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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in pay you envy studios on Public Radio, K, u and v. 91.5. 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
Unknown Speaker 0:18
Lana weatherald. I'm a third year law student and welcome to social justice, social
Unknown Speaker 0:22
justice to conversation conversations.
Unknown Speaker 0:28
Well, hello, everybody. Happy Thursday evening. Once again, we thank you for joining us after what I hope was a restful spring break for all of you that we're celebrating. We're going to start today off with of course, what is going on with our former President Donald Trump. If you haven't been even opening your phone or opening your news, I'm sure you're still aware that what's going on? So I'm gonna pass it over to the professor to give you guys some intel and give some background information about what's going on with our former president. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 0:52
thank you, Lana. Good evening, everybody. Yeah, it's, it's very interesting how, you know, even though the former president is out of office, he still has a stranglehold on the news. It's a very interesting situation we're going through now because the situation with Alban Bragg, basically who is in charge of the of what will be the prosecution of Donald Trump, when when this case, eventually goes to trial. Alvin Bragg had some hesitancy about bringing the case this was a number of months ago. And then the case was, then the case was revised by I guess, additional information that they got. But what's really interesting now is the response of the Republican Party, particularly Kevin McCarthy, and the people who are in the House of Representatives, who basically are sending all kinds of threatening missiles that Alvin Bragg, they want to, I suppose to pose him that that's such a possibility. And in this case, and basically, you know, are saying that the investigation is of legitimate, unknown, unknown, unknown unknown. That completely ties into what's going on in the state of Georgia, because in the state of Georgia, where the charges that possibly may be the form of an indictment against Donald Trump and a number of other people are far more serious than this particular case. So what is their response to the fact that finally Willis may soon be bringing the information that she gathered from the first grand jury to the second Grand Jury with the possibility of indictment? Well, the response has been basically a law that is awaiting the governor's signature in Georgia, where basically, the legislature can remove the prosecutors from particular cases or remove the prosecutor, in some cases, permanently from from where they are, where they're seated, because they don't like the particular case that the prosecutor was is trying. Now all of these attacks on democracy and attack on the justice system and attacking legal system, have also been used by Ron DeSantis, down in Florida, where he removed one of the prosecutors in one of the counties because Ron DeSantis, did not like the discretion that the prosecutor was using in selecting what cases he wanted to prosecute, from having been in the justice system myself for a number of years. If you really prosecuted every person who violated every small law,
Unknown Speaker 3:47
there'd be no justice. It's just too much kidnap, and it was impossibility. It's an
Unknown Speaker 3:50
impossible, it's an impossibility. But what we're seeing now, we're seeing a three pronged effort to really undermine our justice system and undermine our democracy. The first part of that is the ex president, who basically debunks the whole justice system takes no responsibility for what he's done, basically, insults, the prosecutors, claims that there's it's racist that they're investigating him. So that's one part. That's the executive part. The second part, of course, is is the judicial part where he's used the justice system to basically delay delay, delay,
Unknown Speaker 4:32
suppress votes, right. I mean, it's it goes further than just right here right now. This is he's been using the judicial system to undermine democracy since his presidency.
Unknown Speaker 4:40
Absolutely. And now and now in addition to the situation in the judicial system. He's also involved with the legislatures in these various states and support them. What's interesting about what's interesting about all of this is Jack Smith, who's the prosecutor for the Justice Department, It is moving this thing along at a very quick rate. And actually, I would say imminently, we're going to see the testimony of Corcoran, who was the attorney for Donald Trump in front of the grand jury. The interesting thing that was posed last night by one of the commentators was, why did it take Jack Smith to do all this speeded up process? When it's been a number of years for these people to investigate? And why has the Justice Department lags so far behind the prosecutor in New York, and particularly the prosecutor in Georgia? I'll throw this over to you because I don't know why.
Unknown Speaker 5:42
No, I don't have an answer, either. I mean, you just have to think that there is enough people that are unwilling to want to shake the boat knowing that this is receiving a lot of backlash. I mean, if you have been watching or reading or anywhere online, seen, you know, people don't even know, you know, a grand jury indictment, this is going to be decided by a grand jury. This is not some omnipotent Joe Biden decision where we're going to throw Trump in prison. I mean, this is he has to go through due process already. He's going through the court system, a grand jury would have to decide that there is enough evidence to secure an indictment. And I think that's somehow getting lost in translation, where the narrative is just Biden's throwing Trump in jail for a lot of voters, Middle America, that seems to be the general consensus. So I think people people knew that going into this. So I think for Jack Smith, he was the one willing to take the brunt of it, right, willing to bear the burden, for lack of a better term. But it just, yeah, it's mind boggling that it didn't take this long. And let's hope that we keep moving at this pace so that we are not somehow obstructed by one of the myriads of tactics, I feel like you could use to try to get out of this.
Unknown Speaker 6:43
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting how this is a man Jack Smith, basically, who was in the Justice Department for a number of years. They went over to, he went over to the Hague, to work on as a war crimes prosecutor. And they're bringing him in here. So, you know, with all due respect to Jack Smith, and I'm sure he's, you know, I highly well intentioned person. Where were all the people in the United States that they had to bring this one guy in? Because nobody else wanted to take this to take this on? Is that what is gonna say? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So that's how we that's how we begin our we begin our program this evening. And we have two really disturbing cases that have happened over the past week to 10 days. One in New Jersey, one in the state of Virginia regarding people who are mentally ill, and the response of the authorities to, to those two people, which should have been handled, probably by mental health professionals, but was handled by the police. Yeah. And of course, it, it went away, it's gone so many times before. Both of these, both of these men were killed. In one case, in one case, apparently, the defense for the police killing the person was that the person was lunging at them with a knife. So I think that still remains to be determined. visa vie, you know, the particular circumstances of that case. But in the second case, in Virginia, they have a video. I think it runs 11 minutes on this man who was in shackles, and a number of a number of 567 and a how many members that were subduing this man who's laying on the floor. And of course, the man expires, as you would imagine. And they've they've been charged with with second degree murder these individuals. Wow. Oh, five? Yeah. So the question I have, of course, is, why was that necessary? But second of all, how are they trained? What is the training that people get? Because clearly it
Unknown Speaker 9:24
goes hand in hand, right. And I think when you receive no training, you're left with the whatever preconceived notions you had of mentally ill people prior, whether that have been television, whether that have been through mass media, whether that had it usually it was not good, right. I think the representations of mentally ill people that people see commonplace are not awesome. And I think when you have preconceived notions about mentally ill people, that they're capable of terrible things, that they're scary that they're XY and Z, and then you don't train people that they mentally ill people are not that way, and that's not the vast majority of what's going on. Of course, you're going to have people that Have you people with mental illness negatively in view that demonize them almost? No, probably not almost they do demonize them. And then you don't have the training to then change that mindset and you don't have the changing to then reorient the thinking about how to handle those things, or who those people really are at their core. On top of that, we have a terrible problem with medicating and how we handle that and medication versus therapy versus you know, how we do things I think, I think so much of the solution in especially when you're talking locked down intense mental health facilities, like I believe the one you're talking about in this case, a lot of the times the answer is just to subdue them. And these glorified tranquilizers are given to these mentally ill people, and then that creates a whole nother set of tension because you're really treating the underlying illness or you're trying to keep these people subdued. So then I don't think there's a lot of active care or active therapy or active, sort of reconciling the disease with who we want that individual to be. I don't think that's happening in a lot of these institutions. Part of it, that is funding part of that is training. So I just think you've got a huge cluster when you're talking about mental health in America. And then you know, when those things all reach a precipice, this is what we're going to see we're going to see death. Because when you have this many systematic institutional failures within how we treat people that are mentally ill, of course, people are going to die. Yeah, of course. Yeah. No,
Unknown Speaker 11:15
it's it's it's it's disturbing, to say the least. And of course, it's it's, it's also disturbing, because both of the people who were over killed, were both people will call it of
Unknown Speaker 11:30
course, because right? Because then you see that they have, if you don't have the problem already, where you're seeing mentally ill people that way, then you have these untrained people that are inherently racist. So you have the racism problem compounded with the problem that they're mentally ill. This is not, it's horrifying, but not shocking, right? Disappointed, but not surprised. And I, then you see that among the vast majority of the little white kids are getting their Adderall, they're getting their prescription, they're getting their Vyvanse they're getting their Xanax they're getting their treatment, is that the same in all communities of color. We see, study after study coming out that black people are disproportionately misdiagnosed in medicine are under diagnosed in medicine, their pain isn't taken at face value. So of course, then you're compounding all of those issues that are inherent to the medical field with the same issues that are inherent in mental health treatment and facilities. So not shocking but horrifying. nonetheless.
Unknown Speaker 12:21
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So a bouncing off from that to a very interesting program I saw on Sunday night on MSNBC called the recall, and had to do with the judge who was involved in the sentencing of Brock Turner. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 12:40
for those of you don't know, Brock Turner is the Stanford rapist. This was several years ago. And he received it was like six months, three months, I mean, something just totally egregious for what was a brutal, brutal sexual assault and rape. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:53
And it was interesting, because the program was had both the defenders and the opponents of the judge, the judge was recalled, the judge was recalled. So the question is, then, was that proper on the part of the electorate to remove them. And you had vote, you had both sides to it. He was sentenced to six months. And he served three, he served three for good behavior. So then he and then he was out. And to me, as a as a human being, not as a man or whatever. The sentence was completely insufficient. I believe that people who commit crimes like this, you have to have severe penalties that the law has to enforce. In this case, there were so many factors that mitigated against the light sentence,
Unknown Speaker 14:04
right? I mean, just very plain and simply, the idea that you could rehabilitate a brutal rapist in three months on good behavior is ludicrous.
Unknown Speaker 14:15
Well, I don't I don't think
Unknown Speaker 14:19
I live we believe our judicial system is rehabilitative. We don't but yeah, we did. Well, that's
Unknown Speaker 14:25
one aspect of it. And the other aspect of it, I think, was in a sense, well, we can't let him go. But let's do them. Give him the minimum. And then we'll go back to what his life was. But the problem is that the person who was harmed won't go back to their lover. And that's why and I think it's I've said this before in regards to like, child abuse cases. I don't believe I don't really believe in the statute of limitations. because there is no statute of limitations for the suffering of the people who have been harmed. And I think it's, I really think it's a societal deficiency, that we allow these things to continue on, we allow these people to, to basically walk around and not be, not be judged for what they've done. And I think it's all it also creates an attitude among certain members of our society, that it's okay to abuse women, and it's okay to do these things. Because hey, look at this guy, you know, basically, he didn't, he basically got no time. Right. And, and, you know, I can do the same thing. You know, you could you can talk about this far better than I have from the woman's perspective. But
Unknown Speaker 15:46
no, I mean, this was the Brock Turner case was so many years ago, right. I think we just see the same thing over and over again, where men receive slap on the wrist. And I think it's changing a little bit. I think the me to movement helped a little with that. And I think talking about it has become a little bit more commonplace. I agree with you, and that there should be no statute of limitations. I think we're moving in that direction. Again, thanks to the ME TOO movement. I do want to thank all the women that sort of got us there. Because the Brock Turner days, this was very different. And it was sort of the first big shock to the world that someone could get a slap on the wrist for something so horrendous. But now because of the me to move. And we see that that happened all the time to all sorts of women common common common place. So I do want to throw out there that I do think it's better. That I do think isn't great. No, but I, from what I've seen, even in the past 10 years, as you know, a woman in society, it's I would be more likely to report now than I would have been back when the Brock Turner thing happened. So I think I think we're moving on right. I think we're getting better day by day by day.
Unknown Speaker 16:39
Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's don't want to keep it all doom and gloom, right. Come somewhere. It's about you know, it was I was reading in yesterday's paper about what they have going on in Britain, with the police department, which makes our police force visa vie treatment of women look humane, right. I mean, just like total disregard for any kind of decency and correct behavior. But I think I've said this about the police before. I think there's an indoctrination of us versus them. That I think it goes beyond it goes beyond race even or sex.
Unknown Speaker 17:24
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's very astute. We are the arbiters of peace in law. They are the plebs kind of thing. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 17:31
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I think that's right. But, you know, just going back to what you said, and you you could possibly talk about this for a couple of minutes, because this was a film that moved me very much, which was women talking. Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 17:46
So the professor had, go see women talking, see women talking. And I want to you know, I hate praising Jeff Bezos. But he did put a whole slate of Academy Award nominated films up for free to watch if you're an Amazon Prime, and I don't know if they still are, but there's a huge collection of them. And I would encourage anybody listening to go ahead and take advantage of that, because those films were otherwise very expensive to access. So I did get because of Jeff Bezos get the option to go see women talking. And this movie, for those of you that don't know, and without sort of spoiling the vast majority is is about the idea that women coming together and escaping sort of a horrendous situation, or deciding whether or not escaping that horrendous situation is going to be the the choice that they make. And I found it, I found it interesting. And also heartwarming is the wrong word. Because the movie is so dark and intense and horrifying. But the idea that something could be entertaining, this is a grayscale movie, this is a movie that is you see men very sick, but it is just a bunch of white women in a grayscale room for the vast majority of the shot and to be so entertaining and captivating. And to have such a connection with characters. Not only do I think it needs to bring more women into film into directing and have more women based movies, which I've talked about, you know, the professor taught a class about law, morality and ethics in film. And I had found that so many of those films about law and about Morocco did not capture women well or did not even sometimes capture women at all. And to have a movie like this that is so about ethics and morality and doing the right thing be completely based on women talk about passing the Bechdel test this I mean, this movie was just so yeah, moving. I do think that should be added that this was based on a true story, too, that this wasn't just something some horrendous, you know, figment of a woman's imagination. This is something that was real life that happened. And I think it speaks to the horrors of religion, but that's a whole different conversation. The thing I got most from that is that we can make movies that are deep and dark and women centric, and they can be entertaining, and they can be well written. And they don't have to be about you know, female, the female beauty or female doing, I mean, because it was about sex in a way but not in it was so much more about the relationships between strong women than it was about the sexual aspect. I think that That's so important relationships with strong women being depicted on film in a way that is not boring in a way that does not seem contrite in a way that isn't Alinea tar kind of situation. I think we're aching for more films like this as a society. And I'm glad that the academy recognize this film for what it was as well. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 20:14
well, yeah. I mean, I thought it was what was interesting, when you see the film, which I hope everybody does go see is that you have the women and you have the different approaches that each of the women takes. And then, of course, the unusual cinematography and how the film was shot was so different as well. So when you throw all those things in, it's a very timely, it's a very time
Unknown Speaker 20:42
and I do appreciate the one man in that in that film that did have a lot of screen time. You know, the teacher, he he was docile, almost more docile than the women. And he spoke less than the women did and had less of an integrated, he knew that was his role in his job, but you appreciate a movie where the man by his own volition not forced to kind of takes a backseat. And let's let lets the women talk. I appreciated that movie for what it was very much. Yes. And
Unknown Speaker 21:09
we hope everybody will go see it. Now on to something that, you know, sort of troubled me having to do with the Alaska oil drilling situation, which which we haven't discussed before. And after many protestations to the contrary, President Biden is going to go ahead with this project. My question is this, though, from a, from a from a purely economic mercenary point of view. Okay, let's leave out environmentalism and then the rest of this stuff. Will this project will this project finally, allow us to be energy independent?
Unknown Speaker 21:57
We can write we could hope. Right. But no. I don't have any other answer then other than a fundamental mistrust in everybody involved. But no,
Unknown Speaker 22:08
I asked. I asked that question, because we have the oil we do. You see, this is the thing was very fascinating. They they had a study of Aramco, the Saudi based oil company, their profit last year, imagine 160 1 billion. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we have the resources. See, this is the thing, why aren't the resources being developed? And then
Unknown Speaker 22:38
the job creation and those oil rig workers? That's not that's pretty penny a
Unknown Speaker 22:43
decent job? Sure, sure. And what's interesting, what's interesting. We're seeing now, in particularly in the northeast, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine, people under tremendous financial stress, factories,
Unknown Speaker 23:01
shutting down people losing those big corporation factory jobs. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 23:05
and one of the major problems is the cost of heating oil. And the cost of heating oil, basically, although, although only, I think five or 6% of the people in the country who use us heating oil, still 47% Use it in the States, and nobody and nobody, and nobody can afford it. So basically, the people who are making say 30 to $50,000 are basically scrounging on everything. So they can pay the they can pay the heating oil bill. And, of course, the other aspect of it too, like, which, you know, because people in our society are very disenchanted with our institutions, that you have the president, you know, saying a number of times, that he wasn't going to do this. And he goes ahead and completely reverses himself, you know, and we could we could, we could bounce we could bounce right from that and talk about the banks. That's another major disturbing issue.
Unknown Speaker 24:26
Right. And I think there's there's this trepidation about reporting the reality of what happened with so many of these banks at for fear of everybody running to their local basement Wells Fargo to their newest bank pulling pulling their money out, you know, and the reality of it is, is this was a series of really bad mistakes by in individual people acting as a group but you know, at the end of the day, they may risk averse choices that ended up costing which is shocking you make the risk averse choice with so much of your liquid income and then you end up bankrupting people is Generally, but I do think the panic maybe is understated, I think maybe we should be a little bit more panicked. And I think that the actual reporting on this has been lacks and has been sort of skirting around good because it's hard to find what really happened or to have somebody explain it concisely or to look and find a resource that tells you what happened. And I think that's by design. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 25:21
Well, it's interesting because I listened a lot to NPR. And they have a guy with him a chi Rizzo, okay, he's on, it gets around six o'clock out here in Vegas every Monday through Friday. And he's the financial reporter. And the guy is, he's like a surfer type almost. It's like, you know, like, you can imagine Patrick Swayze from, from breaking point, you know, doing the financial things. But he's, he's highly informed about this. And but as you listen to him, like, you know, from having done it all these years, and I used to listen to him when I was back east, people who cover this stuff a very jaded, because they know, basically that people aren't being told the truth. Now, in this case, the case with the bank in Silicon Valley, they had a number of warning signs. This was not like something that just happened on what once, but it also illustrates it also illustrates how tenuous our financial system could be. Because now with social media, and the methods of communication that people have, in ye olden days, maybe 100 People would go into the bank right now you got or people going into that bank and don't
Unknown Speaker 26:44
even have to go physically know on the phone, you can put a check in your bank account. Your bank? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 26:49
yeah. Yeah. And the other interest. The other interesting thing about it, of course, is that, you know, Chase now, it says that they need to, you know, more money needs to be given to these banks, which makes you wonder, How much money did they really lose? Yeah. And some days, like one of the banks had like $200 billion in the bank. How do you go through all that money?
Unknown Speaker 27:16
Right? On what on where?
Unknown Speaker 27:18
Where did it go to? Yeah, well, a lot. I think a lot of it was I think a lot of it was bad betting on this currency thing as crypto currency was was was was we came, you know, like a phobia was people. And, you know, the the, the gentleman who's probably going to be in prison for a while, was arrested. He might only be the tip of the iceberg. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 27:45
he's one of you know, yeah. One of a Yeah, several criminal enterprises that are going on in the
Unknown Speaker 27:51
crypto. So that was going on? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 27:54
no, I wouldn't doubt that. So hopefully next week, when we continue the show, we will have a little bit more update about what was going on with our former president, as we record here, things are still very much in flux. And we're we're not so sure how that's going to end up playing out. But hopefully, when you tune in next week, we will have any, some more updates. As always, we would love to receive any questions, comments or concerns you have about the show. I can I can take those at my email, which is w e t h e l number one@unlv.nevada.edu. Thank you guys for listening. And we'll see you all again next week.
Unknown Speaker 28:27
Thank you and good night.
Unknown Speaker 28:28
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at weather one that's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at CHA R L E S That's Charles dot Stanton s t a n t o n@unlv.edu CNX time
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