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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a k, u and 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.
Unknown Speaker 0:18
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:24
Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.
Unknown Speaker 0:28
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation a
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conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:36
Well, good evening, everybody. Hi, I'm Professor Stanton, along with my partner, Gabriella Tam, hello. And we want to welcome everybody to the last show of the spring semester, at UNLV. And we'll have some comments about that as as as the program closes. But we just wanted to welcome you all, and to talk about a few of the issues that are going on in our country right now. Probably so many more than we could even have managed to discuss, but we'll do our best. I wanted to start out with something that that really struck me as very interesting over the past number of days, having to do with the settlements of the Larry Nasser case, whereby of a number of the families of women and girls who were abused by Larry Nasser in his role as a as a pediatrician, or how, or I guess, a physician, you know, associated with a lot of the gymnastics teams and, and things of that sort. And they had a verdict, I believe we have around $137 million for the failures of the government, the failures of the FBI and all the rest of the stuff. But my take on it is, you know, the way I look at it is no, you know, it's it's great that they that they got this verdict. Yeah. But the, the the the solution to these problems and solutions to these problems, is an accountability on the part of law enforcement as to why they didn't act on the repeated pleas and complaints from the people who were abused, and also from the families of the people who were abused. And I, I have feelings about this. I think you can correlate this to big business. Yeah. Where they have these huge settlement decrees and all the rest of it stuff. I really I don't I don't oppose paying money to people. Yeah. And visa vie, as some measure of like, I'm sorry, sponsor. Yeah. But I really think I really think in some of these cases, that if you're in law enforcement, and you were presented with all this information as to what this man was doing, when people would come to your office, when people would attempt to get in touch with you. Ah, and from a number of different plaintiffs to a number of different agencies. I think there should be like a really a criminal penalty for it.
Unknown Speaker 3:37
No, yeah, um, it. I agree with you that it's, I'm not against, like the money, the money settlement. But I think there should be more as well, because it's like, it's kind of just like, oh, it takes some money. I'm sorry, I did this. That's it. Yeah. Like that's the end of it. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:55
Well, I don't understand what I don't understand about it. In these particular kinds of cases, where a man was a physician, and you had numerous complaints from the parents, and in some cases from individual women who are who are who had reached adult age, who had had these experiences with this man. This should have been a full, aggressive investigation in a very timely manner. The fact that a lot of these complaints were never passed on to supervisory personnel that people were ignored for a number of years. I think it's inexcusable. I don't think I don't think the government I don't think the government gets an out because they gave people money. Yeah, I mean, there really should be there really should be some kind of an accounting. I think a lot of it too is I think a lot of it's who is though, that in our May Is your institutions and why why why respect has fallen for them, respect us phone for them because they don't fulfill their duties and obligations and responsibilities. We see it two out. We've talked about it before on this program. We're going to we're going to Congress regarding the Supreme Court regarding the executive branch. But in a case where it is the primary law enforcement, governmental agency, which is the FBI, and the Justice Department, and they're ignoring these these matters, is really disturbing. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 5:39
And like to talk more about the respect, it's like, since these institutions don't respect us, why should we respect them? I feel like respect is a very two way kind of thing. a two way street.
Unknown Speaker 5:52
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting, because as as, almost concurrently with with this situation regarding, you know, the the abuse issue, they had a very interesting program on CNN, about the Columbia space shuttle, that was very, very interesting, because there was a lot of things that happen there, basically, whereby the people who built the shuttle and the people who were managing it for NASA, like totally failed in their duty, visa vie, safety issues, and how, you know, they just had one way of thinking, and they could, they didn't want to acknowledge that there might be a defect in the way the ship was built. And how, how, when these people took off, to do their mission, they were already doomed, they were going to die these people because they wouldn't have been able to reenter the earth, because the ship would have come apart, and the ship would have come apart. Because when the ship initially left the launching pad, to go up into space, there was a hole inside of the ship. And how this was overlooked, and not really aggressively investigated. Yeah, was was very interesting. I would recommend this program to everybody, you can go on the internet, and guys, you can go on YouTube, and get it about the Columbia spatial. But it really is amazing how you had a few people who were really very responsible, who were involved in engineering and while the rest of the year
Unknown Speaker 7:44
are passionate about
Unknown Speaker 7:45
you, who who actually basically begged the the Space Administration to make them aware of what was going on. Yeah, and how they're pleased, we just ignored. And then the thing came back, of course, into the into the atmosphere, and the whole thing disintegrated. And, you know, but again, I'm always saying, you know, that we have in many ways and in different society. Yeah, you know, we have so many social problems that I know, can't be fixed in a day or maybe even a month or even a year, but there's no hope to fix them, if you don't try to fix them if you don't address the problem, if you don't, as a as an entity, devote resources and attention to it. You know. And I think I think, in many ways, I think there are so many aspects of our society. We just seen that now. You know, it's just like the homeless from the homeless problems didn't happen overnight. No, this has been going on for years.
Unknown Speaker 8:57
Did you hear that? The government is trying to criminalize homelessness now. So like, if you're, this might be, like, overdramatic, but like if you're just like sleeping outside, like you could be thrown in jail.
Unknown Speaker 9:11
I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. But we, you know, the prisons already are full. Yeah. Do you know it's like in, in the, the anchorman show that Jeff Daniels was in and he has this speech in the beginning of the three seasons, where he starts talking about what the United States leads the world in. And we lead the world by a completely disproportionate ratio of people who are incarcerated. Yeah, you know, like the answer is everything is locking everybody up. Now, of course, there are some people who shouldn't be locked up. Yeah, debating that. But, you know, it's so out of whack, though, with all the other countries, and then, you know, the homeless, solving the homeless issue is not to be solved by imprisoning people. The the issue has many has many elements to it. There's there's mental illness element to it, which of course relates to the lack of mental health services in this city and our nation. And other things, but but with the resources that we have, yeah, to me, there should be there should be housing for everybody. Yeah. But
Unknown Speaker 10:37
unfortunately, like, I'm not saying like, you know, the foreign aid bill, that also has the secret Tiktok ban, Bill. But I'm not saying it's hard, because it's like, I do want to, you know, support these other countries, but we have so many problems within America alone. Yeah. And we're giving all of our money, like we're giving all of our money to other countries where, like, we have a huge homeless problem. We should be wanting to house all these people instead of throwing them in prison. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 11:09
Well, I'm all you know, I'm all for you. No, no, the aid, you know, if the aid for the Ukraine, and because it's a very dire situation. Oh, yeah. And obviously, they were they were invaded, so that all that all I'll go with, but, as you say, correctly, we have all these resources, what is the limitation? What is the thing that's impeding us that stopping us from just finding a habitable place to live for people, so they don't have to be on the street. And it's never, it's never really addressed? It's like, it's like child poverty, or, you know, children that are lacking in food and stuff like that. And, you know, you watch on TV at night, these commercials, and, you know, Jeff Bridges does a very nice commercial for feeding the children, which I recommend everybody say it's really very moving. And that there's other there's other, you know, organizations like, and, you know, then you have, you know, like St. Jude's and there's, you know, all those things, but what's interesting is that governmentally in a lot of ways, the society is indifferent. See, that's the thing that I'm always harping on, though. Yeah, indifference, you know that you see people who have nothing, okay, they have nothing, and they're living out in the street. Something should activate inside of you. Yeah. That when you see that, you say, Well, I gotta try to do something for them, give him some money, give him something. But when you have a huge government, like we do, and you have all these institutions of housing, FDA, all these different things. Why don't they want to address that? What what is what is the reason behind it? It is the reason behind it, though, that these people in some way, are less worthy to be held because they're homeless, and that we don't have to really do anything about them, because well, they put them there themselves, and always other things, you know. And
Unknown Speaker 13:31
like, like we mentioned before, like, the government only cares. If you're, like, you're in someone's womb, you know, then they stopped caring about you when you're out of your mother's womb.
Unknown Speaker 13:44
Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's
Unknown Speaker 13:46
just yeah, it's just very frustrating. Well,
Unknown Speaker 13:50
it's it has to do. I mean, I've said it,
Unknown Speaker 13:54
control of women. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 13:57
I mean, pretty much, pretty much. That's what it is. I mean, if you're, if you're in a state like Arizona, and you're trying to resurrect a law that's over 100 years old,
Unknown Speaker 14:12
it's like over 200 years old.
Unknown Speaker 14:14
It's like, it's crazy, though. It's crazy, though. But that's what they believe, though. And the only way the only way to to provide that is for people to vote, basically. But
Unknown Speaker 14:31
then that's also tied to the lack of hope, and then like indifference in our country, and it's like, it's just everything's disconnected. Well,
Unknown Speaker 14:40
yeah. Well, I said a long time ago. You know, you've heard me say it. I think the biggest mistake the social justice movement made is the fact that it's very fragmented. Yeah, that you don't have a unified movement. You have many, many movements. But there's there's not a coordination. Yeah, there's not a synchronization of all those movements. Yeah. So you know,
Unknown Speaker 15:13
I've said this in my papers too, like I said, like, you know, when Black Lives Matter and stop Asian hate was going on, like, we were kind of put it, like put it against each other. And instead of, I'm not saying that, like, we're, like, we should unite. It's like difficult to say, because I know we have two separate issues. But our main enemy is the same person, if that makes sense. Yeah, we're fighting the same person. Yeah. Or the same entity?
Unknown Speaker 15:43
Well, well, well, you're you're, you're also you're also fighting an idea. Yeah. You see, this is the thing I was watching last night on YouTube about the head about the founding of the Conservative Party. Oh, and how the man who was one of the founders of the Conservative Party, he debated James Baldwin, at Cambridge, about about this was back in the 60s, about whether or not people of color should be given the same rights as people who were white. And it was very interesting to watch, because his idea was basically well, they're not ready yet to have the rights of the people who are whitebait. So they need to be more educated. And then and then at a certain point, we as white people would have to approve that they were of sort of such a stature
Unknown Speaker 16:50
of we're if we're educated enough face,
Unknown Speaker 16:53
basically, that's what it was. But it was that it was, and of course, of course, the the audience at Cambridge on that night when they had the debate, overwhelming, overwhelmingly rejected that idea. Yeah, but that idea, that idea has continued. So much, so much of the conservative opposition to the President and his programs, and everything like that, has to do with that. I have said repeatedly that I think that all these issues are connected, oh, 100%, the abortion issue, the the expansion of women's rights, education, your way of education, banning books, limiting people's rights of vote, all of this prejudice against the LGBT community, prejudice against people with transgender, lesbian, all those things, all is of the same cloth. And that's what's behind. That's what's behind. Effectively the Republican movement. Now, I don't mean to say that all Republicans believe in those, of course, it's not all, but it's but there are, but there's a lot of people who voted for the ex president, based on the expectation that those views would be carried forward by him when he became president. And we're seeing now, as time goes on, how, even though as all this evidence has been reduced as to what was going on, you know, that the trials going on now, and all the rest of that stuff, a lot of people are not bothered by it. It's just as just as many of many people who supposedly have, you know, religious or whatever you would say, who support them. It really has really nothing to do with religion. And it has to do with power and appointing certain people to be put on the Supreme Court. But the idea of basically, the idea basically, that that there's a moral imperative to what I think is missing. And I think I think they want to not merely elect this man or people like him, but they want to limit knowledge. They want to limit education. They want to limit not just women's choice, but actually people's choice to vote. Yeah. And they through gerrymandering, they create these districts, where people of color of people who are a minority are basically taken out of the process. Yeah, of having representation.
Unknown Speaker 19:57
I mean, I've said it before like a As much as the United States like says, Oh, we, we hate dictators, we hate China, we hate No, North Korea, we hate Russia. They're supposedly hate Russia. But like, it genuinely feels like that's who they're trying to be by taking away our education by taking away our rights. And basically wanting to have one. What would you say? Like one like one race or something? Yeah, that was
Unknown Speaker 20:28
it's like, you know, I was saying to somebody the other night that the trial of the ex President is very instructive. Because on the one hand, the trial was about him, in a sense, yeah. Which I found very fascinating. And of course, you know, that he's supposedly paid these people often not to say, but the real story in this trials, though, is not that he paid people off. Because people were paid off in Hollywood for years, yeah, to cover up, stuff like that. But how the magazine or the tabloid or whatever you want to call it, for years was working for him, not merely not merely to, not merely to support him, but to discredit and to slander and to defame anybody else who opposed him. Yeah. So if you go back to 2016, when Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and ultimately, Hillary Clinton when she was the Democratic nominee, were running or competing with him. All of those people had their reputations destroyed. Yeah. But But and it struck me as like a high irony. You know, as I've been watching this case, and they were talking about the man who provided all the testimony against the ex president. And he was given immunity. But I'm saying to myself, you know, that's really not right, either. Yeah. And that was I know, they had they had to get this man's testimony, because that was evidence against the ex president of his culpability. But he was involved in this thing for years. This man, yeah. Like he was in it, too. He was in a coup. So, you know, it just shows you how the law like it's very compromised. And he comes in there. It's like, it's like a joke. You know, he's, he's, he's laughing. He's destroyed. They said Hillary Clinton had dementia. They said that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. They said that Ted Cruz that Ted Cruz was involved in adulterous affairs with Fievel where's that? Where's the responsibility? Where's the social outrage? That you shouldn't be able to do stuff like that? I think you know, I said this a long time ago and and you know, you you might have a different opinion than I have. But I really think the internet is the wild wild west. I think it's because if anything goes now Oh 100% Anything goes you know, you could put anything on social media or anything. But the harm that it's doing to people is not being you know, calculated. I we do here in UNLV all the people who are in the faculty have to take a course on internet security. Yeah. Which I finished yesterday. Good job. Yeah. But what was interesting about it is and this is something I truly do not understand what all the other problems that we have reg add on to regulate regulating social media, and basically the people who run the media social media companies not really being responsive, but the whole section they had in this course about AI and how oh the dangerous ramifications of a lack of regulation for AI and yet And yet without any any like apparently seemingly government scrutiny. They just let the thing out there.
