Social Justice - A Conversation

From dissecting the implications of Arizona's controversial abortion law to uncovering alarming revelations about defective fuselages in airplanes, Prof. Charles Stanton and Gabriella Tam navigate through the complex intersections of politics, corporate greed, and societal values. From unequal pay in the hospitality industry to the plight of immigrant workers, they shed light on systemic injustices that demand attention and action. With poignant anecdotes and sharp analysis, they challenge listeners to confront uncomfortable truths and advocate for meaningful change in our communities. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that delves deep into the heart of social justice dilemmas.

What is Social Justice - A Conversation?

Social Justice - A Conversation

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You're listening to local programming produced in K, u and v studios.

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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.

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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. Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student. And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:36
Well, good evening, everybody. We're back again. Professor Stanton with my cohort Gabriela. Tam, hello. And, boy, I tell you, we have so many things to talk about today, we need almost an elongated program. But of course, we're not allowed to have one. So we're gonna have to take

Unknown Speaker 0:55
four hours, the minimal time? Well, anyway, where do we start? Well, I guess we start with the by now famous or infamous, depending on how you look at it.

Unknown Speaker 1:07
reincarnation of an 1864 law in the state of Arizona having to deal with the banning of abortion, basically, the banning of abortion, a law that was passed before actually Arizona even became a state how's that even possible? How is it even possible? Yes. But it basically, it basically

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lays out the fact that the abortion processes murder, and that people are, you know, going to be punished and all that all the rest of this crazy, all the rest of this crazy stuff. What's interesting about it, though, what's interesting about it was that not too long ago, they had passed, I guess it was a five week ban on on the abortion.

Unknown Speaker 1:53
But somehow, somehow a law that was passed before this territorial entity even became a state now supersedes a law from today. Are you out of your mind? What is going on in our country? Man? I don't know, you know, the Arizona Supreme Court, you know, I get the part that the roll Republican, I get that part of it. But come on. I mean, you know, you shouldn't you should know that, that something like this is completely off the charts. And there doesn't seem to be like any accountability for these people. That's what's disturbing. Like, you know, like, somebody one time said, who judges the judges? But I mean, really? Yeah. You know,

Unknown Speaker 2:42
and I think, I think from from a political point of view, it's actually it's actually going to benefit

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the Democratic Party, and progressives, because, yeah, they're gonna turn out an enormous vote. Yeah. You know, when, when November comes, you're gonna get you know, you're gonna get a lot of people out to the polls that maybe never voted before. Because the these decisions that they're making are basically against the will of like, three quarters of the people. Yeah, you know, I know, it's, it's just, like, it's just always so crazy to me. How can you?

Unknown Speaker 3:21
How do you want to ban abortion? Because the idea of abortion like yeah, it's,

Unknown Speaker 3:29
you know, it's, so you don't have a kid or whatever. But, like, it also, like saves people's lives, like people who are already

Unknown Speaker 3:37
out of a womb, you know? And then, also, I don't know, it's just like, is it because it, you don't think it will happen to you or someone that you love? Like, you're like, oh, yeah, let's just, let's just ban it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, my thing is this.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
There are people who oppose abortion on religious grounds. Yeah. And a lot of them are very sincere in what they believe. And I respect that. I respect that. Yeah. It's not my opinion, but I respect what they what they believe. But there's a lot of people who are, oppose it.

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Supposedly, because they are as, you know,

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religiously oriented as the other people except that they're not. Yeah, a lot of the abortion movement, the movement to end abortion,

Unknown Speaker 4:33
has nothing to do with the child and never to do with the child. It's about it's about the subjugation of women. It's about controlling, it's about controlling what women do.

Unknown Speaker 4:46
And basically, taking over the the the autonomy that a woman or any other human being should have with their body. This is this is what it is. So

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When you have a country like the United States of America, where

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there are more women in our country than there are men. And then you also have

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a huge plurality of people who believe that the woman should have the right to choose.

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How did they come up with these decisions? Except that they have, except that they have this agenda? They have this agenda and the agenda is that we want to keep women in their place. Now, this agenda, this patriarchal agenda, has gone back to probably the founding of the country, where women were basically not given a voice to express themselves. Yeah, we were just objects, objects, the right to vote. There's not like a whole bunch of yeah, there's other things, but it's to me, it seems like

Unknown Speaker 5:56
they're getting further and further out with these decisions. Like, it's like, there's like a defiance of reason and logic and fairness, and all those things.

Unknown Speaker 6:08
And I think women now are starting to realize more than ever, that their rights are really in jeopardy. I've said before, and I'll say it again, on this broadcast, I believe that they what they want to do, the forces that are behind this, they want to end they want to end gay rights they want to enter and all the rights for transgender people, the LGBT community.

Unknown Speaker 6:42
eradicate the decision that allowed gay marriage, and if they can, if they're able to actually revoke these marriages, yeah, with the people who already been married, but say that because it's, it's against the law of God or whatever, whatever rationality they use, so to speak. And you got a court basically, now a Supreme Court that, you know, has just abandoned.

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Any, any

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sane analysis of law? Yeah, and it's completely partisan.

Unknown Speaker 7:21
We're seeing it. And of course, in the situation with the ex president, where, you know, you have a situation where, in so many months, the people are going to have to vote. And they're gonna have to make a decision who they're gonna vote for. So it seemed logically that you would want the people of the country to have an idea as to the guilt or innocence of one of the people that's running, that would seem like a logical thing. But their response to it, is to delay the arguments to the ends of the month, when this was a case that should have had a priority. I remember I remember when

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President Nixon was involved with the Watergate investigation, and he had tapes and other documentation. And he did not want to turn them over to the

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legal authorities. And the court ruled unanimously, I mean, there were a number of those justices who had been appointed by the President. And they all voted that, you know, he had to do that.

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When President Clinton was in office, he was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. And, of course, he had to appear. He had to give, he had to give testimony. And those were cases, those rare cases where,

Unknown Speaker 8:58
you know, they were in actually in office, they were both in office at the time. Here you have a guy, he's out of office, now. He's out of office, and they're just taking their sweet taking their time, you know, and that the situation down in Florida, that's a joke, too, because the one woman who is the judge

Unknown Speaker 9:19
I'm not, I'm not I'm not going to say that she's biased or prejudiced or any of those things. I don't know what's I don't know what's inside of her. So I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt on that. But from but from a but from a legal expertise. perspective, it doesn't look like she knows what she's doing. She's like, she's making decisions. And she's she's writing she's writing.

Unknown Speaker 9:43
What shall we say? decisions based on? It doesn't seem like what the law should be. And, and yet somehow she's sitting on the case. You know, I think the mistake that was made, I said this to a number of people. I think Jack Smith should have tried to recuse the riot right.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Right after that, once they had the situation where she appointed the Special Master, this is going back a number of months. And it was appealed to the Court of Appeals in Atlanta. And they unanimously, they unanimously, not only reversed her ruling, they basically said that, you know, she didn't even know what she was doing. She looks like a joke, basically, basically. So, you know, and then and then she, she somehow shows up again, in this case, and she's doing the same thing. Okay. So you say you say what's, you know, what is that about? I think we have a pretty good idea. So that's how we started off our program. That was another interesting tidbit I saw recently having to do with I don't know how many folks out there. Watch the women's basketball finals semi finals, the Iowa game versus Connecticut, the the Iowa game versus South Carolina. Got the bigger a bigger. My dad was talking about a bigger rating than the men's championship game. So more people saw the Women's Championship game than the men's championship game. Why is that? Well, I guess because, you know, there was a lot of a lot, maybe a lot more drama in it. Oh, yeah. There is. There's just one player. Caitlin Clark. Yeah. And she's like, really? She could just like, she's like, really good or something. Yeah. And it's my I feel like her that like some people don't like her because she's not very sportsmen like horsemen, like, well, that that I cannot say, but what I will say is this, that.

Unknown Speaker 11:35
So I'm reading that in the paper. This is what I said. That's great. That's great. So then they have an article about the amount of money that the NCAA gets from the television networks. Oh, it's probably like nothing, huh? Well, nothing for the women. Yeah, the women only got

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their games only got a million dollars. Okay. All right. The man's got 865 865 Yeah, versus eight. Okay, but it gets better though. It gets better though.

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Because the 865 that the men got.

Unknown Speaker 12:14
They only that was just for the basketball. That doesn't count into the other sports. The 8 million that the women got that was for all the sports including the basketball. What so they were they were they were getting robbed, basically.

Unknown Speaker 12:28
getting robbed. Eight, 8 million versus 865 million. Yeah. So there you go. There you go. So so so how do you how do you change that? Well, the way you change it, basically the way to change you basically, if you're the NCAA, which I'm surprised they didn't think of doing this. They should put in workout contracts. Separating the sports Yeah. So it shouldn't be all of a sports are grouped together. Each sport should have its own like women's soccer, women's gymnastics. What have you. But I was I was surprised. I was like, it's like 100 to one. Yeah. Hundreds. Well, literally, like not even just 100 100 millions of dollars. Oh my god. 65 to 860 $5 million. Yeah, yeah. So in the eight, six, like you said sci fi was just for men's baths just for the men's basketball. But but the 8 million that the women got to the bathroom of a sports said which was what sells us nothing. If you figure out you got women's the women's field hockey, women's softball, which is very, which is very popular viewing, women's gymnastics,

Unknown Speaker 13:37
women's basketball, etc. Yeah. That's nothing. It's not that's like not it's like, probably less than a million for like each sport. Yeah. It's like the crumbs you throw to a bird. Yeah. Here's a couple of here's just some like, like, you know, like a million bucks or whatever. Oh, my gosh. So that's what it is. Now. That's what it is. But that's, that shouldn't be really, in a sense of surprise, though. It's not it's just, it's just hearing the numbers. It's just like, yeah, oh, my gosh, oh, it's bad. No, it's bad. So bad, you know. So moving, moving along from that moving along from that we're going to, I didn't want to I didn't want to start the program with it today, because we've started the program with it a few days, a few few occasions, but wanted to talk about the airline situation again. Now, you know, this is a program called social justice, a conversation. And one may say, Well, what is the business of an airline have to do with social justice? Well,

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to to have social justice, to enjoy social justice to seek social justice. You have to have one very important thing

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to do that. And the most important thing you have to have to do any of those things are

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wouldn't be in our studio today is to be alive. Yeah, but you're alive. You're

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okay. Anyway,

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one of the whistleblowers, who has been cooperating with the government, that for him, you know, it's sad, though. I mean, it's sad, really that, you know, this was not brought to the attention of people long time ago. But but one of the whistleblowers is basically saying now

Unknown Speaker 15:29
that the fuselage is in these planes are defective, and that the fuselage could could, I guess, you, I guess, use the word rupture if you want to use that word,

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in the process of the flight.

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So I've said this before. And I'm going to say it again,

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as the evidence mounts in these cases, when you have people coming forward, when you have employees, when you have people who are, I mean, actually business, people who talked about how

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Boeing was cutting one of their costs.

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They were not using proper materials. One of the things that they were doing in certain parts of the plane, they were replacing the metal that they used to use with other compounds. So they were not using the same

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metals that they were using. Yeah, that were apparently incredibly strong. And it was substituting the thing that got me though, the response of these people, which is, which is scary.

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is, you know, when they're questioned about

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you know, the durability of these products that make up the composition of the plane. Yeah, because they use an enormous amount of suppliers. I mean, when when, when an aircraft is built, it's not merely, you know, one or two companies that are building it, it's all the different, you know, contractors and subcontractors bring in

Unknown Speaker 17:10
their unique parts. Yeah. And the answer was, as I took it, well,

Unknown Speaker 17:18
as for now, everything's working well, obviously not. But But what got me about that was,

Unknown Speaker 17:26
but you replaced some of the essential parts of the of the plane with other parts. That is a question about their durability. So if you replace these metals with other parts, you really don't know how long the shelf life is. Yeah. And you're, you're bringing in this other stuff. And I'm saying to myself, whoa, you know, that's, that's, that's kind of scary. Yeah. Like, when you when you want to make change, you want to make change for the better. safety wise, you want, like, your products to be stronger? Not. I'm gonna cut some corners and put all these people at risk. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that's, that's what, that's what you would think you would think but but the truth of the matter is, that all this money that they made, you know, and cutting corners, and, and building these planes, very quickly, was profit money that they made, that went to the executives, and went to the shareholders. The guy who was the CEO, he left with a $32 million severance package. So I'm saying to myself, well,

Unknown Speaker 18:48
what does any of that have to do with the safety of the airline? So

Unknown Speaker 18:54
now, basically, they're gonna have to start from scratch. But but but but for our, for our, from our perspective, as you know, citizens and people who fly and you know, the people who listen to this program, yeah. I look around all the planes. Yeah, I've been saying this, I've been saying, and I've said like, so many times, I would ground all the planes, because

Unknown Speaker 19:21
some of the talk about the fuselages had to do not even with the new planes that they were building, but the planes that they've been using for a number years, and we don't know, you know, what the wear and tear of those planes, how much longer those parts are going to be able to keep going. So they should just do it. They should just say, Listen, it's gonna be a big inconvenience to people. We're gonna have to cancel a lot of flights, because they're the man you met. There's a major manufacturer for, I guess all the major airlines, but you got to do it. Just do it. Well,

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Like, they can even do it when people like when I don't know, like, playing usage is low, you know, like, What time was that? Wednesday? I don't even know. But like, you could even do it when people are not flying as much. You know? Yeah, of course. Well, I mean, I think. Yeah. And again now so you know, you have the FAA, okay. And they're supposed to be the watchdog. But all the information while the information in this whole scandal has come from people who are whistleblowers, and then people coming forward, who has threatened actually, with the loss of their jobs, if they cooperated with the investigation? So how do you how do you rely then on the government institution like that, where instead of like, really trying to get to the bottom of it, you know, that they're just like, very, they're very, like, llevado? Right? We're going to investigate it. But you know, we don't want to step on any toes. And and the reason for that the reason for that not just in the FAA, and a lot of government

Unknown Speaker 21:09
is these people work for the government. And then they leave that job. And they wind up working for the companies they were investigating, while they were working for the FAA, the FDA,

Unknown Speaker 21:26
all these different agencies.

Unknown Speaker 21:29
It's like, exactly, there was a huge was huge article about,

Unknown Speaker 21:35
you know, our drug prices. Yeah. And of course, we have, we have much higher drug prices than most of the rest of the civilized world. Yep. Okay. But it was interesting in the major drugs, I goes and begs a relative, and all the rest is stuff, the actual raw materials that they that they use a compound to make, whatever those drugs are, it's like 20 $30, and a charging, like, Rosetta, and some of these drugs $1,500 $2,000 a month, and more how they get away with this stuff. Where's the government regulation? Where is the government? Where is our government? What are they supposed to be doing in all these regulatory processes? And, you know, it's really astounding to me that there isn't more of a public a public outcry. Yeah, I mean, you know, like, they were saying, like,

Unknown Speaker 22:29
you know, what, the weight loss drugs, oh, and the other thing, the other one, that's a big one, which is also related to people's health is insulin. And they use insulin prices, why the cost of materials is very low. Why should Why should people be paying this exorbitant amount of money every month? It's just, I know, we always talk about this. It's just like, it's just annoying how these companies just don't care about people. Like you have. Like, if you're in the medical profession, you're literally supposed to be caring for people, you and then like, in the airline industry, you should be caring about people because you're like, if you really think about it, like a lot of people use planes to,

Unknown Speaker 23:13
to, like, unite with their family, like even like, I'm going to like, I don't know, I gotta like, search up, which plane I might be using, but like, I want to go, you know, I want to go see my family overseas. I don't and I don't want to have that thought like, Yeah, whatever. What if the door flies off? And I get sucked down? Yeah, no, no, you know, like, I don't want that in the back of my mind. I want to be excited about seeing my grandparents in my family. It like yeah, of course. Of course. You that's a normal thing to want to do. No, it's It's, it's interesting. You know, I was talking with somebody the other night, we were talking. And they worked at one of the big hotels in the city. And they've worked there for a number of years. And they were talking how, when they started working there, they didn't get a salary.

Unknown Speaker 24:06
They everything was tips, that they had some dances subsist on tips. Yeah. And they had a huge article in the USA Today now about it's called tip nation. It's about a lot of these restaurants and places, you know, where they have the gratuity is whatever it is added to the bill. But that's because they're not paying people anything. Yeah, they pay people meager wages. And then they want the customer not only to pay him, they want the customer to pay the salary of the workers and basically, I mean, so what is that about? I don't know. Like, and then like food is already getting, like so expensive. And so. I don't know. And there's another thing it's like, with the you know, a lot of like, companies you know, fast food is are implementing, what is it like robots and stuff? Right, right.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
they're just taking people out of the people out of like the restaurants and stuff. And they still want you to tip but it's like, who am I tipping, like, so you have that other thing too.

Unknown Speaker 25:13
It's just like sad. And then also, like, from an accounting point of view, I remember when I would have to do like payroll. And like these employers, like they, at least they have to pay the tips. They have to give the tips to their workers. Yeah, but people don't even want to tip sometimes. It's just, it's a difficult, difficult topic. Yeah. Well, it's and they should, you know, it's like, a lot of these places don't even pay the minimum wage. No, you know, and then, you know, I always I always, I always, it always makes me think they talk about the immigrants, you know, well, the immigrants and all that, you know, they're like,

Unknown Speaker 25:50
Well, you know, I can the San Joaquin Valley and these places where the

Unknown Speaker 25:55
people harvest the food, they like the farmer's crops, what we eat.

Unknown Speaker 26:01
I don't think they get paid anything decent. Oh, definitely not. They had a very interesting article. And I was a little flabbergasted by this, you know?

Unknown Speaker 26:11
When I was back in the East Coast, when I was younger, I used to go out to the Hamptons. Oh, and you know, it was you know, go go to the beach and everything.

Unknown Speaker 26:21
I couldn't believe that the people who like like handyman handy handyman, people, people who were like domestics and everything. They were living in tents out there.

Unknown Speaker 26:33
They were living in Oh, Woods. Oh, well, when in this ultra wealthy place. Oh, that's like dystopias dystopian, but, but look at look at here, though. Look at here, though. Oh, yeah. You know, you got you got

Unknown Speaker 26:53
so many positive things. Uh huh. But you got this amazing homeless problem here? No, yeah, I was.

Unknown Speaker 27:01
I was

Unknown Speaker 27:03
always like, I was going to my like, family friends like her kid, like, golf tournament. And it was, what was it? It was Desert Pines. And we, like, you know, it's like, weird kids. It's like, you have a golf course. You know, we're in golf is usually viewed as like a rich man sport, right. But when I was like, we were driving there. i We drove past, you know, do you know Las Vegas rescue mission? Yes, I do. And so there was a lot of, like, homeless people around. It's just very, like,

Unknown Speaker 27:33
it was just weird. Like, we were going to a place like a rich man sports place. We had to go through this, like, homeless area. It's just like, yeah, very, like dystopian. Like, what we were saying, yeah. Well, it's just, it's just interesting. It's just interesting, why they don't care, though. When you know, when you have when you have all that, when you have all that, like in the city, we have all these successful places, in making more money now than they've ever made in the history of this city, or maybe any city, sports, gambling,

Unknown Speaker 28:09
you know, and you see these people on the street, something, something should activate you that well, you know, we need to we need to find a place where these people work. And it's the same thing with the young people, all the teenagers and people and all these kids. Yeah. And what we need to do something because those children are a future. Yeah, like that, should that should, you know, click with you. It's just once again, like the United States showing that all these policies that are like, like the abortion bans and stuff to like, save the kids. It's not about the kids.

Unknown Speaker 28:47
That just shows it's never about the kid. It's about, it's about a political agenda. And unfortunately, it's about greed. Yeah. And unless we address that as a society, and look at ourselves, which we don't want to do very much. But I think Nietzsche said it that a society that doesn't look at its own values and examine its own values is doomed. Oh, yeah, you gotta you've got to look at what, not just how you're doing. You got to look at how everybody else is doing

Unknown Speaker 29:20
well on that sort of somber but maybe ultimately hopeful note. We want to thank you for listening and we look forward to the pleasure of talking to you again next week. Thanks for listening. Good night. Good night.

Unknown Speaker 29:36
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at Tangie one at is T A N G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu or to contact Professor Charles satin

Unknown Speaker 29:53
at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai