewpoints that from the from jump, right, you will only see that, you know, small niche of your own internet community and the algorithms are in place so that you only engage with that material. And this starts young, you know, they they start targeting advertisements at very young children. And then certain news articles that very young children, I mean, these are things that you end up creating, and pigeon holing yourself into online communities, and sometimes even in person communities are very good at that. But it's become more increasingly common online. And that just becomes so in echo chamber. So yeah, you know, you are 100%, right, because the, they have this problem where if you are in the in group, and you're only seeing things from the in group, well, then by nature, anybody that disagrees with you is in the out group, and you will treat them accordingly. And I just I'm very scared about as you know, geolocation technology becomes more advanced. And as data tracking becomes more advanced, and we it will become more and more, more more, compartmentalized, more divided, it will be harder to break into alternative internet groups or break into, you know, even a type of social media that doesn't have that sort of, you know, you might have heard the be real coming up. I think those kinds of companies will even be harder to come to fruition because there's such an issue with capitalizing on human data, and then using that data to create some sort of mindset in some sort of way that these people end up thinking, frightening, frightening stuff.

Unknown Speaker 21:47
Yeah. And I think in Lima, what you said, Lana, I think there's also become an attack on truth and objective facts. I think we're seeing that more and more where you see certain things that are clearly, you know, wrong, illegally. And I'm not just speaking as an attorney, I'm speaking just as a citizen, right. And there's a denialism we have in our country. We know certain things are wrong, but but because we back certain individuals, we try to look the other way. And, you know, it's interesting how like, today, there's, there's a whole set of alternative facts as to what happens, what happens in elections, what happens in how the media covers things, but there are there are objective facts. There are objective truths, that everybody should want to find out what they are. And I think we need people to expand their horizons beyond just the media and commentaries that they're used to hearing. I think people need to be more intellectually curious. I think people need to not only learn from one set of facts, or one set of news, but explore a whole bunch of things.

Unknown Speaker 23:13
And you know what, I will give some credence here to people that have difficulty doing so because so many corporate owned media conglomerates only show a certain set of facts. And this is this is systemic, I mean, where the massive media conglomerates will only report what is beneficial to them their bottom line, and you it's very hard, I think, to get a clear, non biased picture anywhere anymore, I would be hard pressed to name a media conglomerate, I can think of that as fully objective. I don't think that exists anymore. You know, even even C span will have a headline with an angle. So I do I do just really wonder about, you know, could we create some sort of another social media platform, another media come up? Is there something that we can create that could sort of fill this gap? Or do we have to like we've been talking about repeatedly sort of take these institutions from ground up and start throwing people out, bringing people in, start changing the way we do things? I mean, it cannot in my opinion, subsist in this way, where we cannot get objective facts anywhere. You cannot subsist. Otherwise, we will have a world full of half truths, sort of like what we what we have now. It's very, very hard to find objective truth and facts and data has become even data has become manipulable. malleable, you know, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 24:28
I think that I think that's right. I think it's very interesting when I was when I was, in one of my classes I was talking about the right to vote. And of course, the the essential importance of the right to vote is the participation of all of us, no matter what our what our social standing is. I thought it was very ironic when we had COVID where we had all the impediments and obstacles to vote. saying that we had a huge voter turnout. We had more people vote in the 2020 election than ever voted before. And now what is the response to that participation of all these people who voted and exercise their franchise?