Unknown Speaker 24:12
I genuinely think it's because since it hasn't happened to them, or it's not been used against them yet in a way that completely destroys their careers. Yeah, that's why it's not important to them. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 24:25
I don't know. I mean, I do know the man who was one of the one of the originators
Unknown Speaker 24:30
he was like No like this is scary we didn't stop he disowned
Unknown Speaker 24:34
it yeah, he
Unknown Speaker 24:35
was like that's not my
Unknown Speaker 24:37
right away right away. That should be a warning sign. And you would you would have a commission or a team of experts to evaluate its its properties both good and bad. It just they just threw it out there. I just throw it out there and all the you know, the Giants and in that industry basically buy shares in all these different companies. Yeah, as each one is trying to monopolize ai ai, and you know, all this crazy stuff that you know, you can create you can be somebody else and you
Unknown Speaker 25:14
can not. Not very nice pictures of like, girls, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like that's like that's a scary thing. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 25:26
It sure is. They had a big article. And yeah, I think it was either. I think it was either.
Unknown Speaker 25:33
It was about the middle school boys, right? Yes.
Unknown Speaker 25:36
Who committed suicide? Oh, yeah. That's that's another story. Another story, huh? Yeah, this was a story of these kids were in high school. And they somehow they hacked their computers or something. And they wanted ransom. Oh my god, we're gonna, we're gonna send out these pictures to everybody. And then what they also did is they were able to create, they was able to create pictures of girls and put them on the computers of these kids, that they the kids had nothing to do with it.
Unknown Speaker 26:13
And there's like, no, like, legal like, like, I don't like that. The only thing that I found that they could get them for was like, for creating pics of like a minor. Yeah, but like, I don't know, it's so it's so scary to like, to me personally. Because, like, I mean, I hope fully like having kid like, enemies like that, who will go out of their way to like, use my pictures. Yeah, like, picture, you know, like, like, a picture of me, like graduating and like, turn it into something like,
Unknown Speaker 26:45
ya know,
Unknown Speaker 26:45
it's like, it's genuinely like such a big fear of mine. No, it's
Unknown Speaker 26:50
you're, you're very rational when you say that. You're very rational when you say that. But the government, the government and these companies. It's like the circle movie that we had in the class, where the woman goes to this company. And all they put these people pretend to be very benevolent, and everything was completely the opposite. Yeah, it's just, it's just getting this information where they basically have a stranglehold on Yeah, you know, people now, so I don't know. But anyway, as we just did to talk for a couple of minutes. And this is going to be our last show for the semester. And it's been such a, it's been such a great privilege for the both of us to be able to hopefully, you know, throw out these these ideas to all of you folks that you know, listen to the program.
Unknown Speaker 27:46
I hope we inspire some hope within our listeners.
Unknown Speaker 27:51
Yeah. Well, that's, that's, that's, that's what we're trying to do. And I also want to I also want to say that it's been such a great experience to work with Gabriela Tam, who has been my partner on this show. I think she's, she's one of those people, who's going to be the future, in many ways. And people like her, of what happens in this country, because we definitely need a change here. And we need people like her who have that idealism, and that intelligence and that devotion to the law, and to enter into into doing good things. So I know you will want to wish her good luck in her new career. She's going to be in the accounting world, in the business, business world. And, you know, but I want to thank her and thank you for listening. And as we as we sign off, now, I look forward to talking to you in the fall. And hopefully, you know, we can continue to kick these ideas around. We don't always have the solutions to a lot of these issues. But the most important thing we all must do is we must acknowledge the problem as the first step Yeah, I mean, nothing can be solved without that acknowledgement. And then once there is an acknowledgement, then you can work on trying to try to heal it. So on that and on that note, I'd like to, I just like to say on my behalf, it's been a pleasure and and good night.
Unknown Speaker 29:35
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi 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