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 College.

Kira Kramer 0:22
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. Welcome back social justice, a conversation. Glad you all with us tonight. I'm here with my cohort, Kira Kramer, and we're going to talk about a few things tonight having to do with basically the response to what the President and his minions are doing, and in many ways, the lack of response, or the cowardly response, you could fill in the blanks on all of those things. One of the things I wanted to talk about to start off the program is that has to do with the law firms in our country who a number of whom have just basically tanked and have assumed the position of subservience and lacking them. That really is completely inappropriate and wrong for these perilous times. The Paul Weiss firm in New York City is one of them, but there are others as well who basically abandon what their duty is as a law firm, or as individual lawyers having to do with, you know, representing people in controversial cases, freedom of press cases and stuff like that, basically exceeding to the demands of the President, which is, in a certain sense, the willful suppression of free speech, which I really don't I really don't understand it, because they were always the firms that did this, that went along with him, did this, really, without any kind of explicable explanation. There are a number of firms, of course, that have not done it. Wilmer Hale in Washington was one of them there. There are others as well. But when you go to law school, and you graduate from law school, much like the New York Times motto, all the news that's fit to print without a fear of favor, that's what a that's what a lawyer should do. That's what a law firm should do, which is to, you know, follow that motto and try as much as they can to pursue justice and and fairness.

Kira Kramer 3:10
I agree. I think, hopefully, as we see these two major law firms, Jenner and block and Wilmer Hale, like you mentioned, start to fight the Trump administration, that we will see similar law firms and lawyers across the country hopefully band together to go after Trump's unconstitutional attempt, attempt to punish these firms for their advocacy and their affiliations, and that we will continue to see the courts slowly but surely defy his executive orders. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 3:45
well, I think one of the things that that needs to be done is an aggressive legal response, whereby the idea that he can ban different law firms from doing investigations or ban them from entering certain government buildings is completely ridiculous. And these cases should be should be pushed very, very aggressively. And I think they should be pushed not merely by one or two firms individually, but a block of firms all across the country, where all these firms join together and assert their rights, basically assert their rights, assert our rights, assert the basic rights of what a democracy is supposed to be. It's really interesting, though, how so many in the legal community are basically mute. They don't say anything about it. And I think we saw a precursor of this having to do with the newspapers, particularly the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, where basically. Uh, they were withholding endorsements of Kamala Harris from from the readership, even though both of the papers were both progressive. In the case of the Washington Post, of course, they had done numerous investigations of the President, most revealing and obvious unfitness. But when it came time to, you know, make that recommendation as to who the paper would support, they weren't able to make it. They were unable to make it in the same way that the owner of the Los Angeles was times was unable to make a recommendation as well. And it all has to do with money. It all has to do with government contracts. But when you have the financial status of both of those people that own those two institutions. You have a next you have enough money for the next 100 lifetimes. There's got to be something more to it than that, that the ownership of those papers is, in many ways, a public trust, and you have to, you have to uphold that. Yes, you're a businessman and all the rest of that stuff, but the idea basically that you just take the day off and don't get civically involved, especially, especially in the case of the post, because they knew as the unfitness of one of The candidates was really inexcusable. And you know, we're seeing we're seeing this. We're seeing it in the publishing industry. We're seeing it in the legal community, and now we're starting to really see it in the educational community, where we have, just recently the University of Michigan, which is considered to be a very fine institution, and an institution that has had programs for diversity, equity and inclusion, they're basically closing up shop. And again, you know, this sets a very bad precedent for other institutions and the same goes with Columbia University as a perfect example, which was always progressive, which was always very much involved in anti war protests, which was very much involved in protesting against the war in Vietnam and protesting what happened in Gaza and a whole bunch of other other things, and the hierarchy of the of the schools, the administration in these schools basically said, you know, we can't, we can't afford to, you know, get this guy angry, or however you want to put it. So basically, all the principles we supposedly stood for, about free speech and free expression, and, you know, academic freedom and student freedom to, you know, express their thoughts and ideas, all that stuff should go out the window. So it does not. It is not a good augery of what's going to happen in the future, unfortunately, and you know, I'm just interested to get your views, Kira, you know, as a student, and you know someone who's going to be going into the Boyd School of Law in the fall, as to, as to How you look at all this. Well,

Kira Kramer 8:41
I think as a student entering into the field of law there, we're all pretty much watching to see how much the rule will withstand someone who's actively trying to dismantle all of it. I think many of us Americans are single handedly relying on the the uphold, like our court system, to uphold our Constitution, I think the tide may change as the midterms come around, which I think is really important for all of us To be shifting our energy and our focus to mobilizing right now. Particularly items of importance are the special elections that are happening throughout the country, in which Democrats are seemingly doing well, furthermore, mobilizing support, doing phone banks and other mechanisms for making sure that, like the federal seat that is up for judgeship in Wisconsin is secured by a Democrat to uphold, continue to uphold the law. Additionally, in terms of the department of education cuts, one. Topic of concern is the cuts that will be happening to the disability programs in schools, and this is for any student who maybe they have vision loss and they need special print or perhaps they have an autoimmune disorder, need to be able to eat in the classroom, things that happen to all different types of children with all different types of needs is currently being threatened in the state of Texas, Texas, Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia. And this is under the 504 policy. And I suppose there's a new proposed change. It's like one section of the 504 and these states, instead of negotiating on the new section that's being changed, they would like to abolish it all together. And so 504 plans are what allows students to be able to advocate for their unique needs, whether they have cancer like childhood leukemia or any of these programs. And so I think that what we're seeing essentially is, how can this administration create the most uneducated voter base, so that when they go in to remove people's rights, it's super easy for them. And not only that, I feel like this is deeply connected to the legal representation being removed from non citizens, because if legal representation in the right to due process. It's not provided to non citizens, and the definition of a citizen changes, and you don't have the right to due process. Pretty much anyone, for any reason, can be determined not a citizen and lose their right to due process. So it's really important that we start fighting on the local, state and as well as on the national level, with these big law firms. And just remember that there's more of us and there are of them, and if these big law firms across the country band together to protect themselves and each other, then I think it might be a viable mechanism for fighting this administration. Well,

Charles Stanton 12:20
I think, I think that's absolutely right, and I think, I think it's what the university should be doing as well. I which, which they're not doing, which I don't which I don't understand. You know, you said something very interesting, which, which sort of piqued my, my, my curiosity, when you said you were talking about the election in Wisconsin, and you said something to the effect that the question is whether this Democrat, Democratic candidate could be elected to uphold the rule of law. And I'm saying to myself, well, this is a question now that that is the question in an election, whether we have one of the candidates, basically, who we cannot count on to uphold the rule of law. Well, if you have somebody who's a candidate who you don't know if they're going to uphold the rule of law, they shouldn't be running for office. And you know, the Republican Party, man, they have taken, they have taken a vacation in this whole in this whole crisis. And you know, in addition to being, in addition to being servile to the president, but really, you know, not upholding, you know, like very basic democratic principles, I think is, I think, is terrible. And the other thing that we're seeing, too is how this, this thing with Dei, has also gone, has also gone into the entertainment world, where now, now this, the Disney Corporation is reevaluating, you know, whether dei is A useful is a useful tool, and, you know, and what's crazy about it is that the Disney Corporation, or any entertainment Corporation, is trying to recruit as customers the most diverse population they can, because obviously, that's the most profitable. That's the most profitable. But now we're saying basically, well, we don't know if we should have any of those initiatives in many ways, in many ways, it's similar to also a governmental connect to things like the Smithsonian Institute, for example, where they want to basically end, you know, They have the African American exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution, and the President says that that presents a divisive ideology. Well, what would be divisive about it, except through that exhibit to show. The history of our country and

Kira Kramer 15:02
our absolute neglect of human beings, exactly, and our history of exploitative labor and pretty much everything that he wants to do is condemned by any type of education, form of education and or museums that show the true history of the United States. Because how can you repeat history when you can see and you allow people to know about what happened?

