 Good morning to the Hawaii viewers. Good afternoon to mainland and other viewers. Good evening to those in Europe or other places. And welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. I want to remind everybody that we're in our yearly donation phase. So if you like the programming, if you think it's worthwhile, and if you're able to log on to thinktechhawaii.com, click the donate button, and whatever you are moved and willing to contribute will be truly, truly appreciated. Those are a major source of the lifeblood of Think Tech Hawaii and of these exchanges of ideas, thoughts, insights, and perspectives. And today we have with us Professor Vernelia Randall, Professor Emerita from the University of Dayton School of Law, one of the leading experts on racism in the law. And as we've seen in these programs, many other things as well. It's a diversity of expertise that we welcome. Hey, David Larson from Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution, and one of the pioneers of online case resolution and its benefits for access to justice in New York and elsewhere. And Ben Davis, Professor Emeritus and also duty emeritus from University of Toledo School of Law, still teaching at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law and to be teaching at Washington and Lee School of Law in 2022. Welcome all of you. Thank you. One of the things Professor Randall that you call to our attention is that with all the attention to the stimulus act, to the infrastructure act, to the Build Back Better Act, the biggest piece of our budget doesn't seem to be getting attention correspondent to its importance and its impact on the availability of funds for our domestic budget, for education, for health, for all the other things that our desperate needs housing. And that's the $768 billion military budget that's even more than they asked for. Hey, your thoughts, what's wrong with that? What does that tell us about our priorities? Well, you know, where you spend your money is where it was important. And I think often that we are like a spouse who has a gambling addiction, who has alcohol addiction, who has some kind of addiction. Gambling, I'd like, but is the analogy I like best because you're spending and losing money. And you're going out, you're spending, you're losing money, and then you come home and you tell your family, you know, we got to tighten our belts because we need more money. The house is falling down, the car needs repairs, the kids need braces on their teeth. And you're saying, yeah, but we don't have the person with the addiction is saying, but we don't have the money for that. Meanwhile, they're gambling. We spend more money or military than the top 15 countries combined. We spend three times as much money as China, who is our current boogie person that we put up before people that we need to do something. And both the Democrats and Republicans just quietly do pass these military budgets. And separately, which is one reason I think we never get to talk about it in relation to domestic spending, because the budgets are passed separately. And so there's never any weighing of priorities against each other. Ben, David, how is it that this incredible proportion of our spending doesn't get more attention and more balancing with needs like education, health, housing and other critical, critical needs? Well, I can just go back. I think I was in high school, 72, 73, where I sat in on one of those hearings about the military budget when I was in high school. And I was really struck by how I think it was the Senate hearing, how willing to give money to the military, the senators who were on that committee were. I mean, it was almost comical, in a way, when the person from the government or from the Defense Department was trying to make his presentation. It said, it's almost like he's saying, well, don't you think you need more? That kind of thing. And one part of this, of course, is where the actual money gets spent. I mean, if you spread it around the United States and you spread it around all 48 states and up in Alaska and Hawaii too, then it becomes like a local jobs program, basically, through the military. And so I think that is something that is thought of strategically also about, certainly for the contractors who are going to get the projects and all that. So that's why I see that the ease of this goes through is because everybody can wear that national security hat, but it's also like maybe sending some port back to the home state, so to speak. Yeah, Chuck, he asked the question, how can this happen? And I think Professor Randall put a finger right on it. I mean, these budget processes are taking place independently. And when that happens, you don't have the opportunity to do a really effective comparison and contrast. And I suppose that as far as the world of media is concerned, the domestic budget and the spending budgets are more attractive and colorful for media attention. So we follow infrastructure bills, and we hear information about what's being prioritized and what's being cut out. And the negotiations just start with a $3 trillion bill and it gets cut down to 1.2. And we learn what's getting taken out and what we're losing in terms of paid family leave and things like that. But we don't learn what's in a military budget. And it's never laid out in that kind of itemized fashion. And that's probably the biggest concern, the fact that we don't get that kind of information that lets us raise questions as to why are we spending $500 million on this when that technology isn't what military experts say is going to be the future of war? Why are we still building that kind of a ship? Why are we still spending this kind of money? So we don't have that kind of the inquiry and debate that we do with the domestic spending budget. Part of it is also, I think there's absolutely, we don't agree with Professor Larson. We don't have that debate. And part of the debate is how we use the budget to establish and maintain empire, because that's the debate we'd have to get into, that the United States is an empire, and that that empire is maintained by the 80 bases, the bases that are in 80 countries. And so that it becomes hard for countries, just like it's hard for people to say no when you have a base and jobs in your state. The same analogy I think is a good analogy can be used for bases in foreign countries that the threat of removing all those bases, I had, I know it's 80 countries, the last time I looked at 200 some odd bases out of 700 bases are in foreign countries. That's no small presence, military presence around the world. And to some extent, I wonder if it's a threat. We got a base in your country. What are you going to do? How are you going to say no to us? Both financially and militarily, Lee, is that a word? I just made it a word. Well, one thing I saw that was kind of also disturbing was that I guess Senator Durbin has tried to initiate legislation to close Guantanamo, and he wanted to have some hearings, and apparently they couldn't get anybody from the Biden administration to come to talk about it, which you would think that at least there'd be somebody who'd be sort of on that. But I thought it was really significant that the Senator's trying, he's pushing that forward after all this time and with all that's gone on there, but apparently no one wants to listen to or wants to say anything about it. I want to close it. Yeah. Well, you know, when Chuck threw out the top of her this week, it was kind of big events in 2021. And to kind of connect it with another big event, because it's right in point, certainly a big event in 2021, talking about the closing of bases was Afghanistan, and everything connected with that and how difficult that was and how perhaps in hindsight, how poorly that was orchestrated. But in terms of when we do have bases around the world, what Professor Randolph was saying, it becomes a pretty delicate issue is how are you going to continue that base, what's going to be your relationship with the host country. And if you do want to close that base under what circumstances are going to do it, and can you do it in a way that's not going to harm the existing country. And Afghanistan will go down, I think is one of the big stories of 2021. The other big story, I think is the use of the improper use of critical race theory to fight against anti-racist education. And I think as Professor Davis has said, that is going to have a long term impact on the education of children. And I find particularly distressing that I saw somewhere where some I forget which state introduced the law to say, no, it was a congressperson asked their the schools in their state to identify books that cause psychological distress based on racism and sexism and abortions. And I'm like, that's really interesting because one, to me, that's like fairness. One person's fairness is another person's unfairness. If you're looking for psychological stress, what about the psychological stress of my child for having to read a book that misrepresents how they view what slavery was, what the Native American massacre was, they don't say it, but they're really only talking about white children's psychological stress. At a really fundamental level, it's just, it's so discouraging and kind of frightening, because it's the antithesis of the liberal arts education. I mean, the whole point is you want to expose people to a variety of viewpoints, and you want to have kind of robust discussions. And if you take out a lot of voices, well, you're lucky to have those discussions. And that's a little frightening. Yeah, it's, you know, I keep saying that it's an academic freedom at all levels, K through 12 and all the way up. I know there's different standards depending on what the level is, but still there are things that I had in my education that when I look back, they're pretty disturbing things to see. I'm thinking of the catcher and the rye, I'm thinking of slaughterhouse file, I'm thinking of Lolita. Yeah, these were part of the curriculum. And, you know, you can look back and say now, wow, I don't know if that was a proper thing to have a kid who was almost 17, 16, 15 reading, but, you know, at the same time, it was a choice that was made at the time within what would be good for opening up a student's mind. And, you know, this idea of creating these, I don't know, these off-limits spaces, I think it's just really quite, quite absurd. And, you know, I don't know what people want. Sometimes I think it's not so much about what the schools are doing. It's about almost like maybe people not wanting their kids to know about things that the parents did, you know. I have a friend who was in Germany who told me the story of like in the early 60s, you basically had a whole generation of German kids who went home at 15 and asked their parents, what did you do during World War II? You know, and it was a very difficult thing for those parents to admit what they had done and being basically going along with what there was doing. And that created a whole kind of rebellion in that generation of kids against their parents because of what they'd allowed to have. So sometimes, you know, I wonder if more of the stuff is more about sort of not the parents wanting their kids to know about the complexities of what, you know, grandpa and grandma did, you know. I think that's what and, you know, it's like, it's okay to know. I mean, grandpa and grandma, you know, because when I look at all those photos, you know, I'm 65. So when I integrated schools back in the day, it was at the time of Ruby Bridges was integrating Louisiana down there. That same time, I was about the same age, right? And, you know, all those kids in that classroom that I was with, you know, they're now all 65 and grandpa and grandma, you know. And I know the stories that were going on in the 60s about trying to prevent black kids from going to these schools and all that because I know them from what actually had happened and what was actually reported after. So, you know, part of what I think of now is like, well, I just don't want to hear what really went on. And, you know, it's all mind game, you know, a certain sense because, of course, it's the reality that was experienced. And people who experience these realities will talk about it. I mean, I'm thinking of Renelius, Professor Randall's was a great grandparents who started the school there and in Jarvis, Texas, is that what it was, you know? In Hawkins, Texas, Jarvis Christian College. Right. And, you know, the idea of creating the college, and I don't know exactly what year it was and all that. It was creating a primary care school in 1904. Right. And mainly for, as I remember, can you tell us more about them because, you know, their idea, they've built some land and all that. Yeah, well, what, you know, coming out of slavery and my grandfather was born in 1870. So, and he was one of the youngest kids and his parents were enslaved people and his brothers and sisters were enslaved people. And so coming out of slavery, my grandfather didn't read or write or anything like that, but he was very smart and by 1900, he was a successful farmer in Texas. He owned a farm, he owned a farm, he farmed the land. The family story is that church ladies, and this is true, went around to black people who were doing well, comparably well, they still was in Jim Crow and said, look, you need to get your children educated and that's not going to happen without a school and since you're well to do, you ought to, you know, help fund a school and put your children in school and pay for them to go to school. And that's the way we can have a school. And my grandfather said, yeah, you're right. And he sold his farm in West Texas and moved down to East Texas across from what became, what was the primary school and he educated all his children, all but one of my aunts in Oakland, which was about eight graduated from college. And the thing that I liked to do, so yeah, it was it was that sort of, you know, history of education, which always upsets me when people said, you know, black people don't appreciate education. I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. Black people are getting educated. And they knew there was nothing they can do with that education, but be educated. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Megan. I mean, it's to me, it's like, this is a story that needs to be out there, that people, particularly in Texas, would need to know. Okay. As part of the memory, because if it's not told, then it gets lost. You know, it's like, my next door neighbor when I lived in Solito was a guy named Zeno White and nice old man and all that. And they told me that his, he was a great grand nephew, I think, or grand nephew of a guy named George White, who was the last black member of Congress from the South, who made a speech in 1901 about all the political shenanigans that went on with him. And just the Zeno White telling the stories of growing up in North Carolina and what they had to do to survive. You know, if that's not told, people will just have no clue. It's just to be this kind of bizarre, bizarre world vision of what was deeply difficult. And yet people manage to survive and prosper. It has meaning, you know. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, I think it has the, yeah, there's a concern about the historically significant stories being lost and episodes being lost and that has value in itself. But you know, these histories set up kind of guardrails for our culture and society that, you know, these are the things that can happen if we're not careful about the paths we're choosing. So we need to be reminded of how a skew we can go or we're going to go there again. So I think that's part of the importance of remembering all this history and these stories is that there's no reason those things can't be repeated. And you know, we can backtrack in the society. We don't always move forward and some ways we're backtracking now. And you know, unless we keep these things on the forefront, we're going to repeat them. And that's absolutely right. And we are repeating them. And the problem is, is people don't understand the like one of the stories, my mom died very young and we moved back from Pennsylvania to Texas. And my dad had a shotgun put up in his face and I witnessed this as a child. I must have been seven or eight, that's when my mom died. And he got a shotgun put in his face because he said to this white woman church at a filling station, honey, I remember these words to the day I died. Honey, pass me a pack of pale all males. You remember those cigarettes? Yeah, almost cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah. They are no longer around. And the man pulled out his gun, put it up in my grandfather's face. And it was my uncle who talked the man down. And he talked him down by just basically saying, look, they just lost their mother. He's had something to drink. He didn't mean anything by it. And it's the same, you know, the same kind of things that are happening now against black men primarily, but also black women and not just black people, brown people and native people, the same sort of those same violent oppression in your face behavior. And part of it is because, as Professor Larson has said, that people that have, we have not been telling those stories. And when we started telling the stories, like Professor Davis said, people got upset and are now wanting to ban the stories from being told to their children, because they would need to explain why did grandpa stick that gun in that man's face which is asking for cigarettes. One modest improvement that I'm happy to see is that some stories are getting told. And in some sense, we've got, you know, we've had law enforcement issues here up in the Twin Cities where I am. Kim Potter trial has begun here. Now we had George Floyd murdered here. Fortunately, that did result in all three charges convictions. But part of the problem has been the arbitration discipline system that's been closed and things were happening for many years. And it was private confidential arbitration, nobody ever knew what was happening. People were getting repeat offenders, were getting reinstated on the force, doing the same kind of egregious things they're doing before and whatever new. So I guess one positive thing that's happening is that some light is being shed on those discipline processes. And at least in some occasions, people that are offenders are being removed instead of just reassigned or just not even reassigned this return to their position. So I'm happy to see that happening. I just also would like to speak to other kinds of violence. Like I just saw there's some story that's just come out about 900 people who were on a Zoom call, got fired by a startup called Better.com. I mean, I just thought Better.com just, I mean, you could not, if he wrote this in a novel, people, you know, the editor would say, come on, please. But the idea of this firing 900, I mean, it's a violence to me, it's an enormous violence. The people are subjected to and our sort of capacity to accept that kind of violence being done to people. It is one of the things that really bothers me that, you know, we all become sort of brutalized by the kind of cruelty that that expresses. It's normalization. And that's again, one of the concerns when stories are lost, you know, then behaviors get normalized. And we're seeing it, excuse me, we're seeing it with COVID deaths. You know, we had 73 deaths the other day here in the Twin Cities. You know, 73 deaths two years ago in one day, people had gone crazy. And it just, people didn't even blink. So, you know, human nature is such that you know, consciously or implicitly, we normalize things. And, you know, unless we kind of consciously object and stay focused, it becomes very easy to accept the status quo. And we see that, I see that happening now with this, with our COVID situation, the deaths, and you know, we're at 800,000 people have died. You know, a male physician was speaking yesterday saying that 25,000 people are going to die between now and Christmas. You know, those numbers are unbelievable. But yes, you know, unless we are vigilant, tragedies and wrongs happen, and we permit it. And it becomes really important to push back and pay attention. And we have, you know, the normalization, there was an article that came that I just, the headline just went by my eyes. It's in my area about why Americans are losing years in life expectancy. I didn't read the article because it's something I've been studying for a long time. And the article puts it up as a surprise. But the reality is that white Americans, white Americans, if white Americans were a country, they would rank 32nd in life expectancy in the world. Black Americans were ranked around 65th in life expectancy. And the CIA on its website uses life expectancy as a measure of the quality of life in the country. So what does that say about our country that we are nowhere near, we're the richest country in the world, and we're 32nd if you're white, 65th if you're black. And people are being surprised that it's going down. And I think COVID obviously is a big issue. But the bigger issue is we live in a very stressful, unhealthy environment. And that even without COVID, COVID draws attention to how bad our society is in terms of this. But even without, we have people dying more than other countries. Don't get me started. It's a big frustration for me because it really is sort of like, we're unhealthy society, unhealthy country, and have been as long as I can remember. We've never ranked high compared to the amount of money we have. Child mortality too. Just as we're closing, just a couple of things in a review. I thought about this and was trying to think, okay, so what positive things happen this year? We had our first female president this year. That was only for a few hours through the colonoscopy. But the fact is, we had a few hours this year. We had the first black and first Jewish senators elected in Georgia. Now, unfortunately, it's one step forward, two steps back, because two and a half months later, the legislature passed a whole series of voter suppression laws that you can't keep water to people in lines and taking away ballot boxes. So it's been that kind of a year, one step forward, two steps back, and that was kind of discouraging. But that aside, Georgia did elect a black senator and a Jewish senator. We rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and we rejoined WHO. And I think those are truly, truly good things that happened this year. Yeah. And the January 6th committee seems to be working hard. Okay. The crowd for me. And I apologize for stepping in. We're out of time for today. But one of the things that I really want to focus on as we sign off today and is if you look at the quality of connections and communications that the people on these dialogues have shared with each other, they're humane, they're responsible, they're caring. There is reason for some optimism, some hope. We can have these conversations. So maybe our message for today going out is go out, have these conversations with the people that you care about and care about you. We can offer each other more and better. Happy holidays, brother. Happy holidays and thank you for all the stuff you do. Yeah, thank you for everything you do, brothers. Thank you all and sisters.