Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 550 - What Can A Social Worker See That Traditional Politicians Completely Miss? - Walter Muneton

Transcript

550 - What Can A Social Worker See That Traditional Politicians Completely Miss? - Walter Muneton · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Today my guess is Walter, when you don't.
0:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I got that right.
0:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
0:07
[SPEAKER_02]: School board for Garden Grove.
0:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
0:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're here because we've had a series of politicians elected, come on the podcast, and you know, I welcome all parties to come on to discuss Garden Grove politics.
0:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's, at this point, it's interesting.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: We have no other third coming up elections coming up very soon.
0:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think.
0:31
[SPEAKER_02]: have you come in here to talk about some of the ideas that we are contending with in the Vietnamese community?
0:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because you're not Vietnamese.
0:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's start by saying or asking you about how you then involved in politics and garden growth.
0:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I grew up, here in Gordon Grove, pretty much all my life, my parents are immigrants, like many of our community here in Little Saigon and in Greater Gordon Grove community from Mexico, Saga Thekas, and they called Gordon Grove their home, specifically in the community called the Buena Clinton area, it's like the eastern part of the city, by Westminster Harbor area.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And growing up there, you know, I was exposed to so many different types of cultures that've nested these languages, communities and families that, I felt very fortunate and privileged.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Although I didn't know it at the time.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up with a lot of poverty, right?
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of my friends, both Hispanic, both Vietnamese, API, that you know, struggled pretty much on a daily basis.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And my own educational journey growing up in the district that I now represent, according to a unified,
1:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little bit, you know what, it wasn't like a smooth sailing.
1:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny, a lot of people have this notion where they'll meet me and they'll say, hey, you're on the school board, wow, that's amazing, you must have been class president, you must have been involved in X, Y, and Z, and I actually was quite the contrary, I was kind of more of an introvert, you know, really wasn't a whole, a lot of me getting involved.
2:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of that was just, you know, a lot of it with a raccoon confidence and not really knowing, like, you know, what to do with my life, but I was fortunate enough to have like really awesome positive like mentors in my life that kind of got me.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: a little bit more direct stream lined into like, all right, think about going to college and stuff like that.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where I go back to community college, sent in a college right down the street, and got that away from my A, and I went to Kelsey Dominguez Hills.
2:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And there, I had to take a class that required me to go into my own local community and observe a political debate or a political forum.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of where
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of got them all, so I'll write, let me give it a shot, so I find one at the Garden Grove Gem Theater right off of Historic Main Street, and this is about 2014, and there's a big election happening for Garden Grove Mayor.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Bruce brought water, he had been a mayor for dozens of years, very long time, and he was running against his new and up-and-coming elected official, about when, and who at the time was on the Gardenville Board of Education.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm over there as an attendee, I'm a college student sitting there and just soaking it all in.
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the elected officials were running for office, a lot of which are still in office now.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: given responses that were just very, I guess, typical of a politician.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Though we're nothing that really excited me or got me, like, oh, this is good.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Except one bow, sorry, it's speaking.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: This guy was throwing out stuff that was like, he knows the community.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: not just the Vietnamese community, but the Mexican-American community, the API community and the greater community.
4:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really digged what he was saying.
4:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a question real quick.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about this quite a bit.
4:13
[SPEAKER_02]: When I hear politicians deliver canned responses versus some guy like Bowen, I think of myself,
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: is it because you're not smart enough to deliver like something fresh?
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Or does the canned safe responses go to more votes?
4:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the second one.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Safe.
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You want a peer, hey, I'm not a concern.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You're safe, you know, I have these responses and they're like, okay, you know, just... You know, if you didn't know, if, like, hey,
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great, but I would be hitting on the head with some real stuff that the community needed to address.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So after his, you know, forum was over and he debated the mayor at the time.
5:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I went out to him another day.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I like to introduce myself when I was walking out of Yada.
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
5:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'll show you, sure, I ended up kind of supporting him with his campaign when he was running, because that was that impressed, and it was no longer any more about the assignment.
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually was hooked on like, man, I really want to improve my community because of my own experience, right, growing up, and feeling like there was a lack of resources for students like myself and my friends.
5:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So he ended up winning that seat.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He became the first Vietnamese American mayor in the history of
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And once he, you know, celebrated, he only won, actually, by 14 votes, believe it or not, 14 votes.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a wild, every vote counted in that election.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Afterwards, I was like, hey man, you know, congrats, you did it.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that was going to be the end of just over.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But he looked at me and said, you know what, Walter, why don't you run for school board?
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And mind you, when he was running for mayor, there was some changes happening on the school board level one because he became mayor.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a seat that was going to be a comma variable.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, from the 2014 to the 2016 elections, our district changed from voting for trustees by a net large area to by trust the areas, where it's chopped up into five different sheer graphical locations.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So he said, this is the prime time out for you to get on to you at the time.