Charles Stanton 15:34
Yeah. Well, the other thing that got me too is that he was saying like that, the the African American experience was divisive ideology, but restoring the statues of the Confederate heroes, that's not divisive. Let's bring all those statues back and all those monuments and all those mementos in all these states where before the Civil War, and before the Civil Rights Act, and before all those other things, people of color were living in a in a state of submission, basically. So I would think that, you know, if we now that we have a society where people are, you know, hopefully moving towards some form of equality. Why would you want to be bringing those statues back? That doesn't make any sense to me, except, except for the fact that there's there's there's the tone of white supremacy. I mean, you know what was an interesting they had an interesting story about how the there's a limitation on immigrants coming into this country from pretty much everywhere, but somehow, not from South Africa, somehow not from white people supposedly are living in South Africa, who are being, supposedly being mistreated by the black population, but the white population in South Africa, as far as wealth, controls the vast majority of wealth in the country, perpetuates

Kira Kramer 17:09
apartheid and is very much connected to the family of Elon Musk. Exactly

Charles Stanton 17:13
right. Exactly right. So, you know, it's not, it's not an even handed it's not an even handed view. But the other problem that you have, though too, is that there's so much lack of knowledge, and not just knowledge in our society, but lack of initiative, lack of interest, where people would want to learn more by seeking a variety of information sources. I think this is one of the major problems. I know from talking to people around where I live, where people they just have one source of news, and that source of news, you know, reinforces everything they believe. Now, I have a variety of sources of news. I'll get up in the morning. I got I get three newspapers every morning. I get USA Today, which is, I would say, sort of middle of the road. It might be a little bit liberal, but, but it's sort of in the middle of the road. I get the New York Times, which is, which is progressive. I get the Wall Street Journal, which is, which is considered conservative. What's interesting, too. It's a very interesting thing about that, just mentioning the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal has been very good over the last number of weeks about bringing out stories about the deficiencies of what's going on in our government. As I've really been, I've really been kind of impressed by it that, you know, they were always very much pro, you know, mag and all the rest of that stuff. Now, I don't know whether they were pro mag just because it was in their interest to do it or they actually believed in it, but particularly, particularly about the Secretary of Defense and, you know, the meetings that they had where basically, people had, you know, not secured means of conversation and planning. And you know, then, of course, also apparently that the wife of this guy, who's the Secretary of Defense, she was attending these secret meetings which clearly, which clearly, by any standard, is is not, is not proper or or secure or safe. And it really is interesting how, you know, there was, everybody was always criticizing, you know, the Biden administration and all the rest of those things. But I don't think anybody really criticized the Biden administration about the security of their meetings, or any of that stuff. I think they were things were done in a very, you know, dogmatic and careful way. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that the people who were in his group of advisors and. Minute had long experience in these different areas. They didn't just pick somebody up off the street and say, you're going to be the secretary of defense, you're going to be the head of the Health Department. All these people had been vetted and were highly qualified, and it seems that those particular requirements seem to have disappeared somewhere.

Kira Kramer 20:18
No, I agree it's anyone who is smart enough to realize what's going on would not preferably be choose like chosen by him, yeah, because anyone who in their right mind can see what's happening in this country would definitely probably dissent, and therefore he can't have them, whereas we typically have used subject matter experts to guide our policy decisions and to guide our policy makers, those people would clearly disagree with how he is handling policy, probably on every single front, and therefore he has to have People that are yes men in right behind him. Also, I'd like to talk about a very big day coming up this weekend, April 5, is going to be the single largest day of protests that the United States has organized in a very long time. This has been shared by mostly more liberal leaning news sources, and it's going to be a massive organization of peaceful marches in Washington, DC and 1000 other cities, which is really important. And of course, this is something that the current administration does not want to see they don't want to see masses of people who are taking time out of their everyday lives to mobilize support against him, but it is imperative that at least 3.5% of the population start to mobilize against him. There's been data that shows that when 3.5% of our population is able to mobilize that it sends a serious message. For example, the Women's March only mobilized about 1% of the population, and even that was an extremely profound moment in American history. And so it's really important that we go out and mobilize on April 5, because as this administration continues cracking down on peaceful protest, this protest will likely be one of the more peaceful and more active protests that people are going to be able to attend that will not have as much intimidation as may be present in the Future. And so I highly encourage you to see where your local hands off protest is. Near you, we are having one run by our local indivisible in Las Vegas. Also, if possible, please take time to call your representatives to make sure that we are blocking Republicans from disfranchising. Disenfranchising millions of voters with their silencing Americans Act. This is going to be voted on in the house. It's HR 22 which poses one of the largest threats to voting rights we've seen, especially in particularly my generation. This bill is known as the Save act, but it really silences Americans ability to vote, and I would highly recommend that you learn more about what this bill is requiring. It essentially requires voters to bring a proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or a password a passport to vote with them in person, so they have to bring these extremely protected and private documents with them to the voting booth, this would completely eliminate online voting or mail in ballots, and this many of those documents people don't every day, ordinary people do not have accessible to them, especially if maybe you're estranged from your family, or you don't live at home anymore, and you're a college student who's traveling, you may not have your birth certificate in the city that you are currently living in for school or any myriad of things. And so it is imperative that this really would disenfranchise millions of Americans from being able to vote. And so I urge you to call all of your representatives and make sure that they are voting against this bill.

Charles Stanton 24:28
Well, I think that that's exactly what we need to do. I think that there's, there's a couple of things that come to mind. What they're trying to do, because the demographic of the country has changed is trying to limit the amount of people that can vote. This is what's behind all this. It has nothing to do with security or any of those things. It's that they have a certain block of voters that they don't want to allow to be to have the franchise to vote. Their their their intention. The other thing that concerns me, though, and this is a concern that I've had for a while, particularly with the protest movement, is if the protest movement is met with violence, how is that going to be treated? In other words, what I'm saying is, if the protest movement, which is peaceful, is met with violence, are we going to start seeing a repetition of the pardon thing, where all the people who were involved in the attempt to overthrow the government the insurrection of January 6, are they going to get a free pass so that they can, you know, you know, assault protesters who are protesting otherwise, legally, I think that's a mate. I think that's a major concern, and I think that it's something that we need to address basically, absolutely.

Kira Kramer 25:56
I think that brings up a really good point. I do think protesting may be particularly risky. Another avenue that I think could be possible for people to take that is may not be directly with boots on the ground, is stifling Trump's economy. I think it's imperative that people stop purchasing anything that is not absolutely necessary, of course, if you can support your small and local businesses, because they absolutely need it. However, if you are purchasing anything from a corporation, look at who you're buying from, and stop making those purchases, and purchase as little as you need to subsist on, because money talks, and honestly it talks louder than anything else. No, well,

Charles Stanton 26:45
absolutely. And I think, I think this is an opportunity now in the condition that our country is in where we where we need a much more involved citizenry. We cannot be asleep. We cannot be like rev Van Winkle. We need to wake up and acknowledge the danger that our democracy could be ebbing away, and we need to get involved as much as we can, in whatever way we can, to raise our voice against what could be basically a tyranny where our opportunity to use our voice will be completely eliminated, and we'll have one. We'll have one. You know, one person rule basically. In fact, he's actually talked about that, about getting a third term somehow, even though the Constitution forbids it. But that's, that's, that's for problems down the road. But we want to say again to thank all of our listeners, because without your listenership, without your, you know, tuning in every week, we wouldn't, we wouldn't be here. And we always want you to know that the most the most important thing is that that you participate and do whatever and do whatever you can to really keep our country informed and aware of what's going on and how we can use our unique individual skills to keep to keep the democracy alive that we cherish so much. Yes,

Kira Kramer 28:15
thank you all for joining us, and I hope that you get involved this week.

Charles Stanton 28:20
Well, thank you all and good night.

Kira Kramer 28:31
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 29:00
we look forward to it, you.