 Thanks everyone for joining us. Good morning if you're in Hawaii afternoon if you're on the mainland or somewhere else. But thanks so much for joining Think Tech Hawaii, thanks for joining us. We have with us Professor Emerita Fernelia Randall from the University of Dayton School of Law, one of the country's leading experts on race, racism and the law, which is a really, really hot topic nowadays, and it will be certainly part of today's discussion as well. Ben Davis was Professor Emeritus from the University of Toledo School of Law is now teaching at Washington Lee School of Law in Virginia. And David Larson at Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, and also head of the American Bar Association's dispute resolution section and the pioneer of online dispute resolution and access to justice through online dispute resolution in the New York courts. So thanks all of you. Thank you. Thank you. So if we're moving from pandemic to endemic if we're moving from whatever stage we have been at to whatever stage is coming, what are some of the old norms and new norms that seem to be in the most conflict now? Professor Randall, you want to start us off? You mean in terms of the pandemic and what we're moving from? Anything? I'm hoping that the pandemic will provide an opportunity for intellectual property that pharmaceutical companies have will that somehow we will use this to allow third world country developing countries to develop industries to develop their own vaccines. I was sort of appalled to find out which that up until now the pharmaceuticals companies have effectively kept out of African countries the ability to manufacture those drugs in their own company. And so I hope the new norm will be with South Africa having said, look, we're going to do this, that the new norm will be look, you know what, you can be a partner or we can step on your intellectual property, but we are no longer going to pay high prices for something we can make in our own country. So what a great idea if they could move not just to universal distribution, but universal manufacturing and even universal research and development collaboratively and globally. Great idea. What a fantastic new norm that would be. And we know there's going to be a lot of competition about that there there is now. Sorry, Ben. Another thing that I think has changed is the in the aftermath of the great resignation is that it's become clear that a good paychecks not enough that people want more from their jobs. And if you're going to attract workers, you're going to have to have people believe that there's an opportunity for growth that they're going to be appreciated and respected. And I think that's a change. And along with that a change of a desire and need for flexibility in ways that we weren't giving that before in terms of time and the ability to work remotely. I think that's not going to go away. If you want to keep your workers, you're going to have to provide that kind of flexibility. And then the other thing is that because there is a shortage of workers, we've moved a lot more towards automation. And people are thinking aggressively about what I can automate and what can I do in manufacturing. And that's going to cost a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs are going to they're going to we know this has been happening but accelerating now because there's a lot of work shortages where people are pushing automation. It loses jobs. There are some benefits. There are some unsafe jobs that robots could do more safely and prevent workplace injuries. But that's going to be a dislocation and displacement. And that's a great insight because you've got that technology expansion direction. But at the same time, you've also got attention toward infrastructure, rebuilding, new building and work that's going to require a lot of physical skilled labor as well as technological. Well, I didn't maybe jump on both comments because I was at George Mason University in Virginia last weekend. And they have robots that deliver the food all over campus. So we're driving around kind of getting a tour from a professor there. And you see these little robots making their way around to deliver food. So you make a food order and it's put in the robot and the robot goes on its way. That was kind of an amazing or even stunning thing to say for me. And there were a lot of them rolling around. And apparently you can have sort of robot jams at crosswalks on certain times. There we have seven or eight of them sitting there waiting and they respond to traffic and all that stuff. And then they go across. As I sit here today and look outside, I'll just make the observation that those robots would have to ski because we still have snow on the ground. If I could just talk to one other thing, it's just I think that when you do these, the numbers are per capita numbers of deaths from COVID. The US per capita number is pretty awful if I remember it right. And to me, it's like emblematic of the problematic sort of ad hoc American system of health care where you might have some money thrown at something for a while. But it's just like not dealing systematically with the health care needs of the population. I don't know. I don't know all about that. But it really seems like there's a Winston Churchill is supposed to say they've said something like the Americans do the right thing after they tried everything else. And it feels like that's kind of how we approach these things with all our various political stuff. But the bottom line is the health care delivery system for all kinds of people. But the thing is, that's true and it goes way beyond health care. The reason we have so many deaths is we have so many people living on the edge of stress. And I just did a presentation where the CIA says that life expectancy is a measure of quality of life in the United States. It's still on their website. I just checked it out. So if that's true, the quality of life from white males in this country is 32nd country. White males are not number one. And for black males, it's 81. So there is something going on in this country that goes way beyond access to health care that is affecting our health in a very bad way. The same kind of disparity exists for white females and for black females in terms of this gap. And so part of what we have to start thinking about is how do we restructure the whole society to be a happier society and to assure that everyone has access to food, housing, clothing, education, and health care, and don't live by toxic dumps. You know, anyway. I have to say I grew up in kind of a famous toxic dump, Joaquin, Illinois, when Anne Garcich came out with her list of the most toxic places in America back in the 1980s. You know, Justice Gorsuch's mother was head of EPA. Joaquin was on it for twice with the air and water. And America Ferreira, the actor, the special about pollution in America, and underrepresented communities. And that happens to be Joaquin and Mercury pollution is endemic in Joaquin. So yeah, there's great disparities in terms of environmental pollution and exposure in this country that we need to pay attention to. We need to tax the billionaires. Actually, we need to tax the billionaires. And we need to bring back what's that tax cause when you die tax. Estate tax. I know everybody gets upset, but nobody who's listening to this has the money is going to be affected by an estate tax. If you're talking about people who have millions and millions of dollars in their estate. Let's say billions. Yeah, we have wealth of inequality now that's really we haven't seen since the 19 teens. I mean, it's extraordinary. And we have, you know, we just needed a whole government agency and the staff of people and federal appropriations to put something into space. Now there's people themselves that can actually put rockets in space and bring them back. So as we talk about inequality and racial inequality, it's really closely tied to wealth inequality and the desire to preserve that power. And you know, it's really interesting how if you're in a position of power, you can use whatever leverage you can think of to maintain that power. So for example, if people are talking about the need for racial equality, you can say that what that is, it's really about revenge, you know, and and and what revenge means is that we're going to flip the world upside down, which means whites are going to lose. So you better, you better push back against this because you're going to suffer, you know, and that's the message that people are putting up for the mid year elections. You know, they've jumped on critical race theory, you know, not really even understanding what it is, but it's the boogeyman now that they're using to energize people with this kind of dog whistle politics that, you know, that if you don't vote for our agenda and our conservative position, you're going to suffer, which in reality probably aren't because we're really talking about dismantling a huge system of wealth and equality that affects, it's not, it is racial-based, but also affects a lot of whites, too, who are still not recognizing their own disadvantages. I'm a little tied to the the fake American dream I called at HBCU for a year and I was teaching my race and racism in class, the whole class was black, okay, and I said to them, what if I could tell you a way where everybody in America could have blah, blah, name it all off, okay, name it like, oh yeah, we would be for that, but how would you do it? I said, well, we just tax everybody. Nobody would have inheritance tax, nobody would have, you know, we 70, 80% tax, excess tax like we did in the 60s, and we would use that money to raise the standard of living of everybody. Only two people in the class was for it. All right, why aren't you not for this? You're never going to be a multimillionaire. Nobody in your family is going to be a multimillionaire. So why wouldn't you be for something that would give your whole family a better way of living? But they didn't want to get rid of the, they, they owned up to saying, yes, I understand that, but if, if I happen, I don't want to tax. I think that whole, that, right, you know, people are so tied into that. What if I got rich? Yeah, that dream, you could be me, you know. So don't think about me, think about you. You want to be taxed, even though you're, as Professor Randall says, you never are. And aren't there these like quintile analysis about people would ex quintile being able to move up to the next quintile or something like that? And that essentially in the United States, there's like very little of that move from generational, from one level of quintile to the next as compared to maybe 50 years ago, it's slowed down dramatically with this kind of inequality that we're dealing with now. So not only is this like a pipe dream, it's also like really an illusion, you know, I mean, the numbers are just kind of laying it out there, that there's something, you know, that chance of you striking it rich and going from whatever the fourth quartile to the second quartile is like Pollyannish thinking. You are, you are going to, people are going to pretty much stay in the economic class they were born in with some mild up and down changes. And black and Hispanic boys, men, drop the most out of upper class. Black, they are more likely to drop out, born into upper class and drop out of it. So yes. Yeah. So we're talking about changes and I don't want to switch the topic too dramatically, but, you know, another change that we're going to be living with is the increased reliance on artificial intelligence, and how that's going to change our lives and our personal lives and our professional lives, and the ability of companies to collect tremendous amounts of data. And you think about reviewing possible employees and the ability to not just look at previous jobs and recommendations, but to look at your social media activity and really get a big broader comprehensive picture of your life could be good. They may discover that you've got skills that are translatable to a particular kind of job that you've never had before. So that could be a good thing. But on the other hand, God knows what assumptions they're making based upon the information they're finding and then consequently what doors are going to be closed to you. So it's a pretty delicate issue. But regardless, it's happening and going to increase. Yeah. There's a book that's hopefully going to come out soon written by a guy named Craig Draper and it uses the term digital robber bands talking about each of us being data now, each employee being data. And the manipulators of that data with artificial intelligence and all that stuff. And it's really interesting about this really brave new world with like the 19th century robber barons, but just on a digital scale. So we think of the Rockefeller and standard oil kind of visions of rapacious control, predatory actions and things like that, and how to deal with that as employees, you know, it's true. I mean, you heard about this Applebee's email among the down. I think it was down in Kansas where there was some person who was saying that because of inflation and high gas costs, they can make the workers work longer because since they're living paycheck to paycheck, they keep the same standard of living. They have to work harder and get more hours in. So, you know, this is like a manager's idea. And they got out and everybody in that particular Applebee's quick visit, you know, this is like such a talk about an attitude towards your workers that you're saying you're going to sort of exploit their difficulties in terms of paying for higher gas, dealing with inflation, as opposed to an alternative vision you could possibly have about their situation. You know, to me, it was just an indication of a sickness, a sickness that is alive. And it's a deeply embedded sickness. Think about Walmart and all of these companies who don't even pay their lowest workers minimum wage, who have so many people who qualify for welfare and food stamps. And so that's been going on decades now where these companies have exploited the social system so that they can give it profits. My view is that we ought to say you pay $20 an hour to your lowest paid person, or we find you double the amount of money your people are taking from food stamps and all of these other things. Walmart was actually having classes for their employees as to how to get those social benefits. So, I'll show you how to file for it. I'll show you how to collect it because we're not going to provide it. I want to just say that I know somebody who works in banking who qualifies. I mean, we're talking banks. I mean, the finance sector and all the money being made over there. Food stamps. I was appalled. The attitude in this country now is to pay as little amount of money as possible to the producers, the product producer, whatever that product is, the lowest so that they can bump that up to people higher up and bump it out as profits. And I'm not surprised that they're not paying decent wages and banking and everything to the person who's the clerk behind the desk or the person who's cleaning the building or, you know, whoever. I don't know if it actually is changing, but we just had two strikes with the teachers here in the Twin Cities, both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Both were successful strikes. They got increases not insubstantial for educational support personnel, pretty significant. They got some victories in this strike. And we've called, you know, this last period, we saw a lot of strikes, striketober, we saw a lot of labor activity in October. And so maybe we're at a period now where given the labor shortage and the recognition of employees that we actually can move around, maybe they can use some of that collective labor strength to get some of these improvements that at least recently have not been available. You know, and that's maybe a little polyannish, a little optimistic, but we just witnessed it being successful twice here in the Twin Cities. Has to go back to the 1910s, 1920s when the labor, everything, people to think about, talk about all this stuff, you know, but all of that was result of labor strikes and labor that the people in these companies, companies didn't just say, oh, yeah, let's, let's do this for you. There were, let's stop child labor. Let's, let's pay minimum wage. Let's do all these all came about by strike. People have to be willing, this is why I keep saying people have to be willing to incur a loss in order to win something. And, and unfortunately, I'm so happy to hear you say that they did that because one, that's the only way we're going to get a change because they're never going to give it to us. And two, you become a model for other people in terms of how to rally your people to, to, to strike and then win. And they missed 14 teaching dates. So there, there, there was a cost. No question about it. And it seems that there may be some really deep connections that you've been talking about between these. We know that intentional, aggressive, competitive wealth and power inequality have been a norm that's been growing for years. It's not a new norm. But the intensity and the level of that intentionality, that aggressiveness, that competitiveness seem to have been escalating years and combined with political polarization of things like healthcare, of things like education, the idea that children in grades kindergarten through third can't even discuss race or differences in sexual identities or gender identities. Jimmy, Jimmy Kim made the observation. He goes, he goes, I like, he goes, he goes, I'm amused by the don't say gay rule because you have to say gay to say that. Yeah, it's good. That's good. That's good. Another change is that we're not there yet, but there is increased attention to mental health, not just physical health. And that's something that's, that's really pretty recent. One thing in Minnesota is that only because of what's happened recently with racial demonstrations and justice demonstrations, police have said we've been under tremendous stress and we're getting a lot of PTSD. And there's been a lot of resignations and just waves of resignations. And so the Minnesota legislature decided that for a whole wealth of first responders, not just law enforcement, but healthcare providers and firefighters, and they wrote into the workers compensation legislation that now presumptively, if you have not had a prior diagnosis of PTSD, and you get that diagnosis, then it fits within the definition of the diagnostic and statistical manual, we're going to presume that that mental health condition is a result of your vocation that arose in the course of employment, which before was really hard to do to make that connection. So that kind of thing is an improvement. And it's for really a class of employees, not just law enforcement, but a lot of first responders in a lot of different professions who are on the front line. Sure, like when I was thinking of all the nurses and medical people all through COVID with the kinds of crazy hours they were working and are teachers included? Teachers are not included, as first responders, but you're right. Good argument. Boy, they've had some tremendous challenges and maybe they should. Yeah. They're on the first line. My son teaches substitute teachers, and as a substitute teacher, he doesn't get all the benefits of being a full-time employee, but he's got more restrictions on what he can do, which means that it makes it harder for him when he goes in the classroom in. Educational support professionals, that was one of the big issues here, because they're paid hourly, they're not paid salary, and they're pushing to get a salary of $35,000 a year. They weren't successful getting that salary, but they did get the hourly wage pumped up to $23.91 an hour, which is really a significant increase, but it'll be it. The challenge remains of getting 40 hours a week, so you're still finding that battle of getting the hours, or at least there's a recognition that this particular group of employees needs help, and they did get some. I just wanted to speak to a couple of the things about these battles that are being fought and coming circling back to a little bit about the don't-say-gay thing down in Florida. I was reading along somewhere here where they said that there's actually no, I don't know what you call it, any more sexual education that is allowed for anyone for sixth grade or below, so that the don't-say-gay is superfluous, so to speak, in a setting where this would never be taught at that age group level. I said, it's just the kind of vindictiveness, the kind of violence that it's not, the cruelty is the feature of this kind of politics. I mean, the thing about transgender folks and things like that that are going, it's like a kind of cruelty. I mean, I even saw an Indiana, I think it was the Indiana Republican governor vetoed one of these bills because he felt for transgender kids, you know what I mean? He could actually feel something, you know, and at least that's what he said when he vetoed, but I find the levels of cruelty towards your fellow citizens that people are exhibiting in leadership. They don't consider, they don't consider, the problem is, is they're playing to the base and they, and since they don't, they don't, the political framework, their calculation is, is they don't need, all they need is their base to get over and as long as they can get their base to come out and vote and then it, you know, what happens to the gay child, the black child, the Hispanic child, the Muslim child is irrelevant because that's, they're not a part of their base. Oh, no, I understand, but I just, you know, I look at that, the level of cruelty then endemic to the base. Okay. I mean, there's something, something deep in that base that's got, that is really, really twisted, you know, whatever. Okay, I'm going to go to my thing about, sure, the Republicans are over and nasty and obvious, but the Democrats do the same sort of thing. The Democrats are, you know, they don't do the same, so they put, you know, like they, when they wanted the black, black people to turn out, they pushed and pushed and pushed on the reparations bill. It's been up for 40 years. You get 103 people to support it and we will get it out. Okay, Democrats have the house and they have the Senate and have they brought forward the reparations? No, okay. Because they don't see it as important to their base. So, okay. Apologies to everybody. We're out of time for today. There's lots more to talk about. We'll be back in two weeks. Those of you viewing, please do come back and join us. And the War of the Norms is in fact, maybe the 21st century civil war that we're all facing. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.