6:25
[SPEAKER_00]: the time I was 23 years old, where he tells me, you run for, for office, and here I am just still, I feel like just still kid, you know, like, I'm soon college university, getting myself together.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This was just supposed to be a quick, well thing, and I put some thought into it, and, you know, long story short, I gave it a shot, and here I am today, 10 years later, still doing.
6:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I, you know,
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: want to know from your point of view, when you think about guys at BOW and you, fighting for people who are impoverished, come from the poor.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you think about like the big money people or people who are on the other side, from Republicans conservative.
7:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I often think about like, at some point, when you make a lot of money, you don't want to give it away.
7:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think about Democrats, I think about people who fight for the poor, two very different sides that are understandable.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I get it, like if I made a lot of money and made a lot of money, I probably don't wanna give it away either, right?
7:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna figure out a way to keep it for myself.
7:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I think about you, you are a social worker and you make not as much as big businessmen make.
7:45
[SPEAKER_02]: is in service to the community.
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it that simple where one side is fighting for like?
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: to keep money.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other side is like, no, we need to screw up money.
7:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it that simple in all of the fighting that you do?
8:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a realm of complex in that.
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that would be more like the overall consensus that people may have or believe, but now being in this political game for quite some time now, it really comes down to how independent is that person?
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: on their own and how beholden are they to the party?
8:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So you know what, it doesn't matter what party you with.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in my perspective.
8:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just really about, we kind of string your attach to.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You can, and you know, I'm in the local elected community, right?
8:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Work.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We are a non-partisan race when people vote for me if they didn't say a Democrat or a Republican, right?
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't really have to dive into all that.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You can still figure it out on your own and if people do your research, right?
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You look at them, you try to figure out who their endorsements are, you can put two to two together.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But my thing is,
8:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in it for the right reasons, you're not be heard into a lot of special interests.
8:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And people think special interests only impact the national state level, but it.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to go down.
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, open that.
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you stay out of that?
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you not have financial strings when
9:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the lifeblood of a politician.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to just have a strong moral compass to not kind of get yourself involved.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also, I think it also depends on your trajectory as an elected official as well.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're starting off at the council level, at the school board level, community college level, and your ambitions and goals is to keep climbing the political louder, they're gonna eventually,
9:37
[SPEAKER_00]: have to have to start diving in into these areas.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, I'm working all the way through and through.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I love being in my own local community, being able to govern and do what I do.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not as temperature, you know, but other folks are in and that's where you have that battle or you identify like, where am I going to go, you know?
9:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm really surprised to hear that.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Like,
10:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not really about fighting for whatever you believe that it's really where the money's coming from and then you fight for the money's coming from to keep you an office Yeah, and you had the courage to for example me.
10:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a Democrat here something from the Democratic leadership and say, you know what?
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm not gonna follow that and vice versa if you're Republican right and you're at this time We have our our president which is the highest office
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of Republicans who hear that and probably think, man, this is a full, full cut, but already going to actually publicly say, hey, I'm not about this, I'm still a Republican, but I'm not about what this guy is saying.
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the key thing.
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you distance yourself from the leadership?
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of times you put yourself as a target and sometimes people don't come back from something like that.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I have saw these questions because I think we as a community of Vietnamese people are always in flux, but for the last 50 years, it leans heavily in the money.
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we also lean in ways that we don't want to support anybody who's caught as being a communist, right?
11:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a real big thing in our community.
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, I feel like nobody really understands like the community issues.
11:23
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't.
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think Vietnamese people in Louis, I go on here in Southern California really understands it.
11:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause if you really understood and you see what goes on, I don't think that they would vote the way that they do.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I think this is an issue in many communities.
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this thing right of identity politics, where, hey, I'm a Democrat.
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm only voting Democrat, or hey, I'm Mexican-American.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm only voting for folks who are Mexican-American people.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: actually feel comfortable with folks that look at them, sound like they live with them, right?
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I totally understand that.
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: However, especially in this community where such a melting pot of different opinions and cultures and backgrounds that, there's a lot more to it than just identity politics.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're saying, you really sit down and you look at the issues.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You might say, hey, but this individual doubt.
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: that looks like me who I typically would have voted for is actually totally against everything I believe in as a person.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember getting a lot of that when I had supported Bow when he ran for Congress after he became mayor because he was up against a gentleman in
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, you know, endorsed style because I, at the, at the time, I was still like, man, this guy has it.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It can take what he's done here locally, betterly, I'm all about it.
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember getting so much like trapped from that endorsement.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Me, as now as an elected official on the board, right?
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He weren't in your support in your own.
12:55
[SPEAKER_00]: All lies like, no, it's not about that.
12:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about who best represents myself as a constituent and the constituents that I represent now on the board.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you look back and think that that was the right move to support bow and not Luke Rare?
13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That taught me a lot.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that taught me a lot.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I still think it was the right move.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I sent by it.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But it taught me a lot about.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: how perical politics can be even locally, right?
13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always going to be a domino effect on decisions that make it an elected official, whether it by policy, by who you endorse and who you don't endorse.
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's always ramifications, right?
13:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But that kind of taught me that, you know what?
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And the day I'm always going to go with my instinct and my gut.
13:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what separates me from a lot of other elected.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, also, I'm not the most popular in certain spaces,
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, cares about popularity, right?
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, really, because let's just make sure the job gets done the way I want to get done because I'm voting for, you know, like if I was voting for my candidate, I don't care about popularity.
14:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to get my stuff done, you know.
14:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's hard because when I look about in the Vietnamese community,
14:08
[SPEAKER_02]: your Latino face and the identity politics is a thousand percent built into the conversation that we're having.
14:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's why it's interesting to have you and Carlos Monson because you guys are swimming in a sea of Vietnamese people.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And the decision to kind of like send your message out and not let it be about identity is so important.
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: If we can all take a page,
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: take some notes on that because it's like, all right, remove what we look like, remove our identity politics.
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What can you get done?
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I learned that at a really young age when I grew up in my community, my best friends were Vietnamese.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We, it's funny.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We laugh about this now, but we would have like these cultural food exchanges whenever I was tired of eating my mom's, like Mexican food and tacos.
15:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were tired of eating like bunnies or or spring rolls and stuff.
15:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We would exchange our foods as kids, right?
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We would be like, hey, try this, try that, you know, they kind of like adopted me as like their son and would take me out to different places and like, I got to really be embedded in the Vietnamese community at a very early age and it's crazy because I'm, you know, eight years old, seven years old at the time.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I don't know about classes and racism, I don't know a lot about that, right?
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just a kid, you're very like,
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all, like, you're still a kid and you don't see a lot of this stuff, right?
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That society puts on you.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So, at that time, I just looked at this other person as equal.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We're the same, you know?
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We come from the same community.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all family, you know, we're all family.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how we felt with them.
15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's how we felt with us and my family.
15:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So, moving into this area for me, it's, it's,
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: very beneficial because I feel like I can embrace the culture, even though I'm not being an American myself.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I love participating in all the, you know, all the celebrations, you know, a tad, you know, on a film festival and just doing a lot of cool stuff that really makes me feel like, hey, this is my community as well.
16:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Although I'm not being amused myself, like I considered this, you know, my community.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been on a school board for how long now?
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going on
16:25
[SPEAKER_02]: What's broken?
16:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the tough one, man.
16:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like what's broken in education right now is
16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to send a story to this broken, but I'm saying there's a lot of change that families, especially parents have to deal with in this journey, like, time, cell phones, AI, and that comes cyberbullying, bullying, mental health as a social worker, and shout out to Hugh, you had another social worker here, as well.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I see a both on the elected side and as a clinician of the practitioner of social world that.
17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, just a lot of families are struggling.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of kids that are going to school are having a hard time understanding, math, arithmetic, and long division in algebra, because they have a lot of said going on at home.
17:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, family is going through a stream, you know, poverty.
17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They're having a hard time paying the bills.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They're being maybe bullied online to cyber bullying and it's just really tough time right now to be a student.
17:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotta get my hats off to a lot of parents that are putting in the work, but it's tough.
17:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop.
17:36
[SPEAKER_02]: What's going right?
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The people that run the schools, the day in and day out people, I'm talking about your frontline teachers, your bus drivers, your custodians that are talking to the kids every single day and they're making it a ballot effort to be there, I mean, they're professional mentor in that capacity, but to be their friend, right?
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: are yawning to mentorship, especially our young boys, and they're just having a hard time making those connections.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's making it right is a lot of our teachers and shout out to all of our districts staff who are watching at home and going to be unified, like they're doing some great work, tremendous work, and we need to re-invest in public education.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this,
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: effort, right, that is both on the Democrats and other Republicans where they want to privatize everything, privatize education, privatize a law enforcement, privatize this and that.
18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that's the way.
18:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we all pay taxes, right?
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We're paying a lot of money for taxes.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And these taxes should be going to social safety net.
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They should be going to law enforcement fire public education.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And not just the scraps, right?
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: put all this money towards wars and just endless, um, just hatred, right?
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And we invested in our schools.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The point I really, you know, accepts me and pisses me off as when education is going the scraps, politicians do what they do.
19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: and then they see that it's not working because they're getting the bare minimum anyways.
19:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they start to blame the barely teachers and folks that are putting in the work will, well, you set them up for failure, you know?
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where themes get political, right?
19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: In my position where it's like, no, we got to fix this.
19:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Sounds like a tough job.
19:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that is.
19:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It really is.
19:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And you don't get paid much, right, as a count.
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: No, most school boards in the county, including Gordon Goodmanified, we get what's called a stipend, just a monthly stipend that basically I believe ours is around $600, $700 a month, and it depends on
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: each school district.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So some may pay $250, some may pay $1,000, and it just really depends, right?
20:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're very active and involved and you're going to advance and doing things that you need to do as an elected, sometimes you basically just break even, right?
20:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's, yeah, this belief, right, that all these proposals are making like $1,000 and $1,000, there is a belief for folks to make money that are in these offices, right?
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: the most honest and sincere way of making these I mean buttons right do I need to ask you with the hear her what it really comes trying to send her during election season so anybody me you anybody watching the audience can look up the local school board or city council race was to look at Westminster for example they can identify uh... you know who are the people running for the premiere uh... they can look at monsel they can look at uh... you know charlie and they can see
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's all public, and many people don't know that these resources are available.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They're completely free, super accessible, and that's where you can identify who or the folks that are funding these campaigns and where are they making at those funds?
21:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you must get a approach all the time to be given funds, no?
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it, I think once you put your foot down and you're kind of like, I'm good.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of, it doesn't, it doesn't come.
21:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They just know.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as higher you go into office, the more that becomes.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: a common thing, right?
21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: For screenboard is not a whole lot of that going on before City Council and up.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's definitely like developments, right?
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Developer money that's coming in, you know, you've got a lot of different special interest groups that are just very, so see, like, hey, who are the players?
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether they need and how come we get them elected?
21:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Kusameza, all of these towns are sort of like neighboring each other.
21:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Each has its own cool or weird or strange dynamics.
22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that because of the different players, they probably have their own cultural vibe.
22:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not just saying Vietnamese or Latino, Latinx, but
22:18
[SPEAKER_02]: the political vibe of each community comes, I think, directly from the culture, right?
22:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And having each of these ratios of Vietnamese and white people, black people, Latinos, and really affects
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: the movement of all these, but I think talking to Carlos and then talking to you, it feels like, let's serve the people first.
22:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you think Vietnamese people see that?
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It really depends on how invested folks are in yawning their research that they're using the visuals, right?
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately with local politics, there's not a lot of information that's out there.
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: If we were to hop on the news later on today,
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: from people running for state, government, federal government.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're not going to see a small local, local thing, talking about Monto or anybody else, right?
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not the funds to be able to afford something that's for a small local way.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really comes down to the civic duty, even in the digital regardless of what community come from, to be able to say, hey, I need to research these folks.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a ballot that just came in the mail with like 20 different people.
23:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I going to have the invested time to sit down?
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and say like, who is the best person for who I want the job to be done?
23:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So do you ever make decisions based on constituency majority, like voter, majority or do you make decisions based on what you think is correct, free from identity politics?
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that work for somebody who's not in the Vietnamese culture?
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I tried to think of myself, and now a lot has changed in 10 years.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: When I first ran 10 years ago, I was a little kid, I don't have kids in my life.
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And then now I have two little ones that home have a seven-year-old, that's going to be seven and a four-year-old.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So now also some of that plays a part.
24:20
[SPEAKER_00]: in my identity and how I go up and there's the addition maker.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm like, okay, I need to put on different hats as a social worker, as an elected official, as a father, as a husband.
24:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what it's going to be best for these students, and am I going to enact the policy that's going to, I wouldn't want for my own children.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I think about.
24:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, when I grew up in the community that grew up in,
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The people that were showing luck like me and also didn't look like me, you know, a lot of the folks that I was in a section eight housing complex and a lot of the folks were refugees that were coming from them right and these weren't folks that were necessarily were coming, you know, in the after the policy on this was in 1975, you know, I was born in 91.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way I govern is I want to treat all the rivals with dignity and respect regardless of when they came.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where some of the politics are like takes into place.
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I believe every individual, every human, regardless of when they came is worthy of dignity and respect.
25:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, people make an argument like all about this, like, oh, but it has to be legal immigration.
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It has to be, you know, like if they're here, we've already researched them and ice can go out and get them because they are crossing the line or either criminals.
25:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that true?
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe so, and data will say the same.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: That folks that are coming into this country and search a better opportunities
26:04
[SPEAKER_00]: everything that my family and your family have long for it and thankfully receive is what is what they want as well.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And what really upsets me is when I see both on the Mexican American side, the needs that community as well as when folks forget about where they came from.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, when
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump got into office a second time and all these ice rates were sorry happening and they're still happening to the state.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I was putting a call to action for all elected officials, divisive latino, we're not to come together.
26:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's strategize and let's talk about how we can support these community members because there also be enemies folks that are being deported and detained as well.
26:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's come together.
26:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, I was not getting a lot of
26:52
[SPEAKER_00]: of, hey, let me let's sit down from the folks who are elected officials that are majority in the Mesoamerican, right?
26:59
[SPEAKER_00]: That were in the seats I could have come down and sat with me.
27:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, unfortunately, on all sizes, there's this belief like, hey, it's they are here.
27:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and their new is not my issue anymore, you know?
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I don't know, that doesn't sit 100% well with me, you know, and that's where I kind of take stances and make these, you know, decisions where I want to support all families and all students, but sometimes people only want to support their own and what they're comfortable with.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Fascinating.
27:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Fascinating dynamic.
27:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's never ending kind of like cycle and loop of, you know, trying to figure this out because it's so ever changing, and I think it took me personally because I mean, you're like the fifth person that I'm talking to elected official.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not even sure why I'm getting into this, but it really fascinates me to hear about the journey that you being an on Vietnamese person who's governing predominantly Vietnamese community.
28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be election season of number third.
28:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you want to see?
28:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to see change.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I want new blood, new people to come in and say, hey, let's check things up.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And not necessarily happy with 100%.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the thing.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't necessarily need allies.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I need people that are going to come and use their critical thinking skills.
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to be able to think on their own
28:37
[SPEAKER_00]: each strong in their convictions, and not be beholden to special interests, not be beholden to their local city managers or school superintendent, that can actually be governed for the people.
28:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the people deserve that.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, they haven't been getting that.
28:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, that sounds like 1950s politics, the beautiful, like,
29:01
[SPEAKER_02]: could old American years that we weren't so divided.
29:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it just sounds like paradise.
29:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I find that's a, it's just hard to believe that we're, ever going to go back to that way of living.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100%.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love to sit down with my Republican colleagues and friends and talk and really get into
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What can we do?
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's put our hands together, let's, let's think of this being a constructive way, but sometimes because of this identity politics, it's like, now you stay on your side, we'll stay on our side, and this is the mess that we've continued to be in.
29:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, I saw one of your other podcasts where you said, you know what, let's have these two folks, right?
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody on the left is going to raise it down, and I'm totally up for that, you know?
29:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody who wants that?
29:47
[SPEAKER_00]: that's on the other side, I'd love to say down and just have a conversation about our local community and what can we do together to make it stronger?
29:58
[SPEAKER_02]: This is kind of weird because it's like you're the fifth person, fifth elected with the other
30:08
[SPEAKER_02]: that's five of you that are like on one side and I would love to have people on the other side to come in and have a but I wonder why people won't come on and I put the word out many many times and I think Dina, you know, you reach out to Chris for a little second official.
30:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Dina, you should come on.
30:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Joe should come on because Joe did have it, right?
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you should come on too and let's talk about the things that they talked about before.
30:36
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, like
30:37
[SPEAKER_02]: not having the kids learn Vietnamese because of whatever the reason I want to know more about that, I'm just curious to hear about it.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, for sure.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, just a quick plug, our district loves to support our real-life communities, our dual language, the Institute and Academies, how we have a strong Vietnamese, dual immersion programs in our district.
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's beautiful.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the fact that folks are able to learn the language, to be able to continue the traditions of their family.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we need more of that.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We shouldn't be hiding from learning the language.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: How is that?
31:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about, like, how does that make Latino and white constituents feel when the DLI, the dual language programs, how Vietnamese language as a choice?
31:32
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that play out?
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's amazing.
31:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love it.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's so awesome.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love it.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when I walk into a classroom, that's, for example, I walk into a classroom that's Spanish dual emergent.
31:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see API students in there and vice versa.
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have been a mutual emergent program.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see a Caucasian student.
31:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I see a Latino student.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's beautiful.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the amazing part of our community world.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it, right?
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's meet bilingual.
32:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's be trialling wool.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, why not?
32:07
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I love it.
32:09
[SPEAKER_02]: What is next for you, beyond school board?
32:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a great question.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, what's next is, I still have two years of my term to continue.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to keep governing with conviction and making sure that my constituents are heard.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I want my own children to live in a community where they are respected and are they are heard.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're safe.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if I'm no longer in the political game as well, I'm always going to be an advocate at the end of the day.
32:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always going to be a community organizer.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a social worker, inherently, our profession calls on always setting for justice and helping Oliver, our community.
32:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very, very strong on mental health that impacts a lot of our communities.
32:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in a perfect world, I want to see two sides fight, but at the end of the fighting, at the end of the day, really respect and still love each other.
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think that that happens in Garden Grove with school board or city council?
33:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at the end of the day it does.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're on the diet, when you're in front of cameras, when you're doing the political day-to-day stuff, you put on this persona, you put on this face, right?
33:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But once all that stuff is gone and you go home, a break bread with your friends, your neighbors, your family,
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at the end of the world, human beings, and we all long for that, that vision, right?
33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It just depends on each individual person of how quickly can they put that to sort of way, and be just, No, but I mean, is it happening in your life, though?
33:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Does it happen in your world, the dynamics that's happening with the politics that are happening?
33:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I can imagine it's just nothing but fighting and really hating each other.
34:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, like in a weird world,
34:06
[SPEAKER_02]: decades.
34:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I keep hearing politicians in America, still would hang out with each other, although they were fighting on different teams.
34:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I do it all the time.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very gorgeous.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost up to sit down and chat and yeah, we can have a strong debate and not see I die, but at the end of the day, I'm like, hey, you have your beliefs.
34:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I have my beliefs.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go and grab a bowl of fun, you know, talking out.
34:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, down the street and hunting to
34:36
[SPEAKER_02]: There are, like, it just feels very, um, anti anything color.
34:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I hate to get to my people in color.
34:44
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of Trump supporters, a lot of like, I mean, it's like borderline Nazi sort of like, you know, um, that's what it just feels like I'm not from or just kind of from LA.
34:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So I shouldn't even talk about the politics down here.
34:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've just definitely, you know, interested in Vietnamese,
35:00
[SPEAKER_02]: politics in the dynamics, and that's why I have you here, but with that all going down the, you know, happening down the street, and you living in a predominantly, you know, Republican atmosphere, how do you mitigate like the choices and the decisions to fight against all of this?
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It definitely gets tiring right when you see some of this crazy stuff happening whether it's in Huntington Beach or you see, you know, a trolley Kirkway.
35:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Why you're driving, you know, talking about it.
35:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, especially, but for me, my personality as I see that stuff, it gives me it ignites me, it pisses me off, and I'm like, you know what, we got to fight this head on.
35:38
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, that's the only way that we can do it.
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way I function the world is it.
35:44
[SPEAKER_00]: engage and bring the community together.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Let them know about this.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So you tell them, hey, did you know that there's a chartic earthquake just down the street from where you live?
35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, I don't know that.
35:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk more about it.
35:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they, themselves, start to be more and engage citizen.
35:58
[SPEAKER_00]: They start to learn and realize the hell, like I didn't sign up for this.
36:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I want my roads and to be fixed.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I want my trash to be collected.
36:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: this political nonsense happening in my own backyard.
36:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Why so I use that, that very things that are happening as fuel to get folks to think critically and be able to analyze what's happening?
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it working?
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: 50, 50, just depends.
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It depends on the person and how convincing I am in that particular day.
36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a post on it to so Charlie Craig thing and I found it to be absolutely nonsense.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just me.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I welcome anybody to come and challenge me on this.
36:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's just my personal point of view.
36:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like the mayor did that for very political reasons, right?
36:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you want to step up.
36:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
36:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he wants to step on to the national stage.
36:49
[SPEAKER_02]: He does that for more, you know, white votes.
36:53
[SPEAKER_02]: all of that, right?
36:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that these games that we play in Little Saigon are people need to understand what's going on.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100% you hit it on the nail really hit on about your pandering, right?
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Is a major pandering to a specific demographic, a very extreme faction of the community?
37:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that faction is not going to look at this person better than before.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, he's still going to be a person of color.
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: He's still going to be a background of immigrants.
37:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember one thing that really stood out to me growing up in Gorgon, going back to historic mainstream.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Every weekend for many, many years, there's this thing where they have like a car show, every like Friday or Saturdays, I forget.
37:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember during one week, the community, the community was getting ready to decorate that street for debt, right?
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were these two communities coming together on this street.
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: One very Americana, you got the USA flag, you got the Ford Mustangs, and then you got your auntie and your friends coming out and you know, they're all yying everything like that.
38:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember the faces of some of these folks
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: The Howard, this is not, this is not their tree, this is what we do here, right?
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And my question right is, at the end of the day, for the folks that think negatively of people like you and me that are people of color, no matter what we do, right?
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Put on this show, hey, Charlie Kirkwell, you're, hey, I'm a Patriot, I'm this, I'm Maga, I think they were still people of color.
38:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still immigrants, right?
38:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still people that
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: they believe that we don't are not in the same level.
38:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So why put this on?
38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Why put this on?
38:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Why put this show on?
38:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You mean, are you asking what the Vietnamese people?
38:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not specifically for this story.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are charting, correct thing, right?
38:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I think that is the thing that is never talked about.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this whole thing about being
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: close to or having proximity to mainstream culture and not being able to say I love myself and I love my culture well enough to separate and fight against the prevailing
39:18
[SPEAKER_02]: wishes of the dominant mainstream culture.
39:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But look, I mean, if we go back to different political parties and political parties that fight for like more taxes, less taxes, I get that fight, right?
39:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We go back to the basic fight of like, I need to keep my money, or I need to distribute more money to public programs.
39:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a fight that I can understand.
39:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I can get behind that kind of,
39:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I can understand it on that level.
39:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's a dollar, you know, I'm keeping my dollars.
39:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm giving my dollars away.
39:49
[SPEAKER_02]: That that is a kind of binary to me, right?
39:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can pick a lane.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But to others, stuff about being, having this proximity to the ruling class.
40:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it really bothers me and it just stirs my soul in a way where I can't stand by it.
40:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's why I have to make that truly Kirk and I try to make it not political, right?
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I try to make it not to be, you know,
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: a red or blue thing, I wanted to just be, does that make sense?
40:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And where does this make sense to put the Charlie Kirk sign in a little side gone?
40:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And that to me, I mean, there's a lot of these examples now, right?
40:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I hear you 100% in it.
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's just baffling at times.
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we educate the Vietnamese constituents more if they're not
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: listening and if they're not reading and if they're not really consuming certain, you know, one thing that I do to garner support and get, you know, enough boats on a specific issue is I make it not just a single demographic issue.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very big on mental health.
41:10
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a time where we were due to the COVID-19 pandemic having a severe mental health crisis in
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you had folks that were isolated, students that were just learning behind the screens.
41:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And I needed to pass solid mental health legislation in our district.
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you look, this is not just a Latino issue.
41:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a white person issue.
41:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We need all of our communities to come together.
41:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We have, you know, there's a lot of stigma with mental health writers.
41:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Some folks that will say, oh, our community doesn't deal with mental health.
41:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have mental health problems.
41:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of folks that are in electro office also have sometimes these views so for me it's like hey I have a parent who's willing to sit down and talk to us and say hey this is the burden that I'm having and this is what I need support with so I always try to make it seem or not seeing but I make it in the way where it's.
42:04
[SPEAKER_00]: All of our communities are going to this pain and this hurt, whether it's ice deportations, mental health, access to food, access to even apartments, man, the cost of living is just insane, right?
42:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, it's not just the Latino community that are being evicted.
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We have our Vietnamese-American elders that are living in section 8 housing as well.
42:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That also needs support.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't forget about these folks as because you are successful and you made it into this country and you've done great.
42:32
[SPEAKER_00]: These folks are looking for their elected officials, whether they're Vietnamese-American and saying, hey, I need you to stand up for me and you're not doing it.
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's saddening and it's hardening at times.
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: so much to process here, man, you know, these, the thing that you said earlier in our conversation about like, you brought up this idea that playing it safe, if you're in a combat, you played safe with a messaging on it.
43:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you allowed to like make social media clips and talk into social
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm able to do it a lot of what to do all the time, and there's something to say some some crazy stuff right there.
43:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh man, okay, but yeah, you were able to do it, you were able to do it, there's nothing against the law, right?
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: No, not all.
43:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it politicians studied how musicians do things now, go learn a lot.
43:35
[SPEAKER_02]: If you look at like the last two years of social media for musicians, what you'll learn is this, they'll take one song, they're most popular song, and they'll sing it over and over again, and they'll shoot it in different scenarios.
43:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, on the back of a truck with some hay, with shooting in forrest, the shoot on a picnic with their family.
43:55
[SPEAKER_02]: No shoot the same song.
43:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen, like, I literally count it.
43:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh my god, this artist did this 40 times different and different.
44:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And you just keep scrolling as the same song.
44:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, why doesn't politicians do that?
44:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you could just jam the same messaging over and over and over and over again, talking to the camera and then it goes viral and then it's pretty soon your channel your social media it catches fire and then
44:25
[SPEAKER_02]: you get to have a platform where you can say whatever you need to say.
44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:30
[SPEAKER_00]: What stops you from doing that?
44:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, yeah.
44:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope they say they're just sort of anything that would stop.
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody from doing that or stop me from doing that.
44:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I do love using social media myself to get messaging across and to be really open and transparent.
44:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think a lot of videos just.
44:47
[SPEAKER_00]: for the your day-to-day typical elected officials and and mind you most elected officials are not my age a lot you know or they're a lot older right social media is that we're not there thing and if it is yeah they're using it for not the best platform after the most affected ways it's just sometimes just peeling some
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: just very partisan rhetoric, right?
45:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And not really getting a good point across.
45:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And the average person, there's a lot of here, the partisanship.
45:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to adhere to nuts and bolts.
45:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing for my community?
45:17
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing for my district, for my city?
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I need to know?
45:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's it.
45:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
45:22
[SPEAKER_02]: If I was a politician, that's what I'd be doing.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be on social media all day and night.
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be making five, ten clips a day, hammering the same messaging.
45:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So somehow that algorithm gets picked up, just like the musicians.
45:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see it.
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a, I think it's a try and true strategy.
45:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think.
45:42
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of politicians should do it because then you can really deliver your message over and over and over again.
45:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's what Charlie Kirk stuff is like, drives me crazy, break it down and take a risk, take a risk and then say what you really feel.
45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you something, I'm curious to know.
45:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Please.
46:01
[SPEAKER_00]: having interviewed already four or five elected officials seeing the politics play out locally nationally.
46:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you yourself want to ever get involved and become an elected official?
46:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I think yes, after this, I would.
46:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I just don't think that I've done some shady things in my life.
46:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't do those shady things.
46:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done a lot of shady things in my life.
46:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that is something I don't want.
46:28
[SPEAKER_02]: people to dig up, right?
46:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just putting it out there.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just gonna head of it.
46:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, I, but if there's some way where somebody a political campaign strategist can sit me down and be like, you know, this is how we're gonna scrub it.
46:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll go about this.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll probably be open to it.
46:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I would probably dig into it.
46:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
46:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the reason why I asked why is because
46:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always want to say down and hear the other side of what their thoughts are on all this craziness.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I always get asked these questions right about, hey, what your thoughts on this, what's going on in community, but that's something that's not in the political circle on the insight.
47:06
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you see it on the outside?
47:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That was nice.
47:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like everybody's playing it safe.
47:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like everybody plays this safe and I'm so tired of it.
47:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so tired of people not really saying what they feel and they're just calculating the things that are coming out of their mouth.
47:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It gets tiring and then there's two things.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I think those calculated statements are boring and tiring.
47:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the second thing is like,
47:33
[SPEAKER_02]: You say all this stuff in the beginning and then when you get an office, you don't follow through with it because money is backing you and then money is like putting their hand on them out your mouth and money is saying you can't say this.
47:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing right now that I guarantee you if 75% of the politicians did so right now and enacted a strong rent control policy in their community because most of our communities are ranchers, especially folks that are my age and younger, it's becoming harder and harder to become a whole knowner.
48:05
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot of these folks are going into the rental market.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: If city councils sat down and said, you know what, we need to put an end on all this crazy developers that are charging sky high prices, high rents, if people in active commonsense rent control, I guarantee you the community would be
48:23
[SPEAKER_00]: so much more relieved in their day-to-day, being able to afford other things?
48:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You tell me that's the biggest issue.
48:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I can guarantee that is a strong issue.
48:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The wider people talk more about it.
48:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Like politicians, you're like, this is what I'm gonna focus on, fight on.
48:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They can lay into it.
48:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The lobby, the apartment association lobby and all the other lobbies will go down on the mart.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They might not make it their next election.
48:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a way to have to deal with this.
48:57
[SPEAKER_00]: She has to deal with a lot of this stuff.
48:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, for her it.
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually a little more blessed.
49:02
[SPEAKER_00]: My colleagues on the school board, hey, colleagues on the school board, I love them.
49:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we are different political sides but in the day, there's not a whole lot of back and forth.
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
49:13
[SPEAKER_00]: On her and on the city council, that's where stuff gets like dicey and messy.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a lot.
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Real money involved.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, heck yeah.
49:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There's real money involved.
49:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Full board, it's like school.
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: related decisions that can't get that messy.
49:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's, you know, at the end of day, everybody wants strong schools and we're all gonna agree to it.
49:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But city councils, there's so many different ways to, to go about things and that's where it gets messy.
49:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So Kudos to my wife, I messin' with that stuff.
49:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's a heart of singing any political system.
49:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you Vietnam, America, Poland, Greece, Europe, you're gonna always deal with the situation where,
49:49
[SPEAKER_02]: money and power buys to little control.
49:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's just an age-old issue that we're dealing with and that's always going to be a hard thing.
49:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100% money.
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Walter, thank you so much for coming on today and is there other things, other stones that we haven't turned up yet?
50:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we got a good stuff on today, and I just want to, of course, thank you for inviting me.
50:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been a fan of the podcast for some time, and I'd love be able to share my story and what I see in the community.
50:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm always open to having these dialogue in this question.
50:28
[SPEAKER_02]: When you run for Governor of California, when you come back on the podcast, I guarantee you I will come.
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be my first appearance, I guarantee you.
50:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I just made that up, but I wouldn't be surprised.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again.
50:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
50:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynn.
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynn, Catherine Wynn, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
50:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese Podcast.