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Social Justice - A Conversation
Announcer 0:00
You're listening to local programming produced in KU NV studios. The content
Wesley Knight 0:06
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 0:18
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton. I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,
Blanca Pena 0:23
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of
Charles Stanton 0:26
Law, and this is social justice, a conversation,
Blanca Pena 0:30
a conversation.
Charles Stanton 0:33
It's good to be with you again. I'm here with my partner, Blanca Pena, I'm Professor Stanton, and we have so many things to talk about this evening that, you know, I made up a huge list, but I'm just going to try to hit a few of them. I wanted to start out with a story that I don't think has been covered that much in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein, which basically has has eclipsed every other abuse scandal there could be, although there are so many others. I want to talk a little bit about Catholic Church and the Catholic situation regarding child abuse, you know, growing up, you know, growing up, I came from a mixed home. My mom was Jewish, my father was Irish, Catholic, and I partook of both faiths. And I still, I still have those ties. And as years went by, and the court. I went to Catholic grammar school and had an uneventful had an uneventful time there. And now, of course, all these years later, we find out about the the abuse of children in the Catholic Church. And it's not limited to the Catholic Church, it's there are other faiths as well that are also been involved in this. But I was looking, I guess it was last Thursday in the New York Times, and they had a article about Rhode Island and the the immensity of all the children who had been abused by the priests in Rhode Island. It was, it was just like you couldn't even take a grip of it. It was, it was so bad, and all the lawsuits and all the stuff that that came out of it. And I'm saying to myself, Well, why do these things continue? Why is there that acceptance of this, that this is normal? So I had cut, I had cut the article out of the paper, and then just accidentally, I turned, I turned over the paper, and there was a story about a man who was a gynecologist in Columbia University Medical School, and he had, over decades, sexually abused and mistreated literally Hundreds of his patients, and they had a, you know, the man's in prison now, and they had all kinds of, you know, lawsuits and stuff like that, and hundreds of billions of dollars. So I'm thinking to myself, you know, why is it in our society? Why is it in our world, particularly the United States, because we live here, why is there almost like an acceptance that there will be, that there will be child abuse and that women will be mistreated, and this is like a norm now where, basically, oh yeah, this part, this woman was assaulted, or whatever as well. You know how things are, that's how life is, people. So, anyway, so anyway, I was thinking about that. And then, and then last Friday, I got up and I read, you know, I read the journal, I read the times, and I read USA Today, and there's an advertisement. There's an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, and I'm looking at it and like, I'm saying, like, you know, maybe, maybe I had a rough night last night. Maybe I was, you know, drinking something instead of Diet Coke or seven up with cranberry juice. There was a huge ad for a Catholic Diocese in Alexandria, Louisiana that's going bankrupt. And the ad basically was about all the the well, we're children then, but now we're adults to file claims. Was against this Archdiocese that basically had numerous priests rotating throughout this diocese from church to church, abusing children as you had relatively the same thing in Rhode Island, and you had, of course, the guy was the gynecologist in Columbia, and you have Jeffrey Epstein. And I'm saying to myself, has our society gotten to the point where this is this evil has become so normalized that people are not even shocked anymore, except, well, that's part of America, right?
Blanca Pena 5:44
And, you know, I think about it, I try to, I try to think about it, about it getting worse over time, but then I look back and it feels like it's always just been that way. You know what I mean? And the only reason why it's so overwhelming now is because everyone has a phone, everyone has, you know, some sort of way to figure out what's happening on the other side of the world. And it almost feels like we're being bombarded with it, all right? Because I can imagine maybe, like back in the 1400s during the Salem witch trials, right? The people living in Salem were inundated with everything that was going on there, right, with all of those crimes against those women, but maybe they didn't know what was happening in another part of the world, so all they knew was what was happening with them. But now it's like we live in Las Vegas, and we have everything happening here and in the country and in the continent and in the entire world, and it I just, I almost feel like society has always been that way. You know what I mean? And it breaks my heart. I with with this conflict that's happening right now and in Iran and everything i It's heartbreaking because I have a friend who's currently, I was telling you before we were on the air, I have a friend who's currently at University in Dubai, and she's stuck there, and she doesn't know where to where to go, and the airports are shut down, and she's hearing explosions every two hours, and it's, it's horrible, because she just went to Dubai to go to school, right? You know, you don't expect to be trapped in a war, right? You, or at least you, you hope you wouldn't right, like, whenever you go somewhere, and it's, I don't know how much, how much we should really think about it, in the sense that, like, you know, society got this bad, or society got worse. I just think we need to really work on our own communities, and we need to work on the people around us and make sure that our friends are going down good paths. Our friends are, you know, safe, our families are taken care of, even even with the Catholic Church scandal. You know, I was, I was raised Catholic, and I did, I think I did all of my sacraments, like I got baptized, and I did my confirmation and my communion and the whole thing. And now I don't go to church every Sunday because I don't align with it anymore. And I think a lot of it has to do with things like this, where it feels like religion at a certain point no longer brought us together, but it is more so dividing us now it's being used as a weapon. It's being used as as a point to to divide the country. And I don't align with it. I don't know what your your thoughts are, Professor, because I know you're still very religious, and you align with with your religious beliefs still. How do you feel about these scandals, considering that you hold the same beliefs?
