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Today is June 1, 2020. And here we have our state representative Gene Wu who serves as a member in the Texas House. Thank you so much for your time today.

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Thank you so much. It has been almost six or seven years since your first interview with us right? To start, would you please give us a little bit update about yourself like your recent job, your

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advocacy work, or what kind of social issues have you, have you been involved recently? Sure. So I was elected in

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2013—2012—2010—2013. This is now my fourth term, my eighth year in the Texas Legislature and for just for people who don't know I represent Southwest Houston and District 137.

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It's a large immigrant district. 70, 80% of the people here speak a language other than English, including myself and 40% of the adults here were born

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outside of the United States, including me. And, you know, it's an incredibly diverse area, and I'm very proud to represent it. In terms of work, outside of my state rep job, I'm an attorney.

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I'm a private attorney, I represent kids, both in the Child Protective Services court system, and also kids in the juvenile delinquency system who can get arrested for doing bad stuff. In terms of my

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advocacy, I've taken on a lot of things. Not surprisingly, I'm, I'm a big advocate for immigrant rights or refugee rights. You know, I'm in for any number of diverse communities, including

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Muslim Americans, including South Asians, including just people from across the spectrum who don't normally have a lot of representation because they deserve representation and a lot of them

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live in my district. Um, so some of my main focus in the legislature I've really focused on, you know, not surprisingly, given my work, I focus on kids. And what this means is I do a lot of

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work in reforming the juvenile justice system and some in the criminal adult criminal system. I focus a lot on reforming the CPS system. I also work on some other issues throughout and

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I know you don't have enough time for me to go through all of them. But needless to say, a lot of is focused on children. And also, my other real big role in the legislature is, is I'm an

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appropriate or I sit on the House Appropriations Committee and we help decide how much the money and where the state spends money. That's great.

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But I guess my next question is is you know, since March Harris County has issued a stay at home order. So I guess in what ways has the Coronavirus pandemic impacted your life or your work?

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Sure. In terms of, in terms of my day job as an attorney, it's a, it's actually affected me a lot because the courts are shut down.

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And it's made dealing with child protective services cases and juvenile delinquency cases very difficult, especially since there are many positive, COVID positive cases of kids in juvenile lockup.

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And this, this has made going to the courthouse or you know, especially dangerous and I have immunocompromised people within my household so I can't you know, it's it's not just about me. Um, yeah.

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In terms of my job as state rep, that actually has traumatically increase my workload. So the–the state legislature is meant to be a, it's meant to be a part time job.

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It's especially since we're paid like $600 a month to do it. And we only meet in the legislative session once every other year. But, you know, we still have day-to-day responsibilities. In our district and in the legislature,

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we have appropriations. For example, I, I have appropriations duties, and we have to watch the budget, we have to take care of things we have to watch over issues, even during the interim.

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And also, you know, part of what I've been doing a lot in during the crisis as a state rep is helping our constituents navigate the crisis, we have had a tremendous number of people call in to us

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asking for help on unemployment issues, asking us where to go get tested, needing help on finding food. And, you know, even–even people outside the district, I actually have directed my snap that if

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somebody calls in and they don't live in our district, we're going to help them anyways, we're not going to push them off to another to another member, when we can help them—if we can help them right there. And then, and we're going to take care of them as much as possible.

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But sometimes because I have a very, maybe larger than life footprint on social media. People see my name and then they call my office not knowing that they have their own state rep.

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But I—we don't push anybody away. If they need help, we'll try to get them help right now. But I've also spent a a tremendous amount of time in the last couple months locating

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PPE and getting ahold of it, figure out where it needs to go and then delivering it. So, my lot my life for the last like two months now has been all about masks.

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I know. I know very intimate details of the differences between the KN-95 and N-95. But for the most part, the simple answer is we help people. That's my job. That's great.

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Um, so, besides your work, what kind of things have you personally done in response to the outbreak? Um I, that's a hard question to ask because I can't really separate out my personal life from

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my state rep life. There is no, there's no such thing. Like I don't I don't have a clock like there's no there's no punch out. Or when I'm not a state rep.

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And for when this is like me time. The reality it is everything that you do is sort of related to the job. And, you know, I can get calls at midnight, you know about state rep stuff and, and you just have to

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respond to it. There's no, there's no, there's no off time. So, you know, personally, my response has been just trying to take care of myself. My mom was with me, my mother in law is close to us and

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you know, my dad's around, and I gotta make sure they stay alive. I don't want to, you know, I have, I have to go out to places and see people and do things and and host food giveaways and mask giveaways and

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wherever else but I have to take extra responsibility to make sure like I am careful about the way I contact people, not shaking hands, washing my hands. You know, as soon as you come home,

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you take a shower, and you change the clothes in the laundry, but you don't any, any way we can minimize risk we have to. Since you mentioned your family are around with you, I'm wondering do you think outbreak of the pandemic has affected the relationship between you and your

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family and your loved ones? Uh I guess? Not really. I mean, the only real big difference that's occurred is that I make

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dinner every single night. That's about it. Usually I kind of like split that up with my mom but now since since like, February, I, you know, since the since the lockdown I've made like, I've

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been responsible for making dinner every single night, which isn't that enjoy, but still, that's about the only difference. I mean, like, you know, for the most part, either lucky or unlucky.

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We've had, we've not been cooped up because, like, I don't have the luxury of not going out. I have to go out and respond to things and take care of things. And my wife is a reporter.

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So she has to go out and go cover stuff and respond to stuff. So we don't have the luxury of not going out. So not a whole lot of changes, kind of one of the ironies like, especially during Hurricane Harvey and other things where other when other people were less busy

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or we were more busy. I see. And let's change gears a little bit. Well, hearing about like assumptions made about Asian community as being more prone to virus.

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I’m sorry I don’t think I understand your question. Oh, so how do you feel about like assumptions made about Asian communities as being more prone to the virus like some racist attacks against Asians? So that's actually been another thing that I've spent a lot of time

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tackling. I've taken a lot of press calls and been a part of a lot of teleconferences over this issue over the issue of anti-Asian hate on an increased

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Asian—anti-Asian crimes and and inactions all around the United States. But um look it's, it's complicated and this is at minimum a problem that goes back long before Coronavirus that—I've talked about this in a sense of what this is just

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coming to a head of the way Asian-Americans are seen and treated in the United States that, you know, we have all these people who talk about the Coronavirus, and there's

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no distinction between what happens in China and Asian-Americans. I'm not going to say Chinese Americans, just Asian-Americans because number one, note most, most non-Asian people have no idea what the differences are and cannot

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tell the difference between the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, you know. The family who was attacked in Midland, in–in–in the panhandle, they're Burmese. And you know, most—any, any Asian-American would tell you like "Yeah,

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Burmese don't look anything like Chinese, and why would you ever mistake them for being Chinese?" But for most, most non-Asians, they're like they don't know the difference, they don't care.

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And the second part of that is this has been the struggle of Asian-Americans, since there were such things as Asian-Americans is that no matter what we do in life, no matter how

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successful we are, no matter how good our English is, how big of a business empire we build, how much money we donate, we'll never be American enough. We will always be outsiders,

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we'll always be alien. People will look at us and they always ask, "Where are you from?" And if you say Houston, they’ll go"No, no, no, where are you really from?" And it's that sort of

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underlying bigotry that people may not understand or even know that it's racist. But you know, if a, if you talk to a black person and they say "Well, I'm from Houston." You wouldn't say, "Oh, no, no, where in Africa are you really from?" Or if you're talking to someone who's

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Hispanic will you say, "No, where in Latin America do you live?" You would only do that to Asians. And this is a part of it. The the fears over Coronavirus are part of it is that not only

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do people not care about the differences between Asian groups, but all Asians somehow are suspects, they're disease carriers. They somehow have something to do with it because they're not really in our community.

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And they're not really from here. They're not really with us. And another big thing that I've been doing the last few months is spending a lot of time being a part of

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community donations from the Asian community, to hospitals, to clinics, to the city, to the county. And a lot of the groups would come out and say it. But to me, and behind closed doors, they'll say, "You

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know, you need to make sure they know that we're doing this because we're good, we're good Americans, that we're part of the community." And because they're genuinely scared, that I've never seen the community this scared before.

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And they're doing everything they can to prove that they're good Americans. And while I appreciate their work, I am disgusted, and just sickened

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that they have to prove it. I see. You mentioned that there seems to be a historical root on people's conceptions on

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Asian-Americans. I'm wondering, how do you think this pandemic has amplified this kind of misconception or? Yeah, I'm, you know, um, a

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favorite movie of mine--documentary. And anybody watching, if you look it up, it's called Searching for General Tso. And it's about, it's about food, but it's not

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really about food. It's about the Asian-American experience, starting from the railroad, starting from the Gold Rush, and the types of discrimination that we've experienced throughout,

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throughout history. And there's a reason why there's as many Chinese food restaurants as there are McDonald's in America. And it has a lot to do with because legally, the Chinese were only

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allowed to open restaurants and laundries. Work that was designated for women, right, at the time, because, you know, that was the type of demeaning attitude they had toward Asians,

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towards Chinese, whatever you want to call it. And there's a lot of history behind it. And there's a lot of subtle racism that we, we see the result of the day, but we don't really understand where it

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comes from. And we sort of just accept it. And I think it's important that you care about this, go watch it. Go read a book. It's called Driven Out.

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It's an important book. It's a it's a historical, it documents the history of the Chinese and other Asian-American groups during the, during the, around the time of the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act, right?

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And you know, but this is not again—I want to say like, like, what was me, this is all about Chinese. No, this country has a long history of discrimination against immigrant

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groups, whether it's the Irish, the Polish, the Germans, or the Mexicans, Guatemalans, the Chinese, the Japanese. This is this is the history of America. And I think one of the important things is, you know,

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that we should learn something from it. And I hope we learned something from it because it seems we seem to forget the lessons. Um, every, every, every few every few years, we seem to repeat the same same things over and

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over again without, without changing it. Yeah, that's great. So how has social media has played a role in this pandemic, as to now like Trump is inflicting more control over it, like I mean, played a role

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in amplifying this kind of social misconceptions? I think the big difference between now and let's say 20 years ago, is social media.

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20 years ago, most people would have gotten their news from the newspaper or from from like, ABC, NBC Nightly News, something like that, where there will be fact checkers, or there will be people who say, "No, no, no, this is what the correct answer is.

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You're hearing something else that's wrong." But, you know, BuzzFeed had a recent post, where they documented all like 40

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something different hoaxes, or false things that are being posted about, about just a George Floyd protest, right. And I I would be scared even to consider that there might be like, how would you

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even put together the number of hoaxes surrounding Coronavirus? Because everybody freely posts false information because there's so many so many people who have news sites that, you

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know, at the very, very fine print, they'll say it's a parody. But it's just to generate clicks. And they write outrageous things but people retweet it and then they they repost it as if it was fact without checking it, without looking at the source, without looking at

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anything. And there's really not a lot of desire by our by our leadership to counteract it, because they kind of benefit from it.

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And I think that's extremely unfortunate that we don't have a White House that actively pursues the truth and actively pushes back against hoaxes and, and scams and false narratives.

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Do you think that has also contributed to amplifying the racial conflicts? Sure. Um, I think more so that so, you know, like this is maybe being a bit of an old man

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here, but like, back in the old days, if you had a crazy racist thing to say, you had to, like do a newsletter or, or just mail people and your reach was limited. And your because your resources

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were limited. Now, all you have to do is create an anonymous Twitter handle, right and you can you can send out as much hate as you want, and at no cost. And literally zero cost.

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Maybe the cost of electricity, it's in your home, right? But um, with the internet comes anonymity. With anonymity goes responsibility.

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Because if you're anonymous, there is no record. There's no collateral consequence. So people are more free to generate hate. Right? And there's been every

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once in a while, someone will get doxxed. And they'll find out who they are, and they'll post it and they'll lose their job. And they'll be they'll be embarrassed that they were posting neo-nazi

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stuff. But that's few and far between the most of the people posting tremendous amounts of hate go without any cost. And I think that's been the real big difference.

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Is that the cost--the barrier of entry is very, very low. And there is no there are no consequences. There's no collateral

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consequence. Absolutely. So would you consider COVID-19 a setback for the progress made throughout the years in the perspectives of Asian-Americans? It's a hard question.

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On one hand, I would say yeah, this is this is not good for us. This is, um, but on the other hand, I think Asian-Americans have been too comfortable with where they are in our society.

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In the past, I think a lot of Asian-Americans actively refused to support other communities that were crying out for help. Whether that be the Muslim community, after 911.

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Whether it be the Hispanic community, with Trump trying to build the wall. With the GLBT community, with the African American community with any number of groups who say, "I really wish you guys would stand up." And the Asian-American community says, "Yeah,

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we're okay. We're okay." But I think sometimes, sometimes you need a punch to the face, to realize you need to wake up. And I think what's happening now is kind of a punch in the face, that

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Asian-Americans around this nation, who were happy, being comfortable, being wealthy, being, being confident in their place in their society suddenly realize it's, it's kind of all just a facade.

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It's a show. That when it comes down to it when we now have become a convenient target for political gain by the Republicans. It's all fair game. Even though there are so many Asian and

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Chinese Americans who are Republicans and have donated to them and support them. And it means nothing. I mean you're—it's meaningless. And I think that what has happened

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recently has spurred the community into action, which is why I say, I don't know if this is a setback because, you know, you get pushed back, you get knocked back a couple of feet, but you decide

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to march forward even harder. I'm not sure that's a setback. And I sometimes you need that, sometimes you need a wake up call. And I've seen Asian-American groups in the last last week, come out

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and very vocally support the African American community and say, "You know what, we're with you. We're standing with you." That's it. That's progress. That's good.

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That's moving forward. Yeah, that's great. And in what way this pandemic has triggered Republicans and the president's policies against China and in particular, like Chinese immigrants, what do you think about this? Yeah.

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Um, so Senator Blackburn and Tom Cotton, both have drafted proposed a, a second Chinese Exclusion Act.

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You know, you asked me a few years ago, whether or not it's possible for the United States to even consider the possibility of a second Chinese Exclusion Act. I would, I would have said no, you're insane.

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You're insane. And we're so we've, we've evolved so far past that. Even discussing it offends me. But right now here we are 2020 and we're looking at a second Chinese Exclusion Act.

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One based purely on on ethnic identity. Um, you know, without any considerations to endangerment. But why should we be all that surprised?

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I mean, again, this is where, where I say like Asian—Chinese community, Asian community needs to wake up because we've already done this. We've already done this. We already did this in the last few

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years—we had the Muslim ban. What's the difference? We had, we had Trump's policy on the border, on the Southern border, denying entry to people lawfully seeking asylum.

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What's the difference? It's all racially motivated. It's all a discrimination against minority communities. And while it was happening, I think a lot of the Asian-American community kind of look the other way. And now it's come to our own doorstep.

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And I, I want to say that I'm shocked but how can you be? So the answer is sometimes, look, China has always been a target.

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And, you know, every, every person who runs for president, Democrat or Republican, goes after China. Okay? And this is not to say and I'll be the first one to say man China does a lot of bad stuff.

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There's, there's a lot of bad stuff. And I disagree on a lot of things that China does including everything from the Uyghurs, to Hong Kong, to intellectual properties to just, I mean, we can just go down

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the list. But China is also one of our single largest trade partners. Um, if you don't have China, go ahead and delete 80% of Walmart because they wouldn't exist.

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Um and it's, it is—most people, most presidential candidates, they'll go after China, they'll attack China, like on the campaign trail. But once they become president, they pull back on their rhetoric, because they

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understand that, hey, this is like, this is not shooting ourselves in the foot. This is like cutting our own leg off. You know, it's a pretty substantial partner. And, you know, and this is what I always

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say to people, when people talk about China, like, "Look, I get it, I understand that we don't like the way they do things, their law, their views are antithetical to ours. But let me ask you this, if you want somebody to do something for you, are you better off threatening them?

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Or being their friend and saying, “Hey, we really want you to do better. And we think you can do better.” And, you know, I know what my answer is. Because, you know, I work in, I work in the criminal

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justice system. I work in a system we'll pay, we can threaten you, we can get hurt you, you don't do anything. But things work out a lot better when people want to do things, when people want to improve. And I think there's a lot of room for both the United States and China to work

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together to work out our own relationships. The United States is imperfect, just like everyone else. And there's, you know, we need to fix a lot of our own stuff. But at the same time we can,

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we can go to China, they're like "Look, you guys need to do a better job with the Uyghurs, this unacceptable. We can't be friend with you guys keep doing it.” And I think that's a good position to be at, and not just threatening to throw balls.

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Yeah, so amid this escalating tension between China and the US, it seems like Chinese immigrants are in a very embarrassing position. So what do you think like is their role are and

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like, what kind of things they can do to deal with this? I don't, I don't think they're embarrassing position. I think other people think that they’re--non-Asians--think they’re in an embarrassing position.

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And what I, what my message has always been is, these are Chinese-Americans. These are Chinese-Americans, they have about as much to do with what happens in China and how China is run, as

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if a white person is being held responsible for what Ireland does, or what Great Britain does. You know, you can be proud of being of Chinese descent of being ethnic Chinese, and are any

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ethnic Asian groups. But it doesn't mean that we get the—why should we get held for the responsibility of what China does? Right? Why is it only our group?

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Why, why don't African Americans get held responsible for what happens in Africa or why don't white people get held through what happens in Europe? Because, because they're Americans, and that's been my statement, almost like, "Dude, we're

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Americans. We're Chinese-Americans, but we're Americans. And we don't answer. And we should not have to answer for what happens in China just because we're Chinese descendants." Yeah,

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absolutely. And so since you've mentioned that you've been pretty involved in immigration issues, I'm wondering, what do you think this pandemic has influenced the US future immigration policy?

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Um, that is definitely not good. Ah, one of the biggest problems that I've been made aware of is that the law the Trump administration has used this opportunity to take actions against immigration policies that they otherwise probably

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couldn't have gotten away with. You know, I don't know what all, what it all entails. A lot of it is. I mean, a lot of it has to do with foreign students. A lot of it has to do with the foreign workers.

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And the things that are almost universally from Democrats and Republicans that people don’t like, you know. Um, if we start seriously excluding graduate students, doctoral students

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from other countries, we're screwed. Our country's going down. Because if you look at the programs for, for engineering or mathematics or hard for physics for any type of hard science, it's over

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65% international. So students from other countries are coming here to study and get the degrees that Americans don't want to try to get because it's

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really hard. And then they're staying here and becoming the future engineers, the future physicists, the future whatever to, to drive our economy forward. Because if you didn't have those people, there'll be no building, there'll be no

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products, there'll be, you know, no cars, there'll be no a lot of things that we that we take for granted that we still can boast that we still make in this country. And so so—but you cut that off,

00:32:20.350 - 00:32:31.490

they have other places to go. They can go to school in Canada, they can go to school in Europe, they can get degrees there. And then they can either stay at those other places or they can go home.

00:32:32.370 - 00:32:44.230

Now, this has already been a big problem because especially in China and India, because of the booming economy in both China and India, a lot of the Chinese and Indian grad students who used to come here and stay here and

00:32:44.860 - 00:32:59.220

and and be productive here are deciding to go back to where they came from. And so we educate them, we pay to educate them and then they go home. And make money in their own country.

00:32:59.600 - 00:33:17.840

That's sort of a lose-lose proposition. If anything, I think we should be encouraging more high-level high education, immigration, because that's what's going to drive our economy

00:33:17.880 - 00:33:31.290

forward. That's what's gonna build the future. It's–it's–it's not going to be our kids who just want to be YouTube stars. It's going to be the kids who are wanting and willing to study mathematics

00:33:31.320 - 00:33:47.890

and engineering. You know, I'm still hoping that we—that our kids our kids are you know, love science and math, but it's hard to compete with YouTube man. Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:49.500 - 00:34:02.930

So what do you think it's the role and the impact of government's communication on people's reactions to Coronavirus crisis, like I said-- I couldn't understand. Oh, do you want me to restate that?

00:34:04.670 - 00:34:18.970

What's the role and the impact of the government's communication on people's reactions to the Coronavirus crisis? Um, the government's role is to be a source, a reliable source of truthful information.

00:34:21.180 - 00:34:31.730

And they're not. And unfortunately, people have political agendas. And you know, part of the problem with the Coronavirus is that it's really

00:34:35.400 - 00:34:48.370

either reset or upset—I don't know what the right term is—people's perception of what the government does or is. There's a lot of people including myself, who thought that no, no, it doesn't matter who's in the White House.

00:34:48.790 - 00:35:00.980

The government will always respond, respond, respond rationally. They will respond in a way that protects the public and do the right thing. And I've been proven wrong.

00:35:02.080 - 00:35:16.580

Um, I did not believe that the White House mattered that much. I believe that a lot of what the federal government does, because it's filled with people who want to do the right thing, who are civil servants who, who

00:35:16.580 - 00:35:32.050

believe in protecting the country, that it'll take care of itself. But apparently, that's not true. That actually--who's in the White House matters a lot. So, um, in terms of communication, I mean, it's

00:35:36.140 - 00:35:50.790

it’s lacking, it's lacking from at our federal level, it was lacking our state level. That that is the one thing that the government needs to do is provide accurate information, unbiased information

00:35:50.790 - 00:36:05.000

like this is where it is, this is what it is, and this is where we want to go. And yeah, yeah. So as a policymaker, what do you think that governments should do to tackle racist and

00:36:05.000 - 00:36:20.790

xenophobic sentiment during a pandemic and promote social cohesion? It’s—being a leader. What do leaders do, they they set good examples. They set good examples with language and with action.

00:36:21.760 - 00:36:36.410

Leaders push back against false information and provide true information and leaders go out and try to build bridges with communities. And you

00:36:36.410 - 00:36:53.760

know, unfortunately, you don't see that happening a whole lot. You know, not to be on a different topic, but like, especially like on on the George Floyd protests. Right now you have President Trump not saying a word and the words that he

00:36:53.760 - 00:37:07.290

are--is saying are are not helpful, they're actively hurtful, and they're causing more division and more strife. While you know, President Obama had to write an op-ed and put it on medium,

00:37:08.170 - 00:37:25.230

um, to, to do that role to fill in that role of like a this a leader needs to come in and saying I understand where, where people are hurting. And here's what we're going to do about it. And, you know, at the end of the day,

00:37:25.780 - 00:37:41.840

what I'm looking for is good leadership. Awesome. Besides discrimination against Asians during this pandemic, we also see how African-American and Latin-American communities have been disproportionately

00:37:41.840 - 00:37:54.780

affected by the virus. In light of recent police brutality against African Americans. I'm wondering like, in what ways do you think these events have revealed about the structural inequalities of the American society.

00:37:55.600 - 00:38:13.090

I think that the COVID crisis has revealed it to other community, to the mainstream community. The African American community, Hispanic community has always known this. They they were never, they were never oblivious

00:38:15.150 - 00:38:32.920

about the disparities with their own community and with race. It's just that we did not find out, we did not get the magnitude of the problem until this. Even before COVID you can even look at things

00:38:33.300 - 00:38:46.730

like heart disease, fatalities from heart disease rates, and you can see it within the African-American community, there's a huge gulf that--their their numbers are far disproportionate the way it should be based

00:38:46.730 - 00:39:06.420

on population. And you know, I, I'm not sure what else to say I'm not maybe I'm not the right person to address the inequities for the Hispanic and African-American communities, but these are things that have long are long known for,

00:39:07.360 - 00:39:18.200

for the people who have cared about this, and for people who make it their business to know about it. It's just that everyone else didn't know. Yeah, that's great.

00:39:18.700 - 00:39:34.800

So what do you think Asian-Americans could do more to promote social solidarity? Reach out. Just at the very minimum. Just a verbal acknowledgment.

00:39:36.680 - 00:39:54.630

You know, would be a great, great place to start. Just saying that you care, and that you acknowledge other people's pain is a good place to start. It's not easy for people to you know, fingered

00:39:56.700 - 00:40:08.390

a leap put themselves in other people's shoes. Because it's hard to imagine, as an Asian the experiences of Hispanic-American or African-American or someone who's gay or someone who was Muslim.

00:40:09.790 - 00:40:23.460

It's not easy to do that. Not not impossible, but not easy. But you can say, I don't know exactly what your experiences, but I understand pain and

00:40:24.780 - 00:40:36.630

I understand your pain. And, you know, I, I'll feel it with you. I think that's a good place to start. Um, beyond that.

00:40:38.300 - 00:40:52.750

I think Asian-Americans are just starting to learn to advocate for our own community. Still, still a little bit lumpy. Um, but I

00:40:52.750 - 00:41:06.510

think there's times when we can advocate for our community. I'll tell you this. I'm—for the family separation policy at the border, two of the largest groups who came in out of out of

00:41:06.560 - 00:41:24.620

nowhere that oppose those policies and provided resources provided money: Japanese-Americans and Jewish-Americans. Because they get it, they can say, we don't know your exact experience, but we feel your pain.

00:41:25.520 - 00:41:41.030

Because our community has gone through this. So I think one of the messages I have for people throughout this is, you know, for all for all communities who are oppressed, for all communities, who

00:41:41.740 - 00:41:55.730

get ignored, for all communities who get stepped on, that the type of bigotry and hate that's out there is all the same. The people who

00:41:55.730 - 00:42:11.670

want the Muslim Ban, are the same people who are really adamant about, about building the wall, who are really, you know, really focused on calling it the Kung Flu, who are really focused

00:42:11.670 - 00:42:21.050

on saying that black lives don't matter. It's all the same people. It's all the same ideas. It's all the same thoughts.

00:42:21.540 - 00:42:40.830

It's just that the names that they use, and the people they target change over time. But it's the same, it's the same game. And I think what we need to realize is that, especially for Asian--the Asian-American community is, you could ignore it for as long as you want.

00:42:42.400 - 00:42:55.540

It'll never but it won't go away until you take action. And I think Asian-American community is finally learning that, "Just keeping your head down," as my family would say, "don't rock the boat"

00:42:57.360 - 00:43:09.700

doesn't fix anything. This is America, you don't you don't speak up and they assume that everything's great. And I think we're learning that you have to speak up. And you can't, but

00:43:11.270 - 00:43:25.190

ultimately, you can't just speak up for yourself. You guys speak up against all injustice. Because it's, it's wrong against you and it's wrong against them. So, anyways, I—you know, they're

00:43:25.190 - 00:43:39.230

probably this could probably, this discussion by itself probably like four or five hours but that's, you know, anyways. Yeah, definitely. So what do you think the future of Houston community will look like in

00:43:39.230 - 00:43:54.520

terms of social interactions? Um, good. More diverse, more tolerant. Okay, I think Houston especially, is a place that

00:43:57.970 - 00:44:11.470

is comfortable with people and with and people who are different. And, you know, because like people don't know, people think, "Oh, well, New York's really diverse." No it’s not.

00:44:11.910 - 00:44:24.950

New York is, New York Manhattan, it's like 75%. White. All right, where in Houston, not only is like 50% of the population is Hispanic, but it's not even all one Hispanic.

00:44:24.950 - 00:44:36.170

It's not even all Mexican. We actually have a large, Central American and South American population. And everyone sort of has to learn to live with each other and tolerate each other.

00:44:36.520 - 00:44:47.840

And I think that's awesome. I think the number of—there's not to say that it doesn't happen. It has not happened in Houston. But the number of hate crimes against Asian-Americans, I think is less than other

00:44:47.900 - 00:44:57.920

places. Because I think we have a population we just sort of like, Yeah, what's wrong with Asians? We see Asian people all the time. You know, love, love going to Chinatown for food.

00:44:59.400 - 00:45:12.480

So I think if you're if you're racist and you hate Asians or you hate immigrants, you're not going to stay in the city very long. I'm glad to see that Houston is a very inclusive

00:45:13.080 - 00:45:27.810

place. So, personally, what do you think you will start to focus on like, in your work after the pandemic? I'm gonna go back to my same same stuff. Um, you know, one of the big things that we

00:45:27.910 - 00:45:44.700

realized not just with the George Floyd stuff, but with a pandemic, is there's a real need for criminal justice reform, that we have, we locked up a lot of people for no good reason that, you

00:45:44.700 - 00:46:03.640

know, especially in drug relation in relation to drug crimes, and other things like why are we putting them in prison for tens of thousands of dollars every year? When we could just help them overcome their addiction or we can just find other ways to deal with them, put them on

00:46:03.640 - 00:46:15.100

probation something, why do they have to be in a cage? And we're going to keep working on that. Um, you know, on the, on the juvenile side for kids, all

00:46:17.480 - 00:46:30.100

you know, our county lockup is now under 100 kids. When two years ago, it was like over 200, almost 250 kids. And everyone thought everyone thought it would be the end of the world.

00:46:30.100 - 00:46:39.650

They were like, but in reality, hey, everything worked out. Everything's okay. We're doing fine. And we're like, if it's fine now,

00:46:41.190 - 00:46:51.270

why was it a problem before? And those are good questions to ask. And we want to ask those questions. And that's one of the things we want to approach like, you know, it's one

00:46:51.270 - 00:47:08.850

thing to be forced to do something, but after the crisis is over, do we go back? If it works out well now, do we need to go back to where where it was when it didn't work out well.

00:47:08.930 - 00:47:24.300

And there's a lot of questions like that. I hope we can tackle it and hopefully address it, it will save states their money. If we can keep, if we can do a better job of ours, of dealing with problems in our society,

00:47:25.680 - 00:47:36.150

I think less--there'll be fewer angry people. I think there will be a more equality, there'll be more justice in our system. And we would have maybe fewer riots.

00:47:38.020 - 00:47:47.510

Yeah, absolutely. I guess these are my questions for today. Anything-- So I actually, I have a call. Okay. No problem. Thank you so much.

00:47:48.060 - 00:47:48.190

Bye.