Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in K you envy studios on public radio K, u and v. 91.5.

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Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

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Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.

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And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation,

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a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:32
Good evening, everyone. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law here at UNLV. And also at the Honors College. Welcome to the second season of social justice, a conversation. And I'm very happy to have as my partner for this upcoming year, Gabriela Tams so you can tell us a little bit about yourself, Gabriella?

Unknown Speaker 0:55
Hello, everyone. My name is Gabriella Tam. I am a fourth year honors college student at UNLV. And I'm very excited to do this program with Professor

Unknown Speaker 1:06
Mike wise. So what we what we try to do in this program is basically talk about some of the issues that are relevant to today's society. It's a program that basically talks about things that in various ways affect everybody. So one of the we wanted to start off our program this year, at talking a little bit about two movies that have been the sensational successes of the of the movie industry. And that, of course, is Barbie and the Oppenheimer movie. So maybe you could talk a little bit Gabriela about the Barbie movie and how you how you feel it affected you when you saw it.

Unknown Speaker 1:47
When I first saw I was I felt empowered, of course, as a woman. But as I went on, like, I thought about it more. And I was like, oh, like, maybe it would have been better if the Khans like had some of the same. Like. They were in the same like position. So it was like, like a mix so that everything could be balanced. And everyone has like equal chance and everyone can share their different perspectives.

Unknown Speaker 2:23
So yeah, I think I think that's, I think that's well put you know, that what's interesting about the movie, of course, is the many varied reactions. Yeah. That that some people think the movie is exploitive of women. Other people think that it's empowering a woman. So I guess in a sense of the director succeeded, because it sort of gave a wide, broad range of interpretations that you can have when you see the movie. She's a very fine director. And she's done a number of other things before this. It's very hard speaking as a man, but will also was a film critic, to find to find films where women are actually not just treated as the equals of men, but that their quest, their dream, whatever it is, is given validity. And I think we I think we still have a long way to go in that area. Yeah. But I think it is changing. I think Hollywood and particularly, the movies, we're seeing a lot more women who are directors, and not just directors, producers and writers. And as that continues, as our society continues to, you know, except the validity of women's stories, we will we will have much more equality than we have now. You know, going back to yon days, the roles of women were have were minimal. Yeah, I mean, not only that, the fact that they didn't have like executive powers, but that women were typecast into two or three different kinds of roles. And that was it. Talk a little bit about the Oppenheimer movie because it's a very, very deeply troubling movie about this man who basically was one of the fathers of the Atomic Age, and all the different things that he goes through, trying to rationalize what he did. And, you know, there's so many thoughts that you get when you watch the movie. One, of course is, despite all his knowledge of science, I don't think they knew really, the cataclysmic this thing. And I think it was something I think that he intentionally initially wanted to create something that would prevent war. That would be so horrible and so terribleness destructive power that people would would would walk away from it. But now in today's world with Kim Jong Hoon, and all these people that might not be so

Unknown Speaker 5:01
yeah, I saw actually that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Hoon were meeting to discuss like weapons and stuff. And I was like, oh, that sounds that sounds very frightening.

Unknown Speaker 5:12
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the situation with the Ukraine, of course, was enormously troubling because the war has evolved into basically a stalemate. Yeah, that the Russians have a certain amount of territory. The Ukrainians have gotten a certain amount of territory back. But it doesn't seem like there's really a clear impetus to victory for either side. So then the question becomes, well, what happens in a case where somebody like Putin decides, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to the last option. And then if he does that, how does how does the Western rest of the world respond? Yeah, you see, I think, I think that's what Oppenheimer realized was that once once these things get launched, there's no going back. Yeah, you know, the power of them. You know, when they did the initial Obama bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course. Now, those particular weapons, there are 1000s of times more powerful. Yeah. You would, you would radiate. Basically whole states. Yeah. You know, and have people suffer from all kinds of radiation poisoning, you would you would toxify the water, you detoxify the air, you know? So, so So, so it's very, it's very frightening. Yeah. I also want to talk a little bit about today about President Biden, because apparently, there's going to be a panel of the house that's going to begin an impeachment investigation of the President. And I have to I just have to shake my head because there are many things you could probably say about Joe Biden that, you know, he he's not, you know, the most, you know, gung ho president, probably he's, he's in his 80s. You know, he's, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But as far as corruption is concerned, he doesn't really fit the pattern.

Unknown Speaker 7:13
Yeah, exactly. Um, I was like, surprised. I feel like, like, they're trying to impeach him because Trump was impeached. So they're like, Okay, we'll do it to you. Since you did it to us. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 7:29
But but even but even even accepting, even accepting the fact that he knew about what the son was doing it. And I greatly doubt that because the son had a drug problem to son did a lot of things I'm sure his father didn't know about. Yeah. But even accepting, even accepting that, how can you compare what Joe Biden may have done to a man who's been basically he's indicted in four different jurisdictions, for all these different crimes, basically, you know, their attention to secret documents, you know, trying to overturn the vote in Georgia, fomenting an insurrection in Washington, DC, paying off people in New York, who had illicit affairs with and using a bag man like Michael Collins to deliver the money. I mean, it's crazy. Like the

Unknown Speaker 8:23
list just goes on and on and on. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 8:26
What's shocking to me, though, and I, and I think about this all the time. He ran against Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And of course, Hillary Clinton, you know, is hated by its her hated by the conservative movement. But as far as like, ability, and intelligence and knowledge of the law and knowledge of foreign relations, Hillary Clinton is an outstanding intellect, yeah, to hear her talk, and that she knows so much about all these different fields. And when she ran against Trump, of course, you she had a couple of handicaps. Yeah. One handicap, of course, was that she was a woman. So there's a percentage of people in the country, unfortunately, who will never vote for a woman, you know, going to maybe 50 years from now, they'll still feel the same way. Yeah. So that so that was one problem that she had. The other problem, of course, the other millstone she had was her husband, and all the stuff that he was involved in. Yeah. And then of course, you know, the man who was involved in whom Aberdeen's husband was involved in stuff, no, so those are all things that were negatives. But the thing that struck me was on the Friday, I guess it was in October of 2016, when they came out with the tape of the ex president on the bus with this man, and he was talking about how he, how he regarded women, how would you how would you vote for somebody like that?

Unknown Speaker 9:58
No, I know like, I'll see I like women and like women of color, support Trump or support this man. I'm like, How can you support him when he like, does not like us? He has no respect for us. Yeah. What makes you think that he's going to fight for us in the end? You know?

Unknown Speaker 10:16
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then then, of course, he became the president. And we need not go through all the disastrous things that happen, including the, the response to COVID. And on and on. But, but what's what strikes me is that when all those things happened when all these people died, get all the calamities that happened? How did all these people still vote from? See, that's the thing that's troubling, that you know, you there were probably people who honestly believed that he was going to make good change. Yeah. And they didn't know all the ramifications of horrible stuff that he had done. But once you saw what happened during the four years, he was the president. He got more votes the second time than he got the first. How could that be?

Unknown Speaker 11:05
I remember seeing somewhere where it's like, it's not like, is it the like, economy that went up or like something went up? And they're like, oh, it happened during like, Trump's like presidency, people were like, Oh, he ended up doing good. Do you see this proof? But then I also like, heard that is because of all the, like, laws and stuff that Obama like, put in beforehand that took place during like Trump's presidency. So by Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 11:39
yeah. It's, it's a puzzlement to me. Yeah, I think. I'll put it I'll put it in this way. I think there are people who still honestly believe in him. Yeah. You know, and and that was you could have all the evidence in the world. They're not going to. They're just not going to accept the fact that he was involved in an insurrection of that. And, you know, that's their right as Americans to believe it. Yeah. But I think there are people who support him, they support him for certain reasons. I think one of the things that he did, was he freed a lot of people to to speak and act in a way that really was not American. Yeah, in the sense that, you know, we can we can vilify women, we can vilify people of color, we can move by people who are Asian we can we can attack the LGBT community, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. And, and that's really was not what the purpose of being the president or being a leader, as a leader is supposed to be a problem solver, a leader who is supposed to be somebody who, you know, comes into office, and tries to help all the people. You know, I mean, he said stuff like about the, you know, he didn't know that Puerto Rico was part of the United States and crazy stuff that I really crazy stuff. And the people support him. And I think a lot of it has to do with, as to do ultimately with the color of a person's skin. I'm sorry to say that yeah, I'm not being original in this. Stuart Stevens, who's a major like, commentator on these issues. He he's been a he was a Republican for many years. He's very much involved. He said, it's, it's the skin, it's the skin. And we still see it, you know, we still see it. The situation with the Chinese in San Francisco, all these people have Chinese ethnicity were attacked. Because they had, you know, an 85 year old elderly woman, she was responsible for COVID. I mean, all this crazy stuff. And you say to yourself, Well, where does that come from? Well, it comes from a long history. You know, as I believe, I believe that the sexism, the anti LGBT, the misogyny, it's multi generational. Yeah, I think it comes from a place that was taught to them by their parents, who taught their grandparents and taught their great grandparents. And it's passed on, and they don't question it. See, that's the scary thing. See a society. A society has the question, what its values are, yeah, just don't go from day to day. And I think that's one of the things that we're doing is we go, we go from depth, we go from day to day, and we don't realize what we're doing. Yeah, no, but I see the country now is extraordinarily divided. Yeah. You know, like there's no like middle ground where people could get together. And, you know, and talk. I think the danger of that is that we could turn into the kind of country that we see always other countries turning into, if you look at China, if you look at Russia, if you look at Turkey, if you look at some of the Middle Eastern countries, where democracy sort of disappears. Yeah. You know, and I don't know, I don't know what the forces are in this country to do to stop that, you know, but I think that I think it's going to be very interesting to see with the Republican Party, particularly because they have joined hands with with Donald Trump. If if these cases prove his guilt or if these cases come out with him being convicted, whether or not they will continue to run them. Yeah. And that's that's like, that's like the wild card in this weather. We're gonna put we're gonna have a man run for president who's under conviction. Yeah, you know, and it seems like he's the most popular candidate. So that's so sad. It is sad. It is sad. It's, it's sort of reflection on our country. Yeah, basically, you know, that with all the people that they could run, how would you? How would you run somebody who's been found guilty? Yeah, but but he's gonna have it. He's got it. The great thing about America is he's going to have his day in court. And they're going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he's, he's guilty of these crimes. So until then, he's given the presumption of innocence. Yep. You know, but it's interesting, though. But the thing that, of course, that we are neglecting in our country is all the social problems that we have, yeah, you know, I can this city, of course, a homeless problem, which has gotten measurably worse, in the last two or three years. What do you see when you go out as a student and you observe?

Unknown Speaker 16:37
Like, I remember, my, I think it was like, my first semester here. I remember seeing, like, a homeless person walking into the library. I was just like, watching them, I was like, oh, like, it's, like, so crazy. How, like, he's not like being like taking care of, I guess. But yeah, even, like, I know, like, here is bad. But like, when I went to LA for my internship, I, it was, it was bad, who, like everywhere? Yeah. And I just felt so bad, because like, people would like, straight up, like, walk past them. But there were a few good people who would like, go to a restaurant nearby and like, give them food and like, just like, give them something to eat? Yeah, but it was just like, some people, I think, like they he just like, maybe, like, drove them kind of crazy. You know, like they were some people were like, like, or some homeless, were yelling at people like pushing them around. And just, it is scary.

Unknown Speaker 17:48
Well, there's a high, there's a high rate of mental illness. Yeah, among among these people who are homeless. But what's interesting to me in a city like we live in, which is a very affluent city, where the main industry, of course, is the casino industry, and probably as profitable and more profitable than it's ever been. That there should be more of a civic movement to find housing for these people. Yeah, that's what I don't. That's what I don't understand.

Unknown Speaker 18:23
Yeah, I was talking to my friend. And she was saying, because, you know, they're building like an f1 truck here. They're putting all that money towards Yeah, this, which, I guess I understand. It's like an investment, but so much of that money could be going to the homeless and like, also, like these kids who are also homeless. Yeah. And it's just so like, why is the money going this way? Not this way.

Unknown Speaker 18:52
You segwayed into a very good point about the young people in the city. We have a lot of teen suicide. We have a lot of teen mental illness. We have a lot of indifference toward the young here. Yeah. So many kids raised themselves, basically. Yeah. And we don't have the mental health programs, the counseling that we should have, you know, the problem now, of course, in the in the CSSD, here in Clark County, is we don't have the teachers. Yeah, this is another major thing. There was

Unknown Speaker 19:30
a school here that like had to close or something because there were no teachers. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 19:36
sure. And you say to yourself, well, wow, that's really something and you know, they changed. They changed the requirements to teach so you don't have to have like a college degree. Now we need to teach to teach in the Clark County School System. So you figure you know, they'd probably be more teachers. But But then the other issue about the schools is that say At Issue. See, that's another thing that there had so many instances in the city, you know, inappropriate wrongful conduct. And, you know, it's not like when, you know, when we were going to school when I was going to school, it was no, I mean, nobody had a gun. I mean, yeah. It was like, you know, I'm not saying that there wasn't things that went on at school, but it was a rarity. Now, you got people that come into the schools, and they disrupt the schools, I think it's really changed. I think the whole concept of Education has changed. Yeah, you know, where you would go to the school to learn. And like that was the priority. Now, the priority may be socialization, who you can go out with? Yeah, where the next party is, you know, it's completely different. And I think a lot of these kids, that they basically raise themselves, yeah, their parents are around, but they're not really around really around. Yeah, no, but it's interesting. I think social media has made an enormous change and well, in the society, but certainly growing up. Yeah, you know, you know, being I'm sort of a dinosaur creature. But but, you know, I can see it, you know, from my vantage point. You see people running to phone all the time. It's like an obsession. Yeah, it is.

Unknown Speaker 21:29
I think it is an obsession. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:31
And you say to yourself, well, you know, the phone is a tool. But the phone is not an end in itself. It's a phone. And you have people who they're on the phone eight, nine hours a day. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. How can you spend that much time on the phone? And I think, I think one of the things that social media has done, and I've talked about this before, it's a false intimacy that it promotes. Because, you know, the real intimacy is people talking with one another meeting your friends meeting, you know, people, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And people are texting and all the rest of stuff. But you're not i There's nothing really of yourself, in a sense, that when you have when you have a friendship with a personal relationship with a person, it's you and the other person. But this is not that it's a completely different experience,

Unknown Speaker 22:30
like I saw that are, well, like, with social media, there's just so there's so many more rules to a relationship now, like, you, like, people can't be liking the opposite. genders like picture because it's like, it shows that you're interested in them. But you're also like dating someone. It's just there's so many rules now because of social media, when it comes to relationships. Yeah. And it's so crazy that you just can't be like, two people like just being together.

Unknown Speaker 23:04
Yeah, yeah. No, that's Well, that's because, well, I think that the true intimacy that people hopefully would want, is very hard to find today. Yeah. Because, as you say, with with social media, and then the whole idea of people who are influencers, and then, you know, like, people who have these, I guess, sites where they have 50,000 followers or 100,000. But if you think about it, you don't know these people.

Unknown Speaker 23:38
Yeah, they put on a face for everyone. Be like to get followers to chase fame.

Unknown Speaker 23:44
Yeah. But it's crazy, though. It's crazy. Because you believe in a person that says home that street so you don't know anything about? You know, but I think I think that I think the society has changed though, too. Yeah, I think there's been big societal changes in America. Where I think a lot of the values, the important values that we used to believe in, have sort of sort of faded away, you know, love of country to a degree, love of love of a higher being love of, you know, the institution of marriage, it was a whole bunch of things. And it seems to have seems to have gone away. I think a lot of that has to do with a lot of the fact that religion organized religion has had so many scandals. Yeah. You know, that's, you know, when, what you were in the class, you know, last semester, we had a couple of programs on that. And I think a lot of people just got turned off.

Unknown Speaker 24:58
Yeah, you know, and Oh, like speaking from experience, like, the school that I used to go to? It just, it's like completely not turned me off from religion, but it's just like it, it makes me feel a little bit of shame being like Christian, you know? Cuz like, there are people who like say they're a Christian, but they'll produce so much hate. Yeah, to the people who aren't like them. And I'm like, This is not what the Bible says at all like,

Unknown Speaker 25:33
Well, I think I think, too, support what you say. I think organized religion has been hijacked by a lot of people for their own needs. And they presented something as being religious. But it wasn't really religious at all. It was, it was something else, you know, and then all the and all the sex scandals they had, particularly the Catholic Church. Yeah. You know, really attack the credibility of the church. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:07
like, this is bad, but my friend will even make the joke. Like, if you ask her like a question, that's like, supposed to be yes. It's like, oh, just the pope touch kids. Like, it's like, that's, that's gonna be a joke. But it's like, it's, it's sad. It is sad. It's sad. That's a joke. But yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker 26:27
let's say it's who is that, that so many people who went into the, into the, the faiths, who were priests or deacons, ministers, whatever they were, they abandoned their calling, that you know that there are certain things that are wrong. As for it, particularly in a religious context, then, you know, you're supposed to be an example of a role model. And then you turn out doing other things that are even a person wasn't religious wouldn't do. Yeah. You know, and I think I think a lot of people got turned off by that. And I think, I think a lack of faith in the institutions to a lack of faith in the court system. The revocation of Roe v. Wade, was a disastrous mistake, you know, basically telling women that they're second class citizens. Yeah. You know,

Unknown Speaker 27:22
I think people are just, they feel hopeless.

Unknown Speaker 27:25
There's a hopelessness. But But, but I will say the hope, the hope is in ourselves, yeah. That, you know, as I, as I always I tried to teach, religion is doing good for others. It's, you can go to the church, you can go to shul, you can go to any of these places, which is fine. And that's, it's also good to pray. But ultimately, it's helping other people. And you have to, you have to look at life that way that you have opportunities to do good. So you get up in the morning, and there are certain things that are going to present themselves to you as challenging. But if you can just maybe help one or two people, then that's what it is. And then, you know, you try to do that every day. And, you know, go go to sleep with a clear conscience, hopefully, that you've tried to look out for others. Yeah. You know, well, it's been great to start off the semester with you. And I hope that, you know, throughout the year, we can hopefully, you know, illuminate some of the issues that are important, not just to the people of our city, but also of our state and also of our country. And it's been a great, it's been a great pleasure to rejoin you again. And you know, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 28:46
it's it was it's nice. I'm excited for the future.

Unknown Speaker 28:50
Yes. Well, that's that's exactly the way it should be. Want to thank you all for listening and this evening, and I hope you'll tune into us down the rest of the semester and then into next year. Thank you so much, and good night.

Unknown Speaker 29:07
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at 10 G one, that is T A N G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai