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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in a 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.
Unknown Speaker 0:18
I'm Joanna weatherald. I'm a third year law student and
Unknown Speaker 0:21
welcome to social justice, social justice, a conversation conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:28
Well, good evening, everybody. Happy Thursday. Once again, I am joined by Professor Charles Stanton out of the William S. Boyd School of Law in the Honors College here at UNLV. I'm Lana weatherald, a third year law student. And I want to begin with opening tonight's show, give a big shout out to my home state of Wisconsin who last night had a very important election where they had flipped to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, from red to blue with the election of Janet P. I don't know if any of you who are chronically online saw the many videos that were coming out of the state of Wisconsin where lines and polling lines, especially in university centers. So I saw in the main video I saw was out of the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, we're talking lines 500 600 Students deep to get out and make sure that that woman was elected and she won pretty handily. I think four to seven points is what they're looking at 11 acts Wow, in early because I'd see when I looked last night was only four to seven. So God bless. I hope that there's some some real meaningful change in the state of Wisconsin who sort of had been slipping into scary Ron DeSantis, land type things. Very, very scary stuff happening there. And hopefully, now there's a little bit more peace, love within the Supreme Court of the state of Wisconsin, so had just opened the show with a big shout out to my home state. And with that, I'm gonna pass it over to the professor. Well, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 1:37
I think there's two really interesting things that that occurred last night, in that in that race, first of all, a race that was predicted as being very close. Janet p one by 200,000 votes. So that was not at all expected. But I think what we're seeing now we're seeing two major issues that are galvanizing not just the Democratic base, but also people who are moderates. One is abortion. Yep. And the second one, of course, is gun control. And these are the two issues that are really have taken center stage in the country. And we're seeing a great sense of discontent among many, many people, not just liberal people, or progressive people, but moderate people, middle of the road, people about the complete inertia and failure to act of the Republican Party in any state in this country. And not only the failure to act, the disdain, disinterest, we could use many other words for what's going on. And you know, it's interesting, because in the state of Tennessee a few days ago, all the all the hands on one of the children and the young people organized the march to the Capitol, to protest the lack of safe gun legislation. And they were joined by three members of the legislature. And now the Republican majority in the Tennessee legislature wants to remove those three people, African American, I
Unknown Speaker 3:18
think we should add right from the legislature.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
So I always thought that the purpose of the legislature and the purpose of a, a deliberative body was to deliberate on these matters, and also to engage to engage those who were vote voters and those who would be voters about our system, right, not to punish people who engage them. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 3:45
they arrested Carrie lake in Florida, for you know, like a pro choice, just peaceful pro choice protests. She was one of I think, three people, officials in Florida that were arrested this week. So I'm not it's just a reinforcement of fascist ideas that you speak up and you are one of these people. And you're one of the I don't know, I guess the people that do not believe in the status quo that we have reached and that believe that our institutions are changeable. And that believe in the idea of getting out into the streets and fighting for what you believe for. That's not apparently that's not okay. anymore, and we don't do that. And unless it's January 6, at the front door of our capitol.
Unknown Speaker 4:19
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think also that there's no more pretense from the Republican Party either. Yeah. I mean, I think I think finally, a lot of moderate voters are starting to see that, that basically these people have no interest in gun safety. They have no interest in moderation. No, no, they've completely sold their soul to the
Unknown Speaker 4:42
NRA to me. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 4:44
Yeah, the NRA. And that, then that, that ties in a course to a couple of things. One thing that I was made aware of in the past week, there's a new organization called stand up to Jewish Hey, Eat. And it's an organization that apparently is trying to mobilize people to be made aware of the dangers of the rise in anti semitism, which you know, as this is the Holy Week of Passover, is very, very timely. And unfortunately, the amount of incidents of anti semitic hatred and mischief have grown enormously. And it's very hard to understand that except for the fact that the messengers of the Republican Party have suddenly endorsed these things, I would say, one person in particular, we will we all know who that person is. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 5:46
you know, what's, what's interesting is, you do have to wonder, because there isn't, there isn't that same sort of, like marginalized ish, where you understand what it is with women, you understand what it is, with people of color, you understand why there's this level of anger and vitriol, because I think we've said it a million times, they're seen minorities and people of color in positions that otherwise previously belonged to the white man. But that that sort of analysis doesn't work with with anti semitism, it just doesn't. You know, the average Jewish person is a white presenting individual, right, who looks like what this country had been held up to mean, there is some understanding that Jewish people look a little bit differently, but otherwise, they hold up that sort of white supremacist ideal, right? So what's going on there? And I don't wonder if it is sort of just the same thing that underlies and beguiles. All of this these issues is jealousy and seen the fact that that you have seemingly a minority group that has risen to the top, much like what happened with you see with affirmative action and Asian people, and you see this sort of when they reach this pinnacle of success, and you do have the vast majority of CEOs CFOs people in position of power that the vast majority are sort of looking a certain way. Is that it? Is it the jealousy that they're taking over just the blue collar average white man's dream American Dream? Is it the idea that they have reached this amount of power throughout that level of persecution? I don't know. But it doesn't make a lot of sense, the same sort of arguments we have for why we see white supremacy. Just embodying every single one of our institutions doesn't, I think, hold as much water when you talk about Jewish people when you talk about anti semitism. I don't get it. I wish I could diagnose the problem. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 7:29
I think I think the antecedents go back many, many hundreds of years, the Protocols of Zion, right. Yeah, you know, and you have a course, in the 30s, you had Father Coughlin you had Gerald Okay. Smith, it's always it's something that's always there, right? That, when at times like this, when you have such a division in the country, it rears its head, where George Soros basically is responsible for everything for all these for all these societal ills, you know, right. But it's also about people lacking in knowledge and history. And, and, and, you know, it all ties into China banned books and all the rest of those things. They don't want people to know the truth about the Holocaust and a lot of other things, you know. And that, that kicks into our what happened a couple of days ago, which was the indictment, of course of the President, ex president. And I was fed, we were discussing this off air before we came on. Everybody's presumed everybody's presumed innocent until proven guilty. And and that's, that's the way it should be, because that's a democracy. Otherwise, you have what you have in Russia, or base Nana Republic. Yeah, people were just taken out and sent to Siberia. But what was really troubling to me was the judge who is presiding over the case, after all the particulars of the indictment were read out and, you know, etc. He talks to the both the prosecution and the defense about, you know, how to how we should conduct ourselves in this period of time before the trial begins, which will be some some many months, I presume, and, you know, that it has to be conducted in a certain way. Now, probably in another day and time the judge wouldn't have had to do that. He would just presume that both sides would behave according to certain precepts and the case the case would happen and that would be it Yes. Well, anyway after that, that that shall we say speech on on you know, behavior and proper etiquette and every right the ex president gets up there and he just, he just basically doesn't, doesn't stop paying attention to what was just that was just said And, you know, you have to, you know, you have the freedom of speech and all the rest of those things. But you do not have the right to threaten the prosecutor to threaten the judge that to somehow a picture of the judges daughter winds up on social media. And I think I think this is the beginning of what we're going to start seeing over these many, many months, we're going to start seeing this attempt to to actually break down the legal system in such a way that there can't really be a trial, because everything has been so completely disordered by all the rest of these things. You know, and I think I think that the question is now, how much the media should cover should cover this stuff? Should they put it on as being a newsworthy event? Or should it be? Or should it be classified as basically propaganda that has that has nothing to do with any attempt to, to
Unknown Speaker 11:00
seek justice or justice was not served? Right? Exactly right. I get do the the thing I was commenting on to the professor is, you know, you see so often that the criticism of the Democratic Party and I think leaders within the Democratic Party is that they have done nothing. And as far as Trump is concerned, they sort of let him run RAM shot over this country and sort of let him do all these things without facing any repercussions or without sort of having anybody. There was no oversight really over the Trump presidency is the complaint that you see, and that nobody checked him in that. But then you wonder, well, now this guy's daughter is for photos being flashed, her name is out there, the wife has been disparaged. What if this is this man's family, everything he's worked to create in his life is now up for not only, you know, public consumption, but very much I think safety is that is at risk here. And we've seen what these people are capable of, and people that have nothing else to live for other than their political affiliation. They don't, they don't have the same level of tact as I think the average everyday person and they they will be capable of violence. They've we've seen that they're capable of violence. And so you wonder, you know, why does he not face any repercussion? Why is there no oversight? Why does he never face any sort of consequences for the things we've seen over and over again? Well, the people that do end up holding Trump accountable for the things he has done, you see what happens to them, then they become a you mean, really quite frankly scapegoats for everybody that should have come before them and done the right thing and did not. And so I think we're gonna keep seeing more and more sort of a refusal or escape, or because I don't think Trump will be the last of this kind of fascist leader or the last of the Republican Party that is a person like this, and I don't think they will be the last two, he will be the last to commit crimes in his, you know, position of power or while within Office. So I think we shouldn't be scared that when the media starts reporting on things, and then this daughter's picture is out there, it's on Twitter, it's on Instagram, it's on Facebook, we should be very, very scared, because then there is going to be no, there's going to be no want need or desire to then do the right thing if then your safety is put at risk for doing the right thing. I mean, of course,
Unknown Speaker 12:58
I think what's interesting, too, though, is the fact that there was a reticence on the part of the district attorney to file the case. So the case cannot be made, though. He jumped right in he wanted to prosecute Donald Trump. That's not true, because two of the prosecutors who worked for him and with him, resigned a number of months ago, right? Because he, I mean, he was reluctant, he was reluctant to he was reluctant to to bring the case. But what's going to be interesting in this case, and it really ties into the fake news and all those different, you know, fables that are flying around in the air, from what I saw, and looking at what the DEA presented, and of course, you know, he only presented a bare bones display of actually what will be presented at the trial, right is basically you have a situation where you basically have three people participating in this conduct. You have the man who was head of the the Enquirer, you have Michael Cohen, and you have Donald Trump. Okay, so Michael Collins is going to testify. I'm presuming that since he's given immunity, David pecker will also be testifying. And you have all these checks, and you have all these documents. It's not fake news. It's there. It's a check that the man signed. It's not a matter of my opinion or Lana's opinion or the opinion of Mother Goose. These are these are factual things but then Professor
Unknown Speaker 14:36
you'll see so then there is a small subset, I believe, of people on the right or people that are supporting Trump that do believe that these charges have some level of merit but what did they say that well, this is a Soros backed DEA, what are you talking about? What are you what what? So you're able to I mean, at least have some level of grounding in reality to understand that these are real charges and he does face real time and he will have to sit through a trial, but then it's well, it's all brought Soros back da Bragg. What do you think? How do people think on the ground things work? You know, I don't know.
Unknown Speaker 15:10
But well, it's it's through social media. Yeah. And the fact that you're able to disseminate this information to a large number of people in our country who have only a couple of news sources. So it's not like all the information is equal. And as a result, even Fox News now with the situation with diminishing, they're still putting the stuff out. And you say to yourself, oh, I mean, it's going to be argued before the judge relatively soon, with the evidence seemingly overwhelming. I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not there, you know, in your report. But, I mean, you have all kinds of emails, you have text, you have conversations that have been attested to, between people who are working there. And they haven't learned anything from it. That's the crazy thing about they haven't
Unknown Speaker 16:14
learned double, triple down on the bad behavior. Yeah, more than excuse the bad behavior, because it's somehow the Democrats fault that the bad behavior existed in the first place. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 16:25
I don't understand it. And while all these things are going on in the country, some really bad things are also going on, for example, now, as supposedly COVID has left us, right. Although that's a matter of some debate, I'm sure. They want to take off the rolls of Medicaid 15 million people who had been given these benefits when when the virus was at its at its high point. And it's really interesting in this country, whereby there's a feeling toward the people, not just people of color, but people who are poor and disadvantaged. That Dan some way or unworthy of these of these of these benefits unworthy of the helps, that most people would would need to get if they, God forbid, were in that situation. I came across some one of my classes, a very interesting movie called Hidden Figures. I didn't want
Unknown Speaker 17:28
to be Yeah, but the three women astronaut, yeah, that's the
Unknown Speaker 17:31
three women who working for NASA as some very bizarre film, because you had three very, very exceptional black women who were involved in, in science, and who were instrumental in the, in the, you know, success of the, of the first man to orbit from the United States and other things as well. And as the movie shows, there's like that division, like, they're good for us to do certain things. And those they can figure out these mathematical theories and scientific programs, about how to actually, you know, propel us around the earth and then to reenter the earth. They see the same doctor. Yeah, I mean, it was really bizarrely a you know, and it was set in Virginia, which in which they had separate, they had separate bathrooms, they had separate What shall we say water fountains, all of us this is all the rest of the stuff, right? And of course, you know, you know, as a law student, and I know as an attorney, the loving case, yeah, with with the with the intermarriage and everything. But it's amazing that there's that division, though, like you're good for us for a certain thing. But all the basic human rights that we would we would attribute to, to people who look like us are going to be denied to you
Unknown Speaker 18:50
with sports and entertainment. The vast majority of I would say, the superstars in sports and entertainment are people of color people that had to benefit from social programs. We're not nepotism babies. I mean, LeBron James is no nepotism baby. Beyonce is no nepotism, baby, right? So you look at these things. And you and you see that the people we give our most money, in our most attention to right, are the same people that we would then strip rights from, I do think that there's something exactly I mean, to what to what you've said, we mark it when we were able to talk about these things. So flippantly, which I think is so you know, talking about taking health care from 50 Millions of 50 million people is not people will die. I mean, if people do not have you have the sort of care that Medicaid and Medicare coverage can provide them, they will die. And it's not going to be you know, like it was COVID, where everybody's all the sudden just dropping dead and there's freezers full of bodies, it's going to be a slow trickle of the same kind of people can't reach generational wealth, because they're not even living past 60. And that's going to be cyclical, and it's going to be families affecting families, and then it's going to be small communities where they just cannot get better and cannot have any social mobility because they can't even see a doctor. So yeah, and then of course, we're fine to have Those very same people that we are fine taking healthcare and privileges and all sorts of institutional rights away from, we're fine to then have them put their bodies, their souls, their lives on the line to entertain us in various ways. So there is something really sick and twisted about that. And I'm not smart enough to pretend to have an answer other than that's what I see. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 20:20
well, essentially, it's interesting that you that you mentioned sports, because very interesting article in I guess it was Monday's New York Times about the WNBA and college basketball. Now, of course. I don't know how many women are playing college basketball in America, I used to do a lot of coaching. So I sorta got into this. All right. And of course, they had the they had the championship game on Sunday. Okay. All right. So I my feeling about it was this. The men were playing and the women were playing on Friday, the men were playing on on Saturday. And then of course, the men's game was on Monday night. Why not have the women's game on Sunday in prime time? Why 9.9
Unknown Speaker 21:08
million views? It still got? Yeah, so for those of you that don't know, more people tuned in to the women's national championship game than any Stanley Cup final ever. Even though the Milwaukee Bucks wanted more than the 2021 NBA Finals, more than I believe any sort of golf tournament golf, anything. I mean, the women's this really caused a little bit of a ruckus people really, I mean, were interested in tuned into this Women's Championship. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:35
But what interested me was, so they decided discussing at the height of the popularity of women's basketball, what are the opportunities for women to play professionally, right, so they get into this whole thing? Well, anyway, there's 12 teams in the WNBA. They have 144 Total players. Okay, that's all they've got. Okay. But here's the here's the crazy part of it. They're gonna have a draft. Yep. But they, the total amount of draft picks for each team will only be three, oh, my God. So there's only going to be designed to be 36. But the other thing about it, which is, which is it's not funny, but it's it's like absurd, right? Bizarre is the fact that they talked to one of the coaches, I guess it was the coach of UCLA. Now, UCLA has always had a great program for our programs, men and women. And one of the women on the team is, is thinking about, you know, declaring for the draft. And the coach says, you know, well, I don't think that's a good idea for her. So you figure, well, you know, the coach is just being selfish and all the rest of that stuff. But what it's about is the whole way the WNBA is run. Those
Unknown Speaker 23:01
women don't make any money. They're better off with now the NFL? Yes, yeah. Yeah. In college, you know, those two twins. I don't know if any of you listening to the show have heard of them. But there are two twins, very pretty girls, very talented girls who make a bunch of social media content. They're multimillionaires. Yeah, right now, because they're sitting next to you who's got a ton of endowment money with a ton of fans and a ton of legacies and a ton of alumni that care a lot about the team, but then it's just tick tock. It's just Twitter. They're popular on social media, now they're millionaires, they're not gonna make that money in the WNBA. They wouldn't make six figures in the WNBA. Truly. So of course, it would behoove them to stay right where they're getting Gatorade, keep getting Nike and Adidas to send them products and make their little tiktoks and make their coin. Girls stay in college and then get your degree paid for while you're writing degree paid for plus six, seven figure media deals. Don't leave, I keep it right there.
Unknown Speaker 23:55
But in a way, it's crazy, though, that you
Unknown Speaker 23:59
can't go to the professional, this pinnacle of your system
Unknown Speaker 24:01
that you want it to do. And what was interesting was that the coach sat down with this young woman. Yep. And he says, Well, he says, You know, I gotta tell you, he says, the major teams Georgia, Connecticut, whenever they have chartered flights, now you're not gonna have any more charter flights. You're gonna be on commercial, you're gonna be on commercial airlines. Now you have a full time person. masu, so full time and so that's gone. So, so all these things are gone. And what it made me think about as crazy as this sounds, was Brittney Griner. And you know, when you when you don't, when you don't, you know, know the salary structure in women's basketball as well as you do the men's structure. She had she had to go to Russia
Unknown Speaker 24:56
right. To play in Russia. She
Unknown Speaker 24:58
had to play soccer I'm saying to myself, Oh, wow, that is that is bad.
Unknown Speaker 25:03
Guess what? Either of those two little Miami girls gets caught with a weed pen. Nothing is happening to them here in the States, right?
Unknown Speaker 25:12
It's really it's really interesting. How that how that there's an acceptance of that. Yeah, now 100% Now there now of course, on a happier side. The soccer the Women's Soccer League, of course, has really started to move forward to really getting a quality of pay and doing a lot of these other things. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 25:36
well, and those girls were so good. I mean, it helped that the the US women's team was then you know, gold man. I mean, they were so talented, which I think when you've got that level of talent, it's hard to ignore and then the media did sort of take over everything make and wrap it over to deal with subway, Adidas. I mean, everything was all across the board. I do want to pick up one more note on the WNBA the WNBA and the NCAA women so Angel Reese, for those of you that are not viewing those new WWE fans, she did a John Cena you can't see me sort of thing with her. It's so did Caitlyn Clark, who was the other star of the other team in the national championship Iowa. And this this beautiful girl and that's the whole thing right? This is a dark skinned woman who is beautiful, who is confident who is talented. She did the exact same thing the white girl on the other team did except this chick got vilified. I mean, absolutely just tore apart by every national media outlet by sports casters alike. Even Jill Biden said, well, we should bring Iowa to the White House to because poor Iowa and sportsmen shit. I mean, absolutely ridiculous. And I'll tell you what it was because this girl was dark skinned it was because she was confident was because she was pretty and it was because she was good at what she did. And people didn't like that it comes back to the same conversation we have all over and over and over again. Well, less than it looks different success looks a different way than what everybody expects it to be, then it's no longer valid. I just, I'm very angry for that girl, because she had every every talent in the world. She's getting out and then expressing herself very well. And then you have Caitlin Clark saying I had no problem with what she did. We were trash talking, it was the championship, who cares, right? So they're arguing about nothing people on the internet just to vilify, a dark skinned black girl. And I think that's shameful. And I want to give all the credit in the world to Angel Reese for behaving herself. I think better than I would have had I received all the flack that she received. And I think, you know, props to her. Congratulations on your national championship. I hope she doesn't go to the White
Unknown Speaker 27:21
House. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting. These these issues, though, the racial issues the the sexual identity issues, you know, and prejudice, right. It's not just here. You know, we think, you know, in America, America's you know,
Unknown Speaker 27:40
the land of hope and land and opportunity. Yeah. But but they had a very
Unknown Speaker 27:44
interesting article a couple of days ago about Scotland, it was very, very fascinating. They had 55,000 rapes reported in this very small country, Scotland, okay. Only 2000 made it to investigation, only 1300 resulted in convictions. So these issues of sexual mistreatment and misdeeds and inequality, it's across the world.
Unknown Speaker 28:15
I think the professor makes a good note, I think we have kept this very insular and very, you know, America driven, which is important because you got to attack the problems at home before you even begin worrying about the problems abroad. But I think the point stands is that we are ignorant to the fact that this is happening elsewhere, and that there are people other than just Americans that are affected by these sorts of ideologies. So with that, we want to close out our show by wishing everybody a very Happy Easter if you celebrate, we want to also wish everybody who wants to come in talk with us or sort of engaged with the show to send an email. So my email address is w e t h e l one@unlv.nevada.edu. For those of you not celebrating Easter, and are celebrating Passover, we'd like to wish you a very happy Passover as well. And we will see you all again next week. Thanks for tuning in.
Unknown Speaker 28:59
Thank you and good night.
Unknown Speaker 29:01
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 CNN axon
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