 to Think Tech Hawaii. Good morning for those of you here in Hawaii, afternoon, evening for those of you elsewhere. And we have the great good fortune to have with us today. Two of our favorite conversationalists and people, Professor Vinalia Randall in Orlando, Florida, Professor Emerita from the University of Dayton School of Law, and one of the leading national and international experts on race, racism, and the law. A very, very timely topic at all times and maybe especially now and going forward. And Jeff Portnoy, our Premier Experienced First Amendment Lawyer, Rights of the Press and Free Speech Lawyer, one of the more respected practitioners in our civil litigation arena here in Hawaii and beyond, and recent traveler. So Jeff, you're just back from, tell us about your favorite part of that trip. Well, first of all, I've missed so many shows that I hope everything is going well. I did try to get employed by Fox during the interim, but it didn't happen. So I'm back on Think Tech. I tried. We'll take you over, Tucker, anytime. Yeah, I hear you. Well, as I told you several weeks ago, I took a trip to Alabama with Duke University, which is now known as this trip as the Alabama Civil Rights Trail. Alabama has finally gotten smart, or at least some entrepreneurs have, and figured out that 50 years after the Selma March might be a good time to get all us old people to travel down to Alabama to learn really what happened during the civil rights movement. And it was probably one of the more incredible six days I've ever spent anywhere. It started in Montgomery, went to Birmingham, went to Selma, went to Tuscaloosa. It was just incredible. It's not just physically being in all of these places that you've read about. I mean, obviously marched over the Selma Bridge and went on the march, not the march, but the path of the bus boycott people in Montgomery. But what made it extraordinary was that many of our docents and many of the people who had been arranged to talk with us were there. They were high school kids who were involved in the bus boycott, who got beaten every single day. We met with a woman who was right next to the four young black children who were bombed and killed in the church bombing. She was right there. And to hear their experiences, I'm getting chills, frankly, just talking about it now, was extraordinary. And I give these people, and frankly, the governments in these various places credit for now promoting that history, which was such a dark part of our history in the 50s and the 60s. And of course, there are phenomenal museums now dedicated to Rosa Park, dedicated to the hundreds of people who were lynched. There's a museum just dealing with, as I say, 200, 300, 400 people they've now been able to establish were lynched in various southern states and some Midwestern kind of states like Oklahoma and places like that. So anyway, it's an experience that I will cherish forever. I knew a little bit, but I learned so much more. And to be there, to be at the spot where Rosa Park refused to get on the bus, to be in the church that got bombed, to be in those places. And I'm just trying to make it short. Pretty incredible. What's the most surprising thing you learned? That's an interesting question. And I asked that question of people in a different way. I said 50 years later, have things changed? And I got multiple answers. Selma, for example, is a very, very poor city. It's hard to look at. Boarded up storefronts. It's just sad. And this is Selma, Alabama. Montgomery is starting to, it looks like a fairly modern city. They even have a new ballpark. I guess what I learned is that many things are better, but many things aren't. For example, we were in places where the high schools and the elementary schools let out at the end of the day. They're supposed to be segregated. They're not close. It would be an all-white high school with a handful of blacks or to be an all-black high school with a handful of whites. This is what? Four decades after Brown versus Board of Education? Five decades? But there is some optimism. But economically, some of these smaller cities in Alabama, Tuskegee, for example, where the Tuskegee Institute is, that city looks like it's in Ukraine. That's how poor it is. That's how boarded up everything is with a major black university sitting in the middle of nothing. So there's been a lot of progress, I think, from the people we talked to, but there's a long way to go. If they talk at all about the, I'm interested, because this is some history I just learned maybe in the last eight or nine years. And I think it's being talked about more, but that Rosa Park wasn't the first person. One of the things that was fascinating was that many of the people we talked to wanted us to know that some of the major figures that we have known about, like Martin Luther King, who was 26 when he went down to Selma, or Rosa Parks, as great as they are, were not the pioneers. And they went through the people, there were actually three women that had refused to get on the bus before Rosa Parks and were in prison that I never knew about. There are ministers that you don't hear about, you hear about Abernathy and Martin Luther King and there are others, but there were so many heroes, Professor Randall, that are not mentioned in history books. I was, one of the ones that I just been is was a teenage girl who was pregnant, and I can't remember her name now, but and I hate that because I really like to have a shout out to her, but she was, I think she was some months before Rosa Parks, and that at least the story that I heard knows what the story is until you hear from the people around there, is that people were concerned about a single teen woman as the front for the civil rights movement, and so why they didn't pursue her as a case as much as they did Rosa Parks. It was an interesting. And that bus boycott, which you know about because you read about it in the paragraphs in the history book, should take up books because it was phenomenal how the black community was still able to get to where they needed to go. They organized car pools for lack of a better word and transportation alternatives until the bus company had no choice because they were going bankrupt. That's right. They were going bankrupt because the majority of the ridership was always black. I wonder what Florida is going to do. Have you been keeping up with what's going on down here in Florida? How could we not? Since I've last been on, I didn't think the country should go further to the right. I was wrong again. Oh my goodness. I should put on my Disney years. It seems like Florida governor and Texas governor are competing for the Republican nomination by saying, look, we're more Trump than Trump. And they are, by the way. And they are. They're just not as crazy acting. They are. And down here, the most recent thing is getting rid of, I don't know, what 29 math books because they have things about racism that's inappropriate. And so, yeah. It's not a good time to be a minority. Yeah. Whether it's a sexual minority or a racial minority. No, they're coming out and droves about it and passing laws. The interesting thing, you know, I think what is making this time a bit different is this turning back to Jim Crow's legal apartheid. That there was a period of, I forget which one is it, de facto is discrimination in fact, de juros is discrimination without laws. Not through the laws, but just the racial discrimination. From 1964 up to the 2000s, there was discrimination, but mostly it was through nonracial laws, enforcement of nonracial laws. But now they're sort of like, oh, we can turn that on you. We can make laws that racially discriminate and be overt about that's what it's doing because we can claim that not doing it is racial discrimination. One of the people who spoke to us for two hours in a famous church was George Wallace's daughter. Fascinating. Two hours. She has become an outspoken advocate for civil rights. It's pretty amazing. But listening to her tell the story of growing up in Montgomery with her father and then of course her mother who by the way is loved, loved by people in Alabama. You know, she became governor for a while before she got cancer and passed away. I never knew that. I figured she was another Wallace, but that's not what I heard when I was there. But listening to the daughter talk about her father standing in the schoolhouse door when she was a teenager. She was very understanding. She had a lot of praise for her father as a father, but admitted that he at one point, he was not an integrationist, but he was not a segregationist. And when he lost his first couple of elections and figured out I can't win this way, he became one of the most outstanding quote unquote. I don't mean that in that way. Segregationist and she talked about what it was like in the family, but she's turned around completely. She must be about 60 or 65. Now interestingly, Chuck, she's married to a former justice on the Alabama Supreme Court who I spent some time talking to a really fascinating guy and apparently pretty liberal for somebody on the Alabama white guy on the Alabama Supreme Court. But listening to her talk about her father and what it was like was just one of those incredible, incredible hours. Did she talk about how he, so he became a segregationist as a political thing and was really outspoken. And then when he lost his leg, he sort of converted back as I remember. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. He did. I mean, he didn't become you know, Elizabeth Warren, but he went back to where he had been before he had lost those first few races. Of course he had already done so much damage. Yeah, of course. But he also, as I remember it, at the time he sort of owned it up to it and was a bit of an integrationist. He wasn't just back to, he was, I remember, sort of appalled at his own behavior. One book that I bought when I was there because I heard so much about a United States District Court Judge Frank Johnson. I don't know, Charles, if you've read Chuck much about him or Professor Randall, he was an unbelievable shining light on the federal court in Montgomery during all the time this was going on and there's a fabulous book. I mean, I read it two days, sort of an autobiography about his time growing up in the rural south and he grew up in part of Alabama, by the way, that wanted to go with the North. I didn't realize that, that the northern part of Alabama did not want to secede, but in any event, he became the United States District Court Judge in Montgomery during all the time this was happening and it goes through all the cases and how he reached the decisions he did and the threats on he and his family and fascinating book about a period of time where United States District Court Judge, we talk about the courts as hopefully being our last bastion of civility and you go back 50 years and you see why. He was an incredible figure, brave, smart, and you know, not always ruled in favor of, he was not in favor, for example, of certain parts of the bus boycott and you know, other things, but he tried to bring people together and when he was unable to, he ruled against the city of Montgomery time after time. Kind of a bit of a, well, it's a great, it's not a bit of a change of topic, it's a significant change of topic. Jeff, what do you think about what's the columns buying Twitter and the free speech implication? Oh, and also the free speech implications of our governor in Disney. Well, let me take the latter one first, because that's a simple thing for me. I think what's happening there is outrageous. I give Disney tremendous credit. This is not new for them. They have always been an advocate for the, you know, the gay community. They were a little late to the party, but since they came to the party, they have been outspoken. And I think, you know, whatever forced them and it must have been their employees to come out against this Florida law. And it's going to be an interesting legal battle. But, you know, I think from a free speech viewpoint, it's horrible. And, you know, I'm not a Twitter fan. And Disney has, I mean, constitutionally, the Supreme Court said corporations are persons. Yes, they did. Which means that they have, but my understanding would be the rights of a person. And that right would be to be able to comment on political things and not have the government interfere. Clearly, it was just one private party to another private party. But we're talking about the government of Florida punishing a person corporation for their speech. Well, it's a big land use issue and I don't pretend to be an expert on it. But, you know, you could argue the opposite side that they were given a privilege. And now that an effort is made to revoke the privilege is going to be fascinating. Twitter, I'm sorry. I was going to say Twitter to me, as Chuck knows, I am a fairly extreme free speech guy. I've taught it. I've debated it with minorities and others who tell me that I don't really understand how words can hurt. And I appreciate it, but I've been consistent. I never agreed with Twitter censoring people unless they were engaging in speech that was harmful, like, you know, go get your gun and shoot the president, you know, or things like that, a threatening imminent violence. But the fact that people put all kinds of false comments on, no, I do think people should be responsible for the content. So must call position is I'm going to open Twitter up to everybody, and I'm not going to censor anything. That's what he said. And that'll be interesting because, you know, I don't know much about him, but he's clearly just look at the names of his kids. You know that he's a little bit off. Well, part of the thing is he's thin skin. Yeah, that is. And I can't imagine. And in fact, he's already lashing out at Twitter and Twitter executives in their personal sort of like by name. And I can't imagine that he is willing to allow his employees to lash out against him on Twitter. Oh, I'm sure you're right. But you know what, when you have $44 billion, you can do almost anything. Well, and that's the whole thing. But what my view is, we should get rid of all billionaires, billionaires out of existence and use that money to on a regular basis to cover the needs of people, housing, education, food, clothing, health. There are some good ones, though. There are some good ones. There is no such thing as a good billionaire. No such thing. All right. Billionaires? Some of them have committed billions to social causes that the government has been unable to fund or unwilling. Well, some reasons though some can commit billions is because they take the money through processes and earn the money through processes that hurts the workers and the average person. And giving back after you accumulate their hoarders. I mean, who needs that much money? Except for a hoarder. I truly think that you can earn a lot of money, but there ought to be a breaking point. Yeah. Just like the other issue that for me right now is, and I mentioned this to Chuck, is everybody's talking about inflation and all of the things that are privy to the inflation and inflation is bad. But no one's talking about the increased profits. Do you know what? Yeah, I hear you. Do you know what $1 billion would do to sell my Alabama? $1 billion. I mean 50 million. What 50 million would do to sell my Alabama. I mean, I've not seen that poverty in such a city. Not just one neighborhood. Since I was in North Carolina and that was 50 years ago. And even then it was only neighborhoods. Anyway, I remember a conversation. I think you and I may have had back in the fall where I think you were a lot more optimistic than I was about the future. So I still defer to your optimism. But I don't see it happening in the short term. In fact, I'm not so sure I'm looking forward to November. I'm not looking forward at all because I honestly cannot vote for Democrat or Republican. Because they are opposite sides of the same corns. And they get in and it's sort of like, yeah, I know mansion is a problem. But I also know that the Democrats have sort of used that as a way to sort of like, oh, we can't do anything because mansion and sentence and what's the name? The one Arizona. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, you could whip them and shake, you know, take them on all the committees. Tell them if you don't support our problems, be Republican. You might as well be Republicans. Anyway, well, I know we only have a minute to go. It's been great fun being back with you, Professor. It's been great fun back with you. And Chuck, I'm jealous of your trip. It's something that really I've told a lots of people about it. And if you have any interest in history and still being able to talk to the history makers, yeah, you don't have a lot more time. No, that's right. Professor Randall Jeff, thanks so much. Thanks for both starting us in Alabama in the things that we really need to understand much better and much differently and bringing us back there. And there are other questions that are out there. If we were going to redistribute wealth, how might we go about that? I'll take it. I'll take it. Let me know. There you go. That's what everybody says. Thanks everybody. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Nice seeing you. Come back. Bye bye. See us again soon. Bye bye.