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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 Gabriella Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student. And welcome
Unknown Speaker 0:28
to social justice, social justice, our conversation a
Unknown Speaker 0:33
conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:36
bring everybody back to our regular program with my partner, Gabriella Tam, hello. And we're going to talk about a few things today regarding social justice. And I think we forget sometimes that social justice is not only a concern in our country, but it should be a concern about what's going on and other countries as well. So I wanted to start the program. And Gabriella, who has spent extensive time in Hong Kong can sort of fill in a lot of the blanks. There's a new law in Hong Kong called the anti descent law. And basically, it is that you must, you know, obey whatever the party line is from the Chinese Communist Party. And if you don't, very bad things could happen to you. As well as not only being able to have proper legal representation after you're incarcerated. And my thought my thought on it is obviously, as somebody who's not of Chinese descent, but someone who visited Hong Kong a number of times, I see it as like this profound tragedy though.
Unknown Speaker 1:50
It is really sad, like, whenever my mom will be like, oh, like, I Miss Hong Kong, and like, I'll be like, Oh, I miss Hong Kong, we always talk about how it's just, it's just not the same anymore now. And it's really, really sad, because I do I do miss it alive. I have family there. So it's, it's just hard being separated from them.
Unknown Speaker 2:10
Yeah. Well, I remember you know, coming in on coming in on the boat. And you see all these, you know, these huge buildings. And so seen again, so as so panoramic when you when you when you go there, and there was such a vitality in the place, though, that was the thing about it, it was always considered one of the, like, the cities that you had to visit, you know, beautiful ocean, you know, when you go around the world, and of course, and of course, you know, the hotels and everything, it was the whole experience. And, you know, they had made, I guess it was the Man with the Golden Gun, the James Bond movie there. And they had made a lot of, they've made a lot of other movies there, too. And there was a big film industry in Hong Kong, you know. What's interesting to me, though, is when you talk about, you know, these dictatorships and everything like that, the thing that all of them have in common is, they're terrified of having their people have free will. Yeah, in other words, like, the everything has to be programmed, they have to dictate what the people should believe what the people should think. But if you're, if you're a government, if your philosophy is so sound, and so good for people, then why should you have to use extreme measures? Yeah, exactly. We, yeah, people should want to flock to it. Except, of course, when you know that it's not, you know, that it's, it's a system of tyranny, basically. Basically, benefiting a few people at the top of the, of the food chain, and the rest of the people, you know, basically having very little, you know, I think I think you can see that, I think you can see that to China, and, and Russia, of course, as well, you know, Russia, Russia, in the sense that, like, you know, you see Moscow and you see the Kremlin, you see all of us impressive, you know, architecture and museums and everything. But when you get out of the city when you travel out, it's like,
Unknown Speaker 4:22
it's like a facade. It's like a little like mask, it's to distract you from the fact that like, hey, there's like one person ruling this whole entire country, and they want it to be in a certain way, and have certain things done. Yeah. If you don't follow that. You're done.
Unknown Speaker 4:39
Yeah. Well, you know, what's interesting, too, of course, is that Russia's economy was was in pretty good shape before they got involved in the war in the Ukraine. And there have been literally 1000s and 1000s of Russian soldiers who have been killed in this war. We're basically conscripted into the military. And the lot of those people is like terrible. I mean, when they had the election, a number of days ago in, in Russia, there was really no opposition. But the people who supported and Avallone, all showed up at the polling places. But they didn't vote. They were just standing around. They're like showing that we know, we know, this is basically bogus. Oh, that it's not legitimate. It's not a legitimate election. And, you know, the United States, of course, is one of the last bastions of democracy. Yes, that. And the other tragedy, of course, now is getting this aid planned. For the Ukraine, where we were, we've been backing them up and everything. And now because the ex presidents hold the Speaker of the House, he's like, No more, no more, no more. But what's crazy about it, too, is though, and I've said this before, and you know, this gets into the talk about the filibuster in the Senate and everything. We are supposed to be a democracy. Yeah. So you can vote for the things I believe in, or you can vote against the things I believe in, you can vote for the aid or you can vote against the aid. But what we should not have in the Congress is a filibuster of any kind, or refusal to put the votes on the table. Yeah, everybody should be counted as to what they believe in or don't believe in, and you make a vote. And if the if the majority of the Congress doesn't want the aid for the Ukraine, then there's there's not going to be any aid. But the majority of the Congress does want aid for the Ukraine. And they and they use these procedural things to not allow the self to be brought to the floor of the house, just as Mitch McConnell was doing with the Senate, basically. So you needed 60 votes to get to get the things into flow. You have you have 100 senators, the thing is put on the table. And everybody decides, why would you need 60 votes to make it legitimate to have a vote? You vote? That's democracy? Yes, democracy. But you know, with all the all these rules, and everything, are really anti democratic, they don't want democracy. See, a lot of it is that people believe well, you know, you know, the Congress and all stuff. They're representing us and everything like that. They're not representing you a lot of the time. They're representing they're representing the people that put you in that office. Yeah. And I'm not talking about the voters, either. I'm talking about the lobbyists, money, Owner, people and all the rest of that stuff. Yeah. And they're, the people who supposedly represent us are doing the bidding of these people. That's as simple as that. I've always
Unknown Speaker 8:00
said like, they, I mean, of course, I want them to care about us. But they don't care about us. Like, like, honestly, like, all they really care about is like we always say like money and power. Yeah. It's all this like greed. Yeah. Well,
Unknown Speaker 8:17
you know, what's interesting, you know, in, in the verdict movie with Paul Newman, where he makes that summation to the jury at the end of the movie, and he talks about how people have lost faith in their institutions. Well, it's not so much the institution itself. As you know, the idea behind it was was was a good idea to have a Senate to have a house of representatives to have a Supreme Court, you know, etc. But it's, it's the failure of the people, though, it's the failure of the people that that are elected, that they don't, they don't see, like, they don't see like a duty, though. Yeah, like when you would go there to represent, let's say, Las Vegas, or clark county or the state of Nevada. And they don't seem to have any idea about that. It's very, it's very similar, in a sense of Supreme Court, in a sense like that. You This is the highest court in the land, they're supposed to be like unbiased, like, well, even more than unbiased, though. I mean, you know, look, everybody's biased. We all have our preference preferences, either conservative or liberal. But but don't invent laws. I mean, the laws, the law, applies the law, apply the law fairly, and act ethically, I mean, to think like, you know, then you have all the courts in the United States. I worked in the court system for many years. And there's a there's a code of ethics. Yeah, except in the case of the Supreme Court. They have a code of ethics to, but it's the it's an optional one. And by that, I mean to say that there's is a code of ethics, but you have to self report the thing. So basically, nothing's gonna happen, because nobody's going to self report themselves. And you see it like you see it in, in not only cases like where, you know, you have a monetary interest in it, like you're sitting as a judge in a case, like this is like basic stuff, and you own let's say you own a lot of stock and say General Motors or something. And there's a case that comes before you regarding whether General Motors use proper safety precautions, or whatever it is, well, you should know that you don't hear a case like that, you should recuse yourself from hearing it. Because you have a financial interest in it. That's
Unknown Speaker 10:47
exactly like, like accounting like code, the code of ethics, like, we are literally like knots, especially in like, an audit, like, you are not supposed to be auditing, like any businesses that you or like family members, or like anyone close to you has like financial interest in because you could like, easily just tweak a few little things and change a little things like here and there to say like, oh, no, their books are clean. Yeah. When they could be like, extremely messy. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 11:20
Yeah. But you see, the thing is that you should know that though. Yeah. See, this is the thing, you know, and I talked about this in the law school a lot. You know, I was talking about last night, actually, but you know, you know that you're gonna take an ethics, you're gonna take an ethics exam, take the bar, but the point is not taken an exam. See, anybody can take an exam, you can take an exam, you can take an exam. It's, it's what's resides in yourself, though. Yeah, that, you know, that transcends an exam,
Unknown Speaker 11:56
would you say it's like a test of your heart and your soul?
Unknown Speaker 11:59
Pretty much? I would say pretty much that's, that's well put. I mean, I remember when I took the bar, it was it was a three day exam. It was the the multi state exam, which was basically the law of the United States. And it was like multiple choice, you know, what it was what the law of the United States pretty much was in all the states regarding different subjects. And then you had, and then you had the essay part, which was your own states part. So it was unique essay questions, just Givens your, you know, like, just saying, what what was going on? But the third part was, was the ethics part and what and what would you would do in a situation? But that has to be part of you, though. Yeah. You see a lot of the CLI these things like we take for granted, particularly in the war? I don't know, I don't know, you would know, far more than I do about the nature of regulatory procedures in the accounting field. But it's something that it's not a joke or anything. I mean, these are serious, it's serious things. Yeah. And how people treat it, like, they don't seem to care. You know, and I think that's, that's, I think that's a lot of what's going on in the country. And I'm always, I'm always saying this, some sometimes it may seem repetitious, but it is, it is that there's an indifference there. I mean, you take the case of when I hate to, you know, go over this again, with Clarence Thomas, but he's hearing he's hearing the case, or he's gonna hear the case about, you know, the question of, of, you know, immunity for the President, but his wife was heavily involved.
Unknown Speaker 13:49
So I was gonna say, I was gonna bring that up to know, I mean,
Unknown Speaker 13:52
how do you sit on a case like that? And what I don't understand also, is where's the Chief Justice on this? He should really be saying, Listen, you know, you need to get out. You should not be hearing this case. It was it was the chief. Was it? Well, John Roberts. Oh, yeah. John Roberts. But the thing is, like, everybody said themselves, yes. Yes, you vote individually. That's true. But but the Supreme Court as an entity as a body should have a unified approach. Yeah. So these questions, it's not like well, you know, I feel like recusing, I don't feel that it's got to be more than that. It's not
Unknown Speaker 14:36
like about yourself. It's about like the group. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 14:40
I would say it's about it should be, it should be it should be, but is it but and you know, and it's also like, you know, like in, you know, the judiciary system, right. That, you know, the lawyers have a responsibility to do You know, administer, try to administer the law and you know, do all the things that are required. But you see this case down in Florida, with with with the with the documents case. And clearly something is wrong. I mean, if you just study the transcript of what's been going on, and the person who's running the case, and you say to yourself, What, what's what actually is going on there, all these delays have been granted. The law, you see what's interesting about you, they're bringing this thing before the Supreme Court. And whether there was immunity or not. And I've spoken about this before that, you know, the law seems very, very clear. Yeah, I don't even know why they took the case. But let's not even get into that. They're really taking their time to think it's a good time to think. But the other thing about it, of course, is, particularly, you know, the obstruction of justice, the obstruction of justice case, is a case of that will either be proven or not be proven, on the basis of witnesses that were there that day, people who were in the White House, it I understand that now, Mark Meadows, who was the chief of staff has been granted immunity by the special prosecutor. So I'm sure his testimony will figure into it. And then and then the jury of his peers will decide whether if he did what he did, or he didn't do it, which is the American way, and that's the way it is. But in the case of but in the case of the documents case, the mere possession of these documents is a crime. Yeah. So how would How would you be walking around? I can't hang all over the place.
Unknown Speaker 16:44
No. And there's like, there's other people who have gotten in trouble for, for having like special documents? And what makes you so different to to avoid that same, like punishment? Well,
Unknown Speaker 16:57
I'm gonna say is this, I don't know, the jury will decide on his guilt or innocence. It's not for me to decide is for those people who were called before the jury become jurors, and they'll evaluate the evidence, and I'll trust on that one. And let's say, let's say that all the cases find a medicine, all the juries find them is that they find them innocent. And that's the system of justice. And that's what it is. But the system for the system of justice to work involves actually having a jury to decide these questions. Now, if you're going to use the system, and basically, game the system. So there's never a trial, because there's delay after delay after delay after delay. That to me is not justice. And I say that because I say that, because to me, just looking at it from my perspective. If you are in a position of being a candidate, and you want to run for office, it would seem to me that you would want to have your name exonerated, so that the people who would vote who might not have one or two vote for you, because they see a cloud over your head, that you might have done something wrong, you would want to have that case heard as expeditiously as possible. Yeah, you would want to have that case heard as expeditiously as a poor person of color or minority person who wouldn't be able to make bail. And yet they languish for years and prison, because they couldn't make the bail. And it takes years for the cases to be heard. Because supposedly part of the promise of our justice system is that justice is a speedy process, fast and speedy trial, except in this particular unique case, where it seems that everything is being done to see that it's not speedy, and then the other and then the other aspect of it is of course, in the documents case, almost every single person that was involved in this, and not related to this particular case, but had these documents once a prisoner now this was this a movie I've recommended before and I'll recommend it again. It's called reality. And it's about this woman whose name was reality winner. She was working for the government. And she was a government. She was in the service of the government. It was one document. It was one document and she's doing years now, how could that be? How can one person be doing years in prison? Another person has stuff all over their house. That's why people don't believe in the institution of justice, because they just see it as as tall disparity. And then, you know, what's another interesting thing now and we talk about lack of faith in our institutions? The question shouldn't have, you know, immigration has come up again, with this with this court decision now that basically the state of Texas is allowed to arrest the illegal aliens or migrants or however you want to put it. But really, if we think about it, if we think about it, who is responsible for security of the United States of America? Well, it's the federal government. Yeah. The federal government should be doing this. It shouldn't be left to each individual state to have to be going around and,
Unknown Speaker 20:34
and trying to guess if someone is illegal. Exactly.
Unknown Speaker 20:38
Exactly. And the other thing, as we mentioned before, and we mentioned before on the program, is that this immigration problem or crisis, first of all, they could have passed the bill, to repeal remediate some of it to remediate some or maybe not all of it, but it was a compromised bill, where they got both Democrats and Republicans, another case of vilner not being allowed to be voted on. Okay, so, so So there you go. So you can blame you can blame the president. But the President wasn't the one who rocked the boat.
Unknown Speaker 21:17
Like, why would you blame? Like, why would you blame the president? It's not him? I mean, all he could do is like, speak about it's not like him being like, Nah, X mark? Oh, yeah. Let's let it through. Like, you know, yeah, it's not. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:34
And then the other point of it, too, is, you know, and, you know, obviously, from a human point of view, you know, these people come from, you know, a bad situations in Mexico and other places. Okay. But of course, of course, you know, we can't take everybody in here. That's the other extreme. But the people, the people don't just come here, that people don't just come here, because they come from destitute situations, although many of them do. They come here, because they know that they'll be able to get employment. Yeah. Now, how do they know that they'll be able to get employment, because they know through the grapevine, that there's a whole bunch of companies in this country who hire illegal people. So if we, if we're really sincere, about wanting to stop immigration, then what we have to do is get is deal with the company. So hire the people and say, Listen, this is against the law, you're gonna go to jail. And believe me, the number of people wanting to come in here, if a policy like that was enacted, would drop, because people would know basically, well, all those jobs that we thought we were going to get. Those jobs have dried up. And as and the other issue there, of course, is using is using underage migrant labor. Yeah, that somehow these young people wind up all over the country working in these factories, somehow, their parents aren't there. How is that? How do we justify that? You know,
Unknown Speaker 23:09
it's hard, because it's like, we have all these people who are basically, you know, they're kind of doing jobs up. Americans kind of don't want to do Yeah. So now, it's a really tricky situation, because it's like, I, I understand that, you know, he's illegals are taking jobs from us, but they're taking the jobs that we don't want to do. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 23:31
well, they're taking the jobs that we were wanting to do. And also, they're taking jobs in industry. They're taking jobs in industry, where the people who run these industries know that they can get cheap labor. So what's the point of hiring people who are citizens of the United States, and you get you have to pay them so much of what wages or union or whatever it is, when we can pay, I can pay somebody six $7. So that's, so that's corrupt right there. And that's a fault of the government. But see, the problem today, unfortunately, is though, whether it's the FDA or all these agencies, they don't have the enforcement mechanisms and protocols, and primarily, the people, the bodies needed to enforce this stuff. So you know, you could say, well, you know, they violated the health and safety are they violated different protocols, but it's just like the meat industry. You you have so few inspectors, for all these plants. How actually, how actually, do you do that? You see, that's the practical point of it, you know. And, you know, one of the other things of course, one of the other things, of course, is that when we talk about, you know, the fact that people have lost faith in the government Do you see all these states passing all these anti diversity laws now? And Alabama has passed a new law. And this is, we're here we go again. In Alabama, it's against diversity. Okay, it's against diversity. So I'll go through, I'll go through like the little grocery list and you can, you can throw in some some some of the foods while we're there against diversity. Okay. Just let's analyze this. Yeah. I'm living in a silo. I haven't come out of the ground for 40 years. I'm against diversity. But our society is diverse. Yeah, our university is diverse. What are we going to do? How, how are we going to change that when all these people are here, and they're living here, and they're American citizens? Okay. So that's one thing, then we're against equity. So if we look into depth at the dictionary, what is the meaning of equity in the dictionary? The meaning of equity in the dictionary is, to be fair. So we don't want people who are not like us, and we don't want to treat people fairly. Okay. Let's move along, then. Then Then there's the matter of inclusion. Well, as far as I know, no problem has really been solved without inclusion. Because inclusion in the melting pot of America is hopefully, the the melding together Yeah, of all the talents, and industries and laborers and intelligence of all the people who have come here from all these foreign lands, who have come to our country, and through their knowledge and through their skills. And through their entrepreneurship. We created the experiment of democracy that's never been rivaled in any other place. But we want to do what we want to get rid of that too. But as the icing on the cake, after getting rid of all those things that we obviously can't get rid of. What we want to do now is we want to stop teaching history. Basically, this is like the icing on the cake. We want to stop teaching history. And what we want to do is we want to stop teaching anything that could be perceived as divisive. In other words, we can't we can't teach about slavery, we can't teach about people being denied the right to vote. We can't teach about how the AIDS crisis exploded, because the government did nothing for years, because they believed that the people who got sick from AIDS are committing sin, and God was punishing punishing them. We've got, we've got that we've got to stop doing all those things. We got to stop doing all those things, and create a world that never existed. So the slaves were here for opportunity. The slaves match to learn to trade, all of these things, the women's movement, LGBT, transgender rights, the racism, the bigotry, the homophobia, the denial. It's all tied together. It's all tied together. And it has to do with basically the disregard the disrespect and the dehumanization of people who are not like they are. That's exactly what we're dealing with here. A person who does that they should be gone. Yes, we expel ro legislature. But because it's become so normal in these places. It's accepted. You know,
Unknown Speaker 28:22
that's incredibly sad. It is sad. Like we've always said, these people who are in our government, they are supposed to represent us. And when I mean us, I mean all of us.
Unknown Speaker 28:31
That's right. That's right. Well, on that on that sobering note, we will we will end tonight's program, but I hope we've given you all something to think about. And it's only if if we all I mean all of us work together. Can we all of us make things better? Good night and night.
Unknown Speaker 28:54
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 M G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai