Speaker 1: It's the New Year's again. Whoa, Yeah, welcome, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Year the Tiger. This is a special special lunar
Speaker 1: New Year's edition of It could Happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: that he is today just about well, it's still about
Speaker 1: sort of things falling apart and things being rebuilt. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to specifically, you know, do do it do it?
Speaker 1: Do a special luniar Year's episode and spend some time,
Speaker 1: I think talking about Chinese nous and how what sort
Speaker 1: of being a part of the Chinese diaspora in sort
Speaker 1: of in the US and Canada is like, and you
Speaker 1: know how how that how the influence is, how we organize,
Speaker 1: how what what we're afraid of, what we're sort of
Speaker 1: proud of? Um. And with me to talk about this,
Speaker 1: we have j n who I think first time I
Speaker 1: ever returning guests. Yeah, who is it works? With laus On?
Speaker 1: Hello j n Oh, what an honor. Thanks thanks for
Speaker 1: inviting me back. Yeah, thank you for coming. And we
Speaker 1: also have Jane She who is a queer Chinese settler
Speaker 1: living in unseated traditional and ancestral territories and Mosquian Sasquamish
Speaker 1: and slave with tooth nations in what is falsely and
Speaker 1: fakely considered Canada. Um. She has a poet, writer, editor,
Speaker 1: and an organizer and does many other cool things. Hello, Jane, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Um just wanted to share that it's musquam squamish and
Speaker 1: slate with tooth. Yeah. Sorry, I apcuately, I do not
Speaker 1: live up north, and so my my pronunciations of tribal
Speaker 1: names are even worse than they are for the travel
Speaker 1: daves that are around me. So my apologies. So all right,
Speaker 1: before we get into a bunch of extremely grim stuff,
Speaker 1: I wanted to because this is the this if you
Speaker 1: will be listening to well, okay, unless listening to this
Speaker 1: on Monday night, in which case, uh, congratulations on beating time.
Speaker 1: But most of your probably gonna listen to listening to
Speaker 1: this on on lunar New Years and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to before yeah, before everything is completely dark, I want
Speaker 1: you to know what you choose favorite Chinese New Year's
Speaker 1: food is because this is like maybe my favorite holiday,
Speaker 1: and it's basically my favorite holiday because in Grand Chinese tradition,
Speaker 1: it's just an excuse to eat a lot. So yeah,
Speaker 1: opening the floor up, Yeah, I think you're the expert here, Jane,
Speaker 1: so feel free to I am not laid on the knowledge.
Speaker 1: I am not an expert. Just because I fault dumplings
Speaker 1: does not mean I'm an expert. But I mean I
Speaker 1: haven't spent like lunar New Year's with really that many
Speaker 1: other people in a very long time, so my sense
Speaker 1: of like breath of food has really really narrowed to
Speaker 1: what is available to me. Um. And I also have
Speaker 1: been really struggling with the dumplings that I've been making
Speaker 1: because of like carpal tunnel issues. But I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about jellyfish lately. Like I keep thinking about jellyfish,
Speaker 1: and I keep thinking about like the sesame anything with
Speaker 1: sesame in it. Yeah, and like just boiled dumplings I
Speaker 1: feel like are really great for me at this particular moment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my favorite is uh. In Cantanese, it's called me and go,
Speaker 1: which is it's really yes um. And the way my
Speaker 1: mom used to make it all the time was like
Speaker 1: dip it in an egg first, um, And so it
Speaker 1: has this kind of like eggy crust on it, which
Speaker 1: is really really awesome. And I've been making up for
Speaker 1: the past couple of years myself where I am, and
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go to the grocery store and
Speaker 1: grab some because it's only available around this time. I
Speaker 1: guess they don't really produce it any other time. And
Speaker 1: last time I went to visit my mom, she like
Speaker 1: loaded my suitcase full of them and that was able
Speaker 1: to eat them fast enough, unfortny and some of them
Speaker 1: went fast. Oh no, we have we have one in
Speaker 1: our refrigerator. I think it's I think it's it was
Speaker 1: in the freezer and it's now I think in the
Speaker 1: refrigerator and all incredibly excited to cut into it on
Speaker 1: New Year's Yeah, do you do? You guys do the
Speaker 1: because I know so we we only have red bean ones.
Speaker 1: I know there's like brown sugar ones or something that
Speaker 1: are like plain wait, I just wanted to check, like
Speaker 1: is it nanal? Yeah? At least so like the sort
Speaker 1: of like flower thing that is like shaped like a
Speaker 1: semi circle. Yeah wait, yeah, I feel like there's different,
Speaker 1: like an entire circle. Yeah. We usually cut them into
Speaker 1: like like square strips, but I think that's just like
Speaker 1: a cooking ease of cooking thing. Yeah, And it usually
Speaker 1: comes with like a date or something on top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it's packaged. That's so interesting because I feel like
Speaker 1: the nngal that I grew up with doesn't usually have
Speaker 1: a lot of things on it. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: sticky and kind of plain, and I'm just this is
Speaker 1: this is a new thing for me. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: one we usually get just has red beans in it,
Speaker 1: and then there's like the one day on the top. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're thinking of like talenting Go,
Speaker 1: which is like a different type of dish um where
Speaker 1: it's like white rice cakes and then you you can
Speaker 1: like it's like saucy and then yeah, like different ingredients
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, I think it's a different Ours are
Speaker 1: just that they're like they're they're pretty close to the Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think I'm just talking about the just
Speaker 1: regularly and golic. They're just like like they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're basically plain, but there's some red being like cirta
Speaker 1: into the dough and then it's just like the flat
Speaker 1: brown thing that you like fry. Yeah. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: this is we've now done dessert chat. I would honest
Speaker 1: honestly much much less grim time than most of the
Speaker 1: stuff that happens on here and you've all been now
Speaker 1: subjected to it. I go eat Chinese New Year's food,
Speaker 1: it's great. A yeah. So on two things that are
Speaker 1: somewhat more grim um, I think there's there's two big
Speaker 1: things I want to talk about that sort of related to,
Speaker 1: like I guess Chinese diaspora nous um. I guess we
Speaker 1: can start with talking a bit about anti Asian violence
Speaker 1: and police violence, because I mean it's like, so my
Speaker 1: sort of into this is that my my someone Okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's happened in the past
Speaker 1: about two years was this the huge sort of spike
Speaker 1: and anti asition violence. But then you know, part of
Speaker 1: what happens politically around that was there was a huge
Speaker 1: attempt to essentially turn anti asition violence is you, I guess,
Speaker 1: like the anti BLM, like especially in the US, But
Speaker 1: I think I think this happened elsewhere too, where there
Speaker 1: reserves it didn't I don't know, it worked in some
Speaker 1: places and didn't work in other places. So I went
Speaker 1: to the research Chicago and a few is it a
Speaker 1: few months ago, now maybe's a couple of a month
Speaker 1: that you ago a Asian Chinese international student like got
Speaker 1: shot on campus, and this turned into a huge sort
Speaker 1: of like bring more cops on campus that there was
Speaker 1: a huge petition that got signed. It was that people
Speaker 1: were like asking for security cameras and asking for our cops,
Speaker 1: and like the UCPD like a couple of weeks later
Speaker 1: just like shot a dude. And so that there there's
Speaker 1: been I've been seeing this tension a lot. I was
Speaker 1: wondering a Futube had also sort of run into similar
Speaker 1: stuff and what your thoughts We're on it? UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like, unfortunately with Canada, there's like this dynamic
Speaker 1: where we look to the States for news and validation
Speaker 1: in this weird way that I find really delegitimizes the
Speaker 1: unique struggles that are here that are different. UM. There
Speaker 1: are there's a different kind of police system. There's like
Speaker 1: the local police like Vancouver Police Department, UM, but then
Speaker 1: there's also the RCMP, the Royal Mountain Canadian Police, which
Speaker 1: are in other the municipalities. And the RCMP was created
Speaker 1: specifically UM as a tool of settler colonialism to enforce
Speaker 1: the Indian Act, which is UM, I guess the most
Speaker 1: succinctly way I can put it as segregation UM of
Speaker 1: Indigenous peoples from settlers, and there's a lot of displacement
Speaker 1: of black communities across Canada. But and there was also
Speaker 1: slavery in Canada, even though we like to pretend that
Speaker 1: there wasn't. And so against this background, I guess um
Speaker 1: and ongoing like police brutality, whether it's in what's written
Speaker 1: territories or just the police killing people. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of mainstream Asian Canadian and Chinese Canadian institutions that are
Speaker 1: very very much complicit in the system. Like there is
Speaker 1: an organization, an immigrant Chinese Canadian organization in Vancouver who
Speaker 1: one of the board members is a cop who is
Speaker 1: married to a a city councilor. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the discourse that institutions not people themselves necessarily, but institutions
Speaker 1: create around for example, the revitalization of Chinatown or the
Speaker 1: president servation of the culture is around. Oh, there's graffiti
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood Chinatown and Vancouver is in the downtowning
Speaker 1: side was just considered, um, the poorest posted is considered
Speaker 1: the poorest post a cold in Canada, and it's like
Speaker 1: a tight knit community with a lot of indigenous people's,
Speaker 1: Black people people in poverty struggling against the poisoning massacre UM,
Speaker 1: wherein the government is not providing UM safe supply, and
Speaker 1: where the police just kind of like are everywhere pointing
Speaker 1: guns and everyone displacing the tens cities and so when
Speaker 1: there is an easy and not an easy but just
Speaker 1: like a demonized group of people that UM, the general
Speaker 1: public doesn't know enough about UM. If you walk through
Speaker 1: the downtowning side and talk to people, you would talk
Speaker 1: to people about their experiences with residential school, their experiences
Speaker 1: with missing family members, experiences with poverty and in the
Speaker 1: in the broadest terms, it's like the way that try
Speaker 1: and Town is being gentrified, people tend to blame the
Speaker 1: poor UM, and there's like this divide and conqueror mentality
Speaker 1: within the Asian diaspora. When in the Chinese diaspora specifically,
Speaker 1: and so similar to happened with UM Michelle Go similar
Speaker 1: to her UM, there was a South Asian elderly woman
Speaker 1: who a group of people who lived in the intensity
Speaker 1: had killed pretending to be cops when they knocked on
Speaker 1: her door, and the county one of the city councilors
Speaker 1: UM in Vancouver was like this, we need to stop
Speaker 1: and ulging in these tense cities. Um. Meanwhile, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like marginalized people in these tense cities who
Speaker 1: who who can't um who need to live there because
Speaker 1: it's COVID times and society has abandoned them. So it's
Speaker 1: like anti Asian racism and violence has also the hate,
Speaker 1: the so called hate crime thing has so apparently increased,
Speaker 1: um And I don't think that it's hasn't increased. It's
Speaker 1: just that like the way that the media, the way
Speaker 1: that the institutions within Canada is also jumping onto the
Speaker 1: police wagon, the police the hate crime angle rather than
Speaker 1: learn from abolitionists. Rather. Yeah, this is a long way
Speaker 1: of putting it. It's like similar, it's similar, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of details because yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think that, yeah, I think that tracks. I mean the
Speaker 1: targets are slightly different just basis of news, but on
Speaker 1: the sort of local context. But I think that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that tracks a lot with what we've been seeing here
Speaker 1: as I think there's a there's another thing that I
Speaker 1: don't know, So I I really don't like the term
Speaker 1: like because the is the Twitter hashtag is stoppation hate,
Speaker 1: Like I hate that framing of it as sort of
Speaker 1: hatred and not racism, but even the sort of the
Speaker 1: anti Asian violence framing, which I've been used a lot,
Speaker 1: I think has problems because you know, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is one of the things you were talking about, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've seen a lot. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, any time, like you know, there are genuine
Speaker 1: sort of racism attacks, right, but then there's a so
Speaker 1: just like I mean, one of the sort of scare
Speaker 1: things that happened here was it was like a bunch
Speaker 1: of people's, like a bunch of restI Chinese restaurants got
Speaker 1: broken into and robbed, and everyone was like, well, this
Speaker 1: is anti Asian violence, and it's like, well, no, like
Speaker 1: this is just theft. And and there there's there's been
Speaker 1: this sort of like collapsing of something bad happens to
Speaker 1: an Asian person with specifically sort of like targeted racist attacks,
Speaker 1: and I think that's been well, I mean, that's been
Speaker 1: a problem. And there's also the secondary problem of you
Speaker 1: know who even who even gets included in this in
Speaker 1: the first place. Like one of one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things I've been frustrated about is you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of the selective inclusion of South Asian people like I
Speaker 1: there there was there was a shooting at the fed
Speaker 1: X facility last year by a guy who was like
Speaker 1: very much, very far right, kind of like pilled online guy,
Speaker 1: and it killed a bunch of sea workers. And there
Speaker 1: was never there's just nothing, even like no one talked
Speaker 1: about is anti Asition violence. But then you know, selectively,
Speaker 1: you get inclusions to South these Asian people when it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's like people get folded into being
Speaker 1: Asian when it's like useful to call from war police.
Speaker 1: But then when it's you know, not useful for that,
Speaker 1: or when it's you know, especially when it's working class
Speaker 1: people getting killed, there's just sort of nothing. And I've
Speaker 1: been I don't know, I've been really frustrated by this
Speaker 1: dynamic a lot um. Yeah, Jane, I want to know
Speaker 1: what you think about this too, because I have no
Speaker 1: talks going enough about Yeah. I mean, you know, what
Speaker 1: wasn't there? There was a hate crime builder was passed
Speaker 1: in Congress, right, uh, And there was supposedly quote unquote
Speaker 1: supposed to be addressing all this quote unquote anti Asian
Speaker 1: hate stuff. And you know the only thing that accomplished
Speaker 1: was it created like some some government organ to like
Speaker 1: oversee these efforts to address hate crimes and then more
Speaker 1: funding for the police. Right. So I think it was
Speaker 1: it was a very kind of direct impact. We could
Speaker 1: just see how this discourse transformed into exactly what a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, organizers had said would happen, which
Speaker 1: is more funny for the police and not making communities safer. Right. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I think the real conendrum for me and the thing
Speaker 1: that really kind of you know, I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about this and I get I get
Speaker 1: kind of frustrated, is um, you know, whenever these these
Speaker 1: attacks happen on you know, Asian heritage or Asian identified people. Um,
Speaker 1: the response, I mean, it's it's a good natured and
Speaker 1: it's well meaning, and I agree with it, but you know,
Speaker 1: the response is always like the telling folks who have
Speaker 1: been victimized or those who know them, um, that more
Speaker 1: police is not the answer, right, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's true. But then I think when struggling with
Speaker 1: is how to make this message resonate with those folks, right,
Speaker 1: Because I think there's a way that in some ways
Speaker 1: that can alienate them even more and make them even
Speaker 1: more reaction, right, because that's you know, the media has
Speaker 1: often spun that argument. Uh, they use further instances of
Speaker 1: violence to spin that argument of like when when people
Speaker 1: say the answer is not more cops, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: a safer the media is able to spend that to say, look,
Speaker 1: this isn't working right, it's things are actually getting more
Speaker 1: dangerous all the kind of like scaremongering tactics with crime
Speaker 1: statistics and all that stuff, which are usually false anyway.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now,
Speaker 1: is like, you know, because in in Chinatown, l A,
Speaker 1: where you know, where I've done some work, there was
Speaker 1: community meetings with c c D, the Chinatown Committee for
Speaker 1: Equitable Uh oh, what's what's destan for? I always forget development. Um.
Speaker 1: They had some meetings with community folks to kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, hear what hear what they wanted to do
Speaker 1: to address this, and they kind of like a lot
Speaker 1: of those organizers had, um, you know, they're coming from
Speaker 1: that viewpoint that calling for more cops is not the answer,
Speaker 1: and so some of the mail they're from the community,
Speaker 1: but they're not. They weren't part of the kind of
Speaker 1: like senior population of Chinatown, which is you know, it's
Speaker 1: like low income seniors is kind of like are the
Speaker 1: folks that are being pushed out and by developers and
Speaker 1: all the gentrification happening as well. Um, some of some
Speaker 1: men were kind of like, Okay, well we should start
Speaker 1: kind of like armed neighborhood watch um. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think in some way that taps into this kind
Speaker 1: of like we protect us type of ethos, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's not relying on a state or government or whatever
Speaker 1: police paramilitary force. Um. But then I think the question
Speaker 1: that some folks had I heard the secondhand, was that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, are are these people actually from the community,
Speaker 1: and are they actually doing this to address the needs
Speaker 1: of the folks who are most affected by it? Right?
Speaker 1: And so I think some folks were uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: idea that there should be these kind of like street patrols. Um.
Speaker 1: And so there's there's just so many different ways to
Speaker 1: approach this, and I haven't you know, I'm not laying
Speaker 1: way or anyone, but I just haven't seen an effective
Speaker 1: way to counteract that call for more police. Yet. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point because I feel like in when
Speaker 1: especially um Asian women, people who experience like various forms
Speaker 1: of sexual violence or UM street harassment. UM that sense
Speaker 1: of unsafety is amplified when we witness other people getting
Speaker 1: murdered in public spaces. And so I think in a way,
Speaker 1: it's like understandable why people want to grasp for any
Speaker 1: kind of solution and and also why that kind of
Speaker 1: trauma can be weaponized or like taken advantage of immediately,
Speaker 1: like just because I'm like, who asked for you to
Speaker 1: be street criptials of Chinatown? Who decided that you make
Speaker 1: the communities safer? Have you consulted the seniors? Have you
Speaker 1: have you talked with all of the seniors, all of
Speaker 1: the elders to ask them, like how would you feel
Speaker 1: if I did that? Like where is that suggestion coming from?
Speaker 1: And I think that like the other argument is that
Speaker 1: like mental health resources is an alternative to policing, even
Speaker 1: though UM policing and mental health systems are very, very
Speaker 1: very connected. UM. Edward Wong has an article about that
Speaker 1: in Upping the anti And I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: think that like there has to be like a way
Speaker 1: to talk about this without invalidating each other's trauma and
Speaker 1: invalidating UM people survival instincts as well, because I feel like, um,
Speaker 1: for years, as someone who's done work in the anti
Speaker 1: violence sector, it's not that I wanted there to be
Speaker 1: more policing. It's just that like a lot of survivors
Speaker 1: might be like, hey, I actually do want use the
Speaker 1: court system because this person is dangerous. Like that's like,
Speaker 1: as somebody supporting a survivor, I can't just go up, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, less cops right, Like that's that's not a
Speaker 1: compassionate response. And it's also not a compassionate response to go, hey,
Speaker 1: you're making us like all about yourself and you should
Speaker 1: like to be talking about like black and Indigenous people
Speaker 1: like like like that's that's also really insensitive. So it's
Speaker 1: like I feel like there's a way that there there
Speaker 1: is like a way to talk about abolition that really
Speaker 1: needs to respect every survivor or every like communities like trauma.
Speaker 1: And it's not an easy thing because it's not like
Speaker 1: our communities have had a good way to respond to trauma,
Speaker 1: Like we haven't really like we're still breaking the cycles
Speaker 1: of intergenerational trauma. Yeah, And I think this this kind
Speaker 1: of comes back to another sort of difficulty of this
Speaker 1: whole project, because you know, a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of the abolitionist framework is about like transitioning things towards
Speaker 1: community solutions. But like what is that you know, like,
Speaker 1: what does that even mean when you're dealing with you
Speaker 1: know this, this is this is part of the problem
Speaker 1: with well, okay, you have armed self defense groups, but
Speaker 1: you know what happens when inevitably and this is this
Speaker 1: is just something that happens just you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is this is the nature of security forces, right
Speaker 1: is eventually you're going to get abusers in it. And
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well what happens then? And what happens
Speaker 1: when you know, like the abuses of people inside the community.
Speaker 1: And and this is compounded I think by this problem
Speaker 1: of like what like what even you know the I
Speaker 1: think I think there's there's there's there's a broader problem
Speaker 1: of like what Asian nous is and there's they brought
Speaker 1: up and this is this is also sort of localized
Speaker 1: problem of like what even like is the Chinese community
Speaker 1: at all? Because you're dealing with something that's incredibly fragmented.
Speaker 1: You're dealing people who speak different languages, You're dealing with
Speaker 1: people who have been in these places for you know,
Speaker 1: some people have been here for centuries, some people who
Speaker 1: have been here like two months. And I think that
Speaker 1: makes it really difficult in a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: sort of like even even just bring together something that
Speaker 1: could be a community. And I know, I know what happens,
Speaker 1: and I know, you know, there's there's there's lots of
Speaker 1: different sort of like fragmented communities. But but I think
Speaker 1: it makes this harder because there isn't a sort of
Speaker 1: like ready made thing you can turn to and go, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: this is how we're going, Like this is a group
Speaker 1: of people, and this is the sort of like social sphere,
Speaker 1: and this is the community that going to turn to
Speaker 1: to sort of deal with this stuff. There's just this
Speaker 1: kind of a bunch of amorphous different groups. And then
Speaker 1: also you have the problem that like you know, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna talk about like political forces nation communities, like
Speaker 1: the business associations are extremely powerful and you know, we
Speaker 1: have different objectives than they do, but they're also like
Speaker 1: extremely well organized in a way that most other sort
Speaker 1: of like Chinese groups aren't. I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: that's that's been where my thinking has been going on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, UM, this there's some residents with what you're
Speaker 1: saying in the kind of dynamics that you're identifying and
Speaker 1: what I've kind of witnessed and experienced in like Hong
Speaker 1: Kong desporal organizing UM, which I think, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap with that same type of like
Speaker 1: small business organization type of thing that usually dominates China
Speaker 1: towns across North America, which is the case in l
Speaker 1: A and actually c C. He spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time fighting the small business organizations UM because they are
Speaker 1: very friendly with developers UM, and they're usually pro UM
Speaker 1: you know, pro securitization and anti for folks and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So there is that that element
Speaker 1: right where a lot of times, you know, you are
Speaker 1: fighting against people who might have to like stame heritages
Speaker 1: for example, UM. And you know, for me personally, that's
Speaker 1: that's very much the case with Hong Kong ASPERG groups, right,
Speaker 1: because you know, many of them are very conservative, are
Speaker 1: right wing and not only just kind of held personal beliefs,
Speaker 1: but advocate a lot for these kind of you know,
Speaker 1: these policies and politicians and all these different things that
Speaker 1: I really can't stand and I'm aligned against UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's a lot of folks want
Speaker 1: to take the kind of pregnantious root of like we'll
Speaker 1: work with you on things that we where we have
Speaker 1: points of unity, otherwise we don't. Whereas you know, I
Speaker 1: guess some people see me as as a little bit
Speaker 1: more rigid in the sense that like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to work with these folks at all, because UM, I
Speaker 1: see them as kind of themselves as as a force
Speaker 1: that is causing more harm than good, especially if with
Speaker 1: these Hong Kong aspert groups. The usual mantra is like
Speaker 1: Hong Kong first, like everything that we do is is
Speaker 1: serving Hong Kong UM, and that you in the desper
Speaker 1: That usually means kind of like non partisanship, lobbying, congress,
Speaker 1: all those different things, UM. And then kind of like
Speaker 1: completely ignoring or being agnostic of local and domestic issues. UM.
Speaker 1: To oversimplify a little bit. So know, I think that's
Speaker 1: been on my mind a lot. I know your question
Speaker 1: was about chineseness, but I guess for me that kind
Speaker 1: of filters a little bit further down to like what
Speaker 1: is being a Hong Kong Right, It's really difficult to
Speaker 1: organize with your specific quote unquote ethnic or diaspora community,
Speaker 1: and the the meaning of diaspora is not a cohesive
Speaker 1: community but people's memories of home. Um. It's like a
Speaker 1: difficult thing to kind of but I butt your head
Speaker 1: against because it's like you have your UM diversity, equity
Speaker 1: inclusion framework of organizing, and then you have the every
Speaker 1: day like what what what these frameworks can't simplify, which
Speaker 1: is the tensions between your communities. Like I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up experiencing overt racist violence when I grew up in Richmond. UM.
Speaker 1: Richmond is an extremely East Asian and Chinese suburb. UM
Speaker 1: that saw first um, not first, but just like at
Speaker 1: some point a wave of Hong Kong diaspora because of
Speaker 1: and then afterwards more like mainlanders, UM, and so on
Speaker 1: the playground, somebody was like, are you from Taiwan mainland
Speaker 1: or or Hong Kong? And that was when I was
Speaker 1: like seven, And that was my introduction to what it
Speaker 1: means to be in diaspora in this particular kind of way.
Speaker 1: And UM being like just right like in that and
Speaker 1: in that and and figuring yourself out within that and
Speaker 1: seeing how there was just an absent of community because
Speaker 1: of how like these different geopolitical experiences have like separated us,
Speaker 1: um and made it more difficult. Um Like when we
Speaker 1: filter our parents political beliefs onto each other. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like this awkward thing. But but I think that
Speaker 1: like UM in in trying to contend with that in
Speaker 1: the in the president, it's sort of like, um, we
Speaker 1: have these older institutions that other people that that the
Speaker 1: older generations have built. What new things can we build?
Speaker 1: What things can we um? Because I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really rigid too. I'm like really not great at
Speaker 1: talking across the aisle, and when I do, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not really about anything substantive. It's like, hey, like hi,
Speaker 1: it's good to see you know, Like when you live
Speaker 1: in a place you you don't want to make like
Speaker 1: make enemies, but like it's it's a really hard thing, um.
Speaker 1: And it's even more heartbreaking when you find out slowly
Speaker 1: that people are just taking advantage of you, right like,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, it's it's a it's a really
Speaker 1: difficult thing to organize against when you're like you all
Speaker 1: hate me, great love it this has been they could
Speaker 1: happen here, Join us for part two of this discussion. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we're going into more detail on the state of the Left.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can find us That Happened Here
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Speaker 1: for listening.