Unknown Speaker 25:16
We want to limit the right to vote. further restrictions on voting, right? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:20
I mean, it's like it does it. Does that make any sense? I mean, it makes sense in this, it makes sense in this analysis, that the demographic of America has changed. And the demographic of America will continue to change. And there are people in this country who do not want to accept the fact that the demographic has changed. And so a lot of these impediments to voting, whether it be gerrymandering, whether it be taking away the mailboxes, for people to vote, are all are all part of that. I mean, you know, you don't have to be a sav on to understand or realize that when you look in a lot of the major cities, in our country, I'll just use Houston, Texas, as an example, the the attempts to really prevent people from voting, taking away their right to vote. And then of course, the other thing that struck me as interesting is, you know, we talk about our country, and we talk about our prison system. And that's, that's a subject for a whole other program. But what strikes me as fascinating is, we our system of justice is ultimately predicated on the fact that a person can be rehabilitated, and only the most severe criminals are given a life sentence. So the rest of the criminals or people who have been convicted a crime are sentenced to prison, with the hope of being redeemed with the hope of being rehabilitated. And then they go out in society. Okay, well, let's take Well, let's take states now in our country, where people get out of prison, they're been rehabilitated, hopefully, and they want to engage in the Acts of citizenship that the rest of us do. But they can't do that, because they have to pay fines and fees and all the rest of this stuff to prevent them from voting basically.

Unknown Speaker 27:16
Yeah, you know what, it fascinating enough, I went to high school in college in Florida, and that was on the ballot while I was in college, allowing the, you know, felons, but were convicted of nonviolent crimes to restore their voting rights, and you wouldn't believe the amount of victory and I went to a, you know, a very, very liberal college the amount of vitriol people hold towards that idea. And then I don't think it's any surprise that Ron DeSantis narrowly, very narrowly I might add, won that election. I don't, I don't see a reason why, if we can hold the idea, it is false. But why we can hold the idea that well, after prison, we've rehabilitated you know, if we have this true belief in our system as a rehabilitation system, why then once you are released, and quote unquote, rehabilitated, you then aren't given the right to vote. I shocking. I think you sort of need to be a little hypocritical within yourself to believe those two things, right? That the prison system is fine and good the way it is, and then subsequently, that felons can't have the right to vote afterwards. I don't but many people hold those two beliefs simultaneously, which is, which is odd. And I do encourage you, if anybody out listening here is in a jurisdiction in which felon voting rights or the restoring of felon voting rights is on the ballot, visit, rock the vote.org and make sure that you are registered to vote, make sure that you know where your polling places, if you want to receive a mail in ballot, make sure you were able to do that. Because this this stuff is is very important to the future of elections. You know, we're not we're not just saying lightly restoring the right right to vote for for people that have been incarcerated in this country is is I think a must.

Unknown Speaker 28:51
I think so. And we're coming. We're coming up on a very critical election in November. A critical election because we're going to see the response of the citizenry after the ruling on abortion. And I think that the abortion decision is a portent of things to come from the court regarding other rights that we we hold precious. But certainly, it will be interesting to see how the public is going to deal with that. It's my belief that there's going to be a huge women's vote in this election. I mean, the numbers so far have shown a big increase in voter registration in a lot of a lot of states. And certainly in the state of Kansas, for example, where the rights to abortion was was finally codified. We saw that I think we're going to see it in Michigan where It's on the ballot. And I think that I think there needs to be a movement to put these things to a vote of the people. That is ultimately democracy. Democracy is not, you know, four or five or six or 10 people get in a room. And they decide basically whether a woman has a right to bodily autonomy. I think that, that the whole idea of it is off so far out. I don't think really the magnitude. I don't know, I don't really think the magnitude of the abortion decision has really been acknowledged, the momentousness of the decision that, you know, a right basically, that was established by law is basically being taken away. And all the ramifications of that. Also, from a health point of view, all the women who are now having to endure life threatening situations. We're seeing that all the time as well. And yet there are people who want who are in the Congress who want to who wants a nationwide ban after 15 weeks.

Unknown Speaker 31:14
Lindsey Graham doesn't know anything as far as I'm concerned. All right. Well, I we are coming up on our 30 minute time here. And I think it's a good note to end on. That definitely given the current state of our country and given the current decision that if you're a woman, especially it may be time to get out to the polls, and old cliche, but you got to vote, get out there and vote. With that. We thank you for tuning in for our first program. We hope to catch you again next week. And we thank you very much for listening and for K, u and v for sponsoring this program. Thank you all. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at whether one that's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at CHA R L E S That's Charles dot Stanton s t a n t o n@unlv.edu CNN axon

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