Charles Stanton 8:55
Well, I think, I think over time, I've re evaluated how I think I was in the I was in the church. I went to shul. You know, on Friday nights I sang. I actually sang in a Calvinist Dutch Reformed church choir for a number of years. And I, and I believed, and I still believe that, that that God is in those places. But I think the bottom line is this, it's important. I think, if you I think it's important if you can go to religious observance, even if it's just to meditate there and to give thought as to how you're living and what you're doing, or even to meditate outside of a religious institution and just spend some time each day just thinking about what, what, what you want to do and what do. Meaning of life is. And I think, I think, I think it's important to pray. And by and by prayer, I mean, you know, like when I wake up in the morning, I thank God that you know I'm here and I'm, you know, going to have another day. And when I go to bed at night, I I pray and I say, you know, I tried to do good today. I tried to be a good person. You know, there's always room for improvement. But I think, I think ultimately, what I've come to feel about religion is religion is about one thing. If there's one most important thing about religion is it is just too good. Just help other people, love other people, care for other people. Be be an encourager, be an advocate. Be a person who looks out for those that need, looking out after. Have compassion. Be all of those things and be, be the be, be those things in the way you in the way you speak and the way you act. If you can, if you can do that, if you can do that, then things will be, I think, immeasurably better. I think what's sad and you were talking about the war, is that in a sane, rational society or a sane, rational world, the answer to these problems is not violence, it's not mayhem, it's not killing. If that was the case, if that was the case, if all those things were true, that it was a solution, you wouldn't have the solution. You wouldn't have the situation you have in the Middle East, which has not improved at all. It's going on since, well, we're going to be going on 4053, we're going on 80 years, basically, of mayhem. But I think what's happened in the world, maybe we're more aware of it because we have the different modalities of communication which we didn't have in the olden days. But why is it always to me, divisiveness. Why is it always anger? Why isn't it people just sitting down together and trying to use our intelligence and our learning to try to work things out in a peaceful way? Why is violence always seem to be the go to thing?
Blanca Pena 12:38
I think people just don't value human life anymore, at least not the people who who are in power. You heard Donald Trump speaking last week about how, well, I'll make a reference here, and I'll see if you understand it. Did you ever watch the Shrek movies? The one? Okay, so there was one of the movies. I think it was maybe the third one. I don't remember. There's this man they His name is Lord Farquaad, and there is a scene in Shrek where he's like, we're gonna lose a lot of soldiers, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, right? As if it was, as if he's on the front lines, as if he's losing his life and all of that. And he's just, he's putting people out to die. And that's essentially what Trump said last week about, like, well, people are gonna die, but like, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. And it's like, Well, what a human life is? A human life, right? Like, we were so quick to minimize that when, when we group them all in words, like, like troops or casualties or numbers or whatever it is, right? And we forget that, like even just one life lost is a huge failure. It really is. And I think as as soon as we allow ourselves to feel numb to these things and to and to look at human lives as dispensable and and nothing more. I think that's that's why there's so much conflict, because they think that they can throw bombs at the issue or or gunfire at the issue, and that's just not the case. But here's the thing, if, if world leaders could just if, if it had to be them fighting right? If it had to be them out on the field, in the trenches, doing whatever they had to do, I doubt we'd ever go to war. But because they get to go home every night, because they get to just sit in air conditioning with their suits on on TV, because it's never them who lose anything. That's why they're so quick to allow their egos to start these giant conflicts. Because it never, it never personally affects them. And it goes back to what we've been talking about, about rich people never facing consequences, even even if they've done. The worst of things, that money will always get them out, right? So I think that's what it is. I think, you know, it's hard to fathom, because you and I are, in their eyes, dispensable. But to them, it's, it's nothing. It's it, yeah, there's really nothing for them to lose there, and that's why it's so easy for all of this to happen. Yeah, I think that's,
Charles Stanton 15:26
I think that's exactly, I think that's exactly correct in what you said when we, when we were doing the movie in the class, the Judgment at Nuremberg movie, and, you know, a movie that I've seen a number of times, and very familiar with it, and I had actually been able to get for the class, I guess it was this past week, an actual documentary that was made About Nuremberg, which was phenomenal. But I'm always reminded of the end of that movie where the judge, who's under a lot of pressure not to give these people a sentence they truly deserve, he said that, you know, today, we make a statement about the sanctity, the value of every human life, and I think that's that's something that we need to really think about in our society. Now there's a lot of people at the top of the food chain who will never think that way, because their thing is not about the rest of the country, or what's going on in the country, or how millions of people are being taken off health care or children can't get food. It's about me. I have said this before, and I'll say it again the computer, internet, social media, AI, all those things in their way have been revolutionary in doing a lot of good to society, but what they've also done, though, is they've created an insularity where people are into themselves and they're their own world, and so when the time comes in society like it should be coming now with this war that really is a war, although they're denying it, it's a war, right? You don't see any movement. You don't see any like seminal joining together of people who are saying, this is insane, with what's going on here, we could have a worldwide conflagration of all these countries, and not just that, that so many of the countries that are involved in this have the nuclear capability we could, we could actually incinerate the planet. But as you say, the people at the top who feature in so many of our scandals, it seems to be the same cast, the character you know. And you say, well, these are the people who have all this influence. And one of the reasons, but not the only reason, is the political process in our country has been totally corrupted by money. It's been totally corrupted by the by the egregious mistake of Citizens United, perhaps outside of the immunity case, the worst, I guess Dred Scott was one of them, but, but, yep, but, but, but this decision, unlimited money, no no validation, no verification, all these different groups, aliases, everything, and you can pour as much money as you want to Yeah. So when, so when a Congress is elected, when a Congress is elected, even if, even if we as individuals gave something to contribute to someone who seemed like an idealistic, good person, we're nowhere in the ballpark. No, absolutely. There are 1000s of times ahead of us, millions of times ahead of us,
Blanca Pena 19:21
1,000% and I'm glad you brought up corruption. I don't I know you know, Christina was testifying last week about several issues, but there was this portion of her testimony that stuck with me. It was about a corporation that was receiving $143 million from the US government. I don't know if you, if you saw that part, but um, oh, yeah, they were, they were asking her about it, and they were like, Well, where is this corporation? Where are their headquarters? Where's their website at? And she's like, I don't know. I don't know where it is. Like, I'm sure there's blah, blah, blah, whatever. And. They were like, Oh, well, we ended up looking into it and we found it. But what's what's concerning is that that corporation wasn't incorporated until eight days or something, before it received the funding. And the location of it was somewhere, I believe, in North Dakota, where she was governor, or something like that. Like it had some sort of connection back to her. And they were like, Why is $143 million of taxpayer money going to this weird, ominous, like, great, like, corporation that no one knows about? Yeah, it's that's the thing. And I think I said it either the last show or the one before that. But people like to talk about other countries and their corruption, and how in Mexico, there's all of this corruption. No, we need to talk about the corruption here, because it's real. It might look different. They might hide it differently, but it's so so real and it's so true. I mean, think about all of all of the money that you know, these lobbyists put into different politicians or different bills and things like that, like the oil companies, the electric companies, the car companies, these giant, giant companies who have the amount of wealth that that us regular people can't compete with,
Charles Stanton 21:20
yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's as you say. It's as you say. It's got, it's gotten. It's one of the other things is also the greed. Yeah, yeah. Well, you were saying corruption. I guess we could throw greed in there too, in my in my lifetime. In my lifetime, I'm a little older than you are, but only, only two years, a couple years, but it's an exalted greed. Yeah, it's a greed that's almost become legitimatized. It's not the greed like, well, you took like, a few $1,000 yeah, it's the greed of all the insider deals that the government is making. The case of the takeover of Warner Brothers by Paramount which under any study of the FCA, FCC rules and a knowledge of what those rules are was completely bogus, but they're been with the President. You got people who are criminals, rioters, felons, they're buying pardons and and it's it shows as an example, then to everybody else that's in corporate America, well, that's the way to go. That's how you get ahead. You basically throw money at certain people, and your and your feathers will be pressed, and everything will be good. And the idea of and the idea of justice, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. Is this, this whole situation, I was talking with one of my colleagues before I came over here to the broadcast with you. They were talking about, they were talking about, how, with this shadow docket. Now, basically, oh yeah, that's basically, it's basically a bridge. What's supposed to be going on and how the court is supposed to work, and you can have a two sentence opinion and there's no debate and there's no I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.
Blanca Pena 23:32
It really is. It's funny because I'm in the I'm currently taking a bar exam foundations class, and so we just finished up property. Now we're going into con law, and I'm like, wow, it would be so crazy if, if everything that I'm learning right now is actually real, like if checks and balances were actually real, if we could actually hold people accountable, if, if the court did what they were supposed to do, kind of thing. Yeah, the shadow docket has always confused me, because I understand why something like that would exist just for purposes of expediency or something like that, right? But with the with the greed, with the greed that these people have, they will always find a way to make the system work for them, even if it means putting everybody else to the side,
Charles Stanton 24:20
yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you. You know, another thought hit me too, like, you know, you're a student here and I'm a teacher, which doesn't mean which doesn't make me superior, because I always say that what you teach, the true success of teaching is you learn as much from the students as you try to teach them, yeah. But I was thinking about it the other day, and I was saying to myself, you know, I'm teaching an ethics course here, and I'm trying to show through the movies these beliefs, yeah, but what are the. Students seeing around them in their everyday lives, in the Congress, in the presidency, with the Supreme Court, yeah is basically, is basically a repudiation Yeah, of everything I'm teaching. And trying to teach Yeah, because they're seeing and they say, Well, you know, professors there and he's talking all this stuff, and then they're doing this stuff, like, yeah, out of nothing. How do they do it? How do they get away with it?
Blanca Pena 25:24
Yeah, the essays that you attach to your movies, right? The the prompts that you give us for every movie, the the one prompt that is like, how does this relate to our country? That prompt is the easiest one, yeah, always. It takes, it doesn't even take me more than 10 seconds to be like, oh, yeah, this is happening in this way currently in this country. And I just, I go on a rant about it. And, you know, you we'd like to think that people learn by making mistakes and by learning their history. I mean, by this point, there's been so many movies and books and lectures and classes all about all of the wrong things that humans have done throughout the course of our existence, and it just keeps on repeating.
Charles Stanton 26:10
Well, I think one of the other things, though, too, was Dr King said, and you know, Sidney Poitier, who I met, and Nelson Mandela, who I met, and it was a privilege to to meet them all said the same thing when we when I talk with them, change starts with each individual, yeah. But to make change, whether it's an individual or a family or a class or whatever it is, requires people to do something very difficult, and that's to look at themselves and what they're doing, to be reflective and to be introspective. And this is something that for a lot of people, is very, very hard, because they just go through the day, they just go through the week, you know, like, like, everything is the same. I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, complicate my life. I just want to, you know, not ruffle any feathers, but, but while all those people agglomerate in that same way of looking at things, attitude, the democracy, is going out. It's like, I think it was one of the, I think Montaigne said that that democracy is like a statue that you got to maintain the statue, but if you don't maintain it, and it keeps getting chipped away by people who don't believe and people who don't care, eventually the statue will be gone. You know, CS Lewis said they asked him about Christianity, and they said, How could all these terrible things be going on? He said, they said, it's a failure of Christianity. And CS Lewis said, he said, No. He said, It's not that Christianity. It's not that Christianity has failed. He said, it's that Christianity hasn't been tried. You know, yeah, for sure.
Blanca Pena 28:13
I was thinking about how we could have let something like World War Two happen. But the truth is, it all happened because good people were complacent. It wasn't because bad people were the worst of the worst. It did play a part in it, but it was the good people that let it happen. Yeah, and I fear that what you just described, Professor, is what we're what we're seeing today. I mean, we talked a little bit about how we have all these modalities of seeing what's going on in the world, and instead of it fueling our passions more, fueling our abilities to unionize or to organize, it still feels like nothing is happening, even though, arguably, right now, we have the tools to actually get something done. Maybe back then, people weren't as connected, right? And people couldn't talk across the world and organize and talk about these issues. But now that we can, it seems like we're spending all of our time arguing with others instead of trying to make something work and and fixing our problems. So I really hope that we can start using these tools as as a way to actually connect with people and care about people, and not further divide ourselves from from the rest. So thank you all so much for listening today. We hope you have a good night.
Charles Stanton 29:42
You take care. God. Bless you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai