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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  
Well, we want to say, Good evening everybody. Welcome back to our show. Professor Charles was my cohort. Blanca Pena, it's good to be with you tonight. And I was just thinking, you know, over the last few days, trying to recover from everything that happened last week is the oddity of America. You know, America has always been a place where people have come as a shining ideal more than any other country, a country of freedom, of freedom, a country of opportunity, a country where you can make the best of yourself and go as far as your abilities will take You. And one of the things that I always thought that America possessed, even though many times it possessed it in a fractured way, was some some quest for justice, even when justice, many times didn't seem to be available. There were so many people, not just not just regular people like ourselves, but people in positions of power who wanted to do things that would bring justice. I think of Lyndon Johnson with the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act, and I think of Barack Obama with the creation of Obamacare and all of these and people of that stature who knew knew our flaws and knew our imperfections, but sought to make things better for as many people as they could, and that those thoughts came to me this week, as we see the never ending saga of trying to unearth the truth of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and my mother used to, used to cook. She used to cook with onions, and she my mother would unpeel the onion and take off layer after layer after layer of the onion. And finally, finally, she would reach the meat of the onion, and then she would use the onion for the various goodies that we had to eat. But in America, in this particular case, the onion never seems to be reached. We never seem to find the truth. We never seem to be truly, truly, truly trying to find what the truth is. And we also seem to be so completely out of date and out of order and out of and out of position, what seemingly all the other countries in the world who have had men involved in this scandal, people in Scandinavia, people in Norway, people in England, people in France, people in Germany, people all over the place, and in all those places there's been a major societal uproar as to the involvement of these men, and their involvement and friendship or partnership or whatever you want to say, what this man who was, who has done, who had done so much evil, and they're, they're, they're involved in investigations, and they're summoning juries and all the rest of this stuff, except for, except for the land that's supposed to provide justice, the land that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, the land that was once considered an ideal by people from all over the world that came here, it doesn't seem to be happening. What we seem to see be happening is the complete reverse, and the opposite of that, the opposite of truth, the opposite of being transparent to not just the victims of what happened, which obviously they erode, but also, but also to the citizenry of America, and I thought it was very interesting to me, and I don't, I don't know whether this was either an act of deliver of deliberate malice or just incredible stupidity and ignorance, how in so many of the papers. That were released in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, we find the names and sometimes the pictures of the victims, but we never seem to find the names and the pictures and the actions of the people who committed the crimes. Totally.

Blanca Pena  5:17  
I agree with you, and I think this flaw that America has always had it, unfortunately has been since the country's creation. The founding fathers wrote, you know, our Bill of Rights, right? And they came here for a purpose. They felt as if they weren't being represented the way that they wanted to on the other side of the pond. And they came across to create something that would hopefully work for the people the way that they wanted it to. And, you know, they, they, they wrote words like, all men are created equal, but in the same breath, created the three fifths rule. And that's, that's horrible, because you would like to think that in search of justice and in search of freedom, everyone is included, and unfortunately, a lot of people are just looking out for themselves. It's a lot of individualism, a lot of apathy, and I think having generations upon generations stacked up on those morals and those ideas have led us here to where people are numbed out. Unfortunately, I think the reason why there's such an uproar in all these other places is because they haven't been conditioned the way that we have conditioned to accept what what has happened and and have normalized the the watering down of how history actually happened. I remember learning about slavery and war in high school, and I it's almost like they, they brush it over really quickly, you know, the country's faults, and they always worded it as well. America saved the day. You know, it was always this idea of white saviors. I always think about this one case that I learned in law school and during my first year. It was during my property class, and it was, it was those cases that arised from the conflicts that Native Americans were having with white people when they were seeking to take their land and their property. And I remember reading the opinions from Supreme Court justices and how they said things like, well, you know, this land has so much potential, and the people that are here are savages, and they will never be able to make use of the land the way that we would. So we are entitled to it. And so they came here and they murdered millions of people, and they took their land, they created their own rules, and then those rules kicked others out, and from there, it never seemed to stop. And now we find ourselves where the president of our country, a country that's supposed to be revered for its pursuit of justice, people are are cutting him slack. They're giving him a break over over and over again. And I think that's a direct result of of how he's carried himself throughout his life, how He ran his campaigns, how he speaks to people in public. He has allowed, he has he has made it so the people let him do what he wants to do. And now that it comes out that, you know, a lot of fouls were unreleased in order to protect him, and there's still so much we haven't seen yet, and the the lack of uproar is just very, very saddening to see. It's very disheartening. Well, I

Charles Stanton  9:02  
I think this is part of a pattern, though. Yeah, I think he may be, he may be the beneficiary of this now, but there have been many other instances prior to this particular scandal. I mean, yeah, if you take, if you take the Larry Nassar case, where the guy was the doctor, he was out in Michigan. He was the doctor for the Olympic team, the women's gymnastics team, he was also involved, I guess, as a consultant at Michigan State, and he had been involved in all kinds of improper things. The parents of a number of these children went to the FBI in Indianapolis and in other places to complain about this. And it took an eon Ian. Not eons, long period of time before they finally brought this man to justice. Yeah, we have talked on this show for since we started this fourth year about racism and anti semitism and all these different ills that you know, obviously a part of our country, but I think now we face an existential challenge, an existential challenge that goes that goes beyond one person, or even the people who are doing things that were terrible, but whether or not the country the society, is okay with people basically harming children at their leisure, and that nothing can be done about US and the normalization of all these people in academia and the arts and the media who are part of this, who are part of this, colleague, of harming innocent individuals, is that what we stand for, is what we stand for as a country, the protection of people who are so harmful and so evil, is that what we stand for when I see they had this, they had a last week, and this is I'm sure more will be found out about it as time goes by, a young woman who was underage, who accused, who accused our president of sexual misdeeds and violence. Okay, yeah, I am not here to judge that case, because I do not have in front of me all the information that would be necessary to make it to make a judgment. But what strikes me, what strikes me about it, is an investigation was done. They did an initial investigation, and they had a report of what this person said to the people who were investigating. And then they had three more occasions when she was called back to talk to them, and they had reports on those three times as well. So you had four, basically interviews with this person. Now I, I, I would like to believe, I would like to believe that all people are created equal, and that, you know, as in as in race, as in gender, as in the criminal law, that everybody is treated the same. But I must say that when you know you read reports and you listen to reports, how of these interviews and interrogatories that they had with this this woman who's an adult now, but she was a child at the time, three of those interview records can't be found. I have to say that it does not allow me to place too much faith in the people who are doing these investigations, or in our Justice Department, or our our or our FBI. I think one of the things that's that's really happened here, though, which I think I mentioned in the past, is and I've referred it to, I've referred it in regards to the Congress and the Supreme Court, but now also the president. The president is our servant. We are not His servants. There's some misguided idea here that this is a man who can do pretty much whatever he wants. He can put his name on buildings. He can put his name on coins, Bibles, on Bibles. He can tear up the White House. He can take over the Kennedy Center. But none of this, none of this is proper, none of it, and the fact that the Congress and the Supreme Court, secondarily, have done little to nothing. Indicates, indicates to me either, either that they don't care or or that it's not a problem for them. But if it's not a if it's not a problem, when you get down to Ground Zero, if it is not a problem with our Congress, with our court system, with the majority of our population that children are being abused. Boy, we're sunk. We're sunk as a country. If that does not if that does not activate you, then there's something rather. Wrong. That goes way, way beyond one person. Yeah, you know,

Blanca Pena  15:04  
the complacency is very disappointing, and we see it in we see it everywhere, right? I mean, we saw it in that video where the President was talking to the US Men's hockey team and how everybody is sort of okay with, you know, being misogynistic or disrespecting women or other athletes, just because, you know, the President made a joke about it, and it's, I'm not gonna say that every man in that room who was listening to the call necessarily agreed with the sentiment that the President made. But no one said anything right, like either they genuinely laughed or they laughed to fit in whatever, whatever they had to do to assimilate to that vibe in the room, right? That's what they did. And and no one, no one stopped it. And so if we see it at such a small level, we would think, we would like to think that when it matters, right in the big, in the grand scheme of things, people will stand up when it's supposed to, when it's supposed to matter. But I think we're seeing the same thing, both at the at a smaller level and at a larger level. And it's, it's, it's really sad to see an experience because being, you know, and I've said this before, being common folk, you know, down here with everyone, you would like to, we would like to feel as if we have each other's backs and we can organize and we can unionize and we can make something happen. But everybody feels really divided right now, and it doesn't seem to get any better. I mean, I don't know if you read about what happened in Mexico last week, where they killed the cartel leader element show, and things just started getting really chaotic over in Jalisco, and it was so I don't know if you saw sort of the reaction right from the people, but I saw way too many people complaining about how, wow, now I'm gonna have to cancel my vacation to Puerto Vallarta or, or even seeing it on the news right of American tourists are trapped in in this chaos. And it's like, well, Mexican citizens are also trapped in the chaos. Like, why? Why does America see an issue and go, me, me, me, like, how does this affect me? How can I make this about me and not even that? But unfortunately, it's things like this that increase the xenophobia in the country towards people like me and people that look like me. And it's it's so difficult to to want to get people together when, when things are so quickly torn apart, yeah?

Charles Stanton  17:47  
Well, I think what you say is really interesting, because, you know, people are always talking about, you know, the crime in Mexico and everything like this, yeah, but very few people, very few people want to face what the truth is and what the truth is is. You could take all the cartels in Mexico, in various parts of Mexico, who are their enablers, but their customers, Americans, which is the biggest market that they cater to, America, is America, okay? So, in other words, they're violent, they do all kinds of stuff, fine, okay, so one day people like they wake up, right? I'm not doing any more dope. They're out of business. Yeah, there's no more cartel.

Blanca Pena  18:42  
And, I mean, there's no more cartel, those, those businesses that make bank, I think, I think his cartel, specifically, their net worth is, is in the 50 billions, you know, and that's not even accounting for other cartel leaders who are even more notorious, like we have El Chapo, we have Pablo Escobar, we, like all of these different people who have gained enormous amounts of wealth from abusing people's addictions and taking advantage of that. It's not even just the drugs, either. It's the guns too. Where are they getting all those guns from? From here?

Charles Stanton  19:19  
Well, it's the other thing that, the other thing that you have there in Mexico, which I think, I think she's trying, scheinbaum is trying, as best she can, to try to stop it, is you have the highest rate of femicide in the world. In Mexico, you literally have more women killed than in any other country. And not only that, but the unsolved murders, oh, yes, of people are off the charts. Yeah, there was a number of years. But to get to get back to to, you know, our thing with, with what's going on in our country, a number of. Years ago. And this is an interesting story. They had one of the generals in Mexico who was going to visit with, I guess, President Trump, and comes to Los Angeles. And they had, I guess it was a big thing. They had it on CNN and everything. And they had a guy there who, I guess he was in one of the holding tanks in one of the prisons in Los Angeles, okay? And he's, he's, they gotta, I guess, they transport him to the court to have a preliminary hearing or something, right, right? And he's like, fixated. He keeps looking at the TV. And the guy says, What do you keep looking at the TV for? And he goes, he goes, That's he says, That's Generalissimo. And says, Okay, he's Generalissimo. He says, Well, he's running the thing. The guys tells the security guy. So the security guy gets that, get then gets ahead, gets in trouble, and sets with the FBI Justice Department, and they lock down the airport, and they arrest him and his family. They arrest all of them within, I don't know how many hours he was let go. Oh, wow. So, you know,

Blanca Pena  21:18  
yeah, I mean money runs the world, I guess, world. And that's,

Charles Stanton  21:22  
yeah, and then, you know, with with this scandal, of course, with this scandal, of course, these are supposed to be the elite. These are the people who are supposed to be the example. These are the people who are actually running the country. And how are they running it? Because they're going off to some ranch with some man who's imprisoned children and he's committed all these crimes. And what shocked me too, though, which was, I must say, I was a little bit surprised with this was academia, all these professors, people who were deans, the guy who was the head of Harvard, the guy was in the charge of the neurosciences program at Columbia. Yeah. What would you be doing with this guy? Yeah.

Blanca Pena  22:06  
I mean, unfortunately, I think people get to where they are because they've compromised their morality. I don't think, I don't know where you stand on this professor, but I don't think there's any such thing as an ethical billionaire. You know, like, how could you be ethical and hoard so much wealth? How can you wake up every day know that you can fix so many problems in the world, but just choose to keep all the money instead, I was thinking about this earlier because I woke up with a I had no gas in my tank this morning. So the first thing I had to do this morning, before I went to the gym, was go and get some gas. And I was thinking about like, you know, every gas station has their prices, like on their big signs, and all of the prices are different and, like, whatever. But I was thinking about how, you know, it is because of how big the oil industry is that we don't have walkable cities or, like, just the fact that it's the interest of the rich that Trump the interest of the majority, it ignites some sort of rage in me, because our society could be so much better if we just put to the side the damn profits, like if we just stopped caring about that stuff, if these people, who are so rich and resourceful, if they can, just for one second, stop thinking about themselves, right, and then thinking about what enriches them even more than they could have already imagined, and just think about the regular, everyday people We would be, we would be in a much better place. And I think if we had that kind of society, we would not be allowing these rich people to rape and kill and kidnap children and women and and boys and men and all of these people. Because ultimately, that's, that's what it is they were, they were allowed to do what they wanted to do to get what they to get their money, their profits, to grow, and that wasn't enough. And so then they started harming people. Yeah? And they get to continue to do that until someone puts a stop to it, but who knows when that'll be Yeah?

Charles Stanton  24:15  
Well, someone once said, The more they have, the more they want, and they never have enough. But it's what's interesting is like how science has also been ignored. We know through scientific studies the warming of the planet, the need for, you know, environmental controls, which in this Administration, has almost been completely removed because of the tie in to the oil companies, as you were just saying. And they all, everybody knows, everybody see, it's an incestuous group of people. And you know, the. The needs of the average person are of no consequence. But it's through these, through the ignoring of science, that the planet is going to be on habit, uninhabitable for everybody, even if you are a billionaire. Yeah, but they were talking about here that they're talking about average temperatures between like, 117 122 degrees, yeah, and the next few years. Now, that's a pretty scary thing to contemplate. No, it is, but they The thing is that, the thing is, though, that they don't care. No, they don't. No, it's not. It's not. It's I man one time told me, he says, he says, It's not that they don't care, he said, or that they really don't care. He said, it's that they totally don't care, because all they're concerned about is the accumulation of things, money, possessions, whatever it is, and social conscience helping people out. I mean, you have one person in the sort of more. Jeff Bezos is ex wife. This is a woman. She's given like, billions to help Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton, she's given billions to help people. And she's an outlier. Yeah, you have this one person. We got like three, 60 million people. Got one, one person. I mean, come

Blanca Pena  26:21  
on there. No, it's, it's horrible. And, you know, we were just talking about Mexico, it got me thinking about how people are so quick to say that the Mexican government is so corrupt because the cartels are allowed, quote, unquote, quotes around, allowed, right, allowed to terrorize innocent people in the country. But it's like, have you seen America? They're corrupt, but just in a very different way. You know, these these packs and these lobbyists and these crazy industries that truly run everything. I mean, it is because of certain rich people's interests that we don't fix basic, everyday problems. Let's think about the immigration problem, right? They don't fix the immigration system because it doesn't truly benefit them at the end, right? Like they want, even if they don't want to admit it. They want undocumented people in the country, because they contribute so much and get so little. They want people who were brought here when they were young, people that are DACA recipients to only have a work permit. Why? So they can pay taxes, and so they can, you know, provide labor to the country, but they're not getting again, any benefits or any sort of sort of return on their investment, even though they've been here their whole lives, and this is the all they know, like, it benefits, oh, and not even that, but just the fees to renew whatever status you have every every year, every few years, whatever kind of status you're holding on to in the country. The reason why it's so bad is because it makes them money, and they don't fix the problems because it benefits them. It's almost when you know that immigration bill almost passed right around Biden's end of his term, and how the Republicans just did not want to pass it, not because they didn't think that the bill was fair, because it was a bipartisan bill, a lot of people were behind it, but because they wanted their their king Trump, to run on the issue and to say that it's a problem that he could solve instead, it's ridiculous,

Charles Stanton  28:21  
I know well on that, on that sobering note, we want to thank you all for listening tonight, and we must not lose the faith and in our own lives, try to do as much as we can to make our nation better.

Blanca Pena  28:38  
Definitely, everyone, have a good night. God bless you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai