Episode 013: I Voted

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Transcript

COLD OPEN

JAMES VO: Hey, it’s James. I’m filling in for Cathy this week, because today’s episode is personal. That also means there’ll be some swearing along the way.

JAMES VO: Anyway, I want to play you part of a conversation that I had with my mom, on election night.

Myung: Oh, they want a strong man. They don't care about the background.

Myung: So somehow the American people, they want to pick, "Okay. Uh, we're sick and tired of politicians, you know, professional politicians, so we elect somebody else.

Myung: They don't only look at the bottom or inside of the person, how much they know, how honest they are, you know, whether they not telling the truth ... They don't think about it. They're just very simple. If they just like it. They just vote it.

JAMES VO: She's telling me her answer to a question that I've heard over and over again over the past four years, then even more as the ballots were being counted on November 3rd, 2020...

JAMES VO: What in the fuck could make a person vote for THAT guy?

Myung: It's like a showmanships. They act like that. They're so strong. They're a strong leader for the whole country.

JAMES VO: She also told me why she didn’t vote for the Republican candidate for President.

Myung: We don't think he's going to fit for the office. We never, ever gonna pick a movie stars, people don't know anything about the politics. How do they going to manage it? How do they gonna fit into their office?

Myung: So it should be people who has been experienced within government affairs

JAMES VO: My mom is 72 years old, and on the phone, she wasn't talking about Donald Trump.

MUSIC starts

JAMES VO: She was talking about Ronald Reagan, who was elected to the oval office in 1980.

JAMES VO: That election was the first time my mom could vote as a U.S. citizen, after she immigrated here to work as a nurse. And she joined the 36% of Californians who voted for the Democrat, Jimmy Carter. To her, the choice seemed obvious.

Myung: I was really, really surprised, how they could vote for the Reagan?

Myung: He has no experience at all. I mean, he has, he was the governor , but his main business is, uh, movie star. So we didn't think, Oh, he should be elected as President.

JAMES VO: In college, I spent a few years studying political science, with a focus on regime change. That basically means I have a bachelor’s degree in how nations become democracies or how nations become dictatorships.

JAMES VO: My mom, who watches CNN and local news, and has voted in every election for 40 years, was able to summarize most of what I’ve learned about America’s political dysfunction in about four minutes.

Myung: Once most Republican President ended, they leave huge debt. And then when Democratic takeover, they tried to recover, they tried to pay back and try to turn economic better.

Myung: It just keep going back and forth it back and forth.

Myung: Same thing. Like when Clinton became president he paid it, pay off all the debts. He left like a surplus.

Myung: But after that, after George Bush took over? The same thing, he ended up with all the debt.

Myung: It's exactly the same thing, what the Trump is doing right now. So who's going to pay? Eventually you guys are going to pay. Next generation has to pay, if we can not pay.

Myung: So that's what I've been noticing, going back and forth, back and forth. I mean, the history of all the presidents in United States in the last 40 years.

James: If we keep ending up in the same cycle, do you think that the system is working?

Myung: No. 

James: What do you think is wrong?

Myung: They should have some changes in Constitution and electoral system. This is totally wrong. None of the world, the other countries, they don't have a system like the United States.

Myung: Stupid system. Like, even you have, uh, millions, million people in like California, New York, there are only two senators. And they're a small population like Indiana and Iowa. They still have two senators.

Myung: That's wrong.

JAMES VO: As we talked about the parallels between past and present elections, I couldn't help but feel like she was confirming the ways that our democratic system is... pretty undemocratic.

JAMES VO: It’s been biased, by design, against the will of the majority, against the rights of the powerless, from the start of our nation's founding.

JAMES VO: Having seen California when it was still the land of Reagan, she thinks that demographic shifts in states like Texas, Pennsylvania, and Virginia could lead to long-term change. And she's putting her faith in younger generations.

Myung: Right now it’s pretty obvious, when you compare it to 10 years old or 20 years ago, people wake up.

Myung: Now they're more participating. They’re more communicating, and some people try to listen.

MUSIC ends

Myung: Better or more than, “Oh, we didn't realize.”

Myung: Most of the white people, saying, “Well, we didn't realize. Baybe we didn't know their history. We didn't know their cultures.”

Myung: So people are more waking up these days, which is good.

Myung: So it’s probably better when your generation comes, in 10 years.

Myung: I hope so.

James: Well, my generation will already be in... past middle age in 10 years. 

Myung: Yeah, but when you guys turn 45, around 45, 50, that's what I'm talking about. Our generation will be disappeared.

THEME MUSIC begins

Myung: So eventually, it'll turn out better than, you know, what I've been expecting. Something we couldn't do.

OPEN

JAMES VO: This is Self Evident, where we challenge the narratives about where we’re from, where we belong, and where we’re going. By telling Asian America’s stories.

JAMES VO: In the days right after November 3rd, 2020 — when it still wasn't clear who our next President would be — I called over a dozen people from different backgrounds, and different citizenship status.

JAMES VO: To see how they were doing, ask about their experiences with voting, and find out whether they saw the same kind of repeating cycle that my mom and I were talking about.

JAMES VO: I ended up going on kind of a journey, through my own cynicism about electoral politics, and whether the American people are ready and willing to go past beating Trump…

JAMES VO: And I ended up talking with a few folks from the youngest generation of voters in this election. Who had their own frustrations, and their own hopes, about how to move forward.

THEME MUSIC ends

SOUND: Phone rings

JAMES VO: But first, I want to share a little bit of the raw, unfiltered uncertainty and conflicted feelings that I heard when I called people up on November 4th and November 5th.

JAMES VO: Not to talk about Trump vs. Biden, but about the more systemic problems that would stick with us after all the votes were counted.

SOUND: Phone receiver picks up

MUSIC begins

Dorian: Being Black didn't necessarily get worse under Donald Trump.

Dorian: And there was a gang of black people who got murdered by cops and by race soldiers under Obama's watch.

Dorian: There was no consequences for these bodies being taken, these lives being taken from us. There hasn't been any punishment under Donald Trump either, and there's not going to be any punishment under Joe Biden.

Dorian: I mean, thats what I think.

Dorian: Like I'm at the point in my life where I don't care about anything else.

Dorian: Where I'm just like, when are you going to pay me back for all the work that, that my ancestors did?

Dorian: You know, when are you going to pay people back for all of the red lining and disinvestment that you've done in, in black neighborhoods? When are you going to give us what we deserve? We built this country.

Dorian: So... like, yeah, of course I can decide an election. The black vote always decides an election. But what does it mean?

Alex: We're still waiting for returns as we're recording this. And as of now, a lot of hopes are being pinned on like, Michigan, and Arizona. And I'm just thinking about, like, all of the things that they said — “they," the big "they" said to us during the Democratic primary, when we were pushing for more progressive candidates...

Alex: ...and they were like, "They're not gonna work. They're not gonna fly with white working class voters. They're not gonna fly in Michigan.”

Alex: And... it truly is coming down to that, and I just… (sighs)

Alex: I don't have patience for this, for this, like, "You're our hope now because white people are just, like, beyond help."

Alex: And I am not interested in organizing on their behalf, you know?

Melissa: The thing that I'm most frustrated about is that conservatives continue to frame the conversation.

Melissa: I can't believe that we have to play defense on ridiculous claims that the Republican party makes. Like that it's even an argument that we should count every vote.

Melissa: I mean, that's… (laughs in exasperation) How, how are there people protesting about whether or not we should count every vote?

Melissa: You know, and then you keep hearing people talk about, “Well, both sides”...

Justine: I think the people who make me angry are the ones who come at issues that they do not have direct firsthand experience with. They come to these conversations with so much confidence in their position.

Justine: They are obsessed with using data to come up with solutions and they are less interested in hearing stories from people who are experiencing it firsthand...

Sid: People don't seem to care. Like when my manager told me "We have to let you go," there was no acknowledgement of the fact that, "Hey, you're an immigrant, we're going to work with you."

Sid: At company level, people just, like, think, "Oh, it's HR's problem." And the HR is like, "Oh, it's Legal's problem." Or the Legal can say, "Oh, it's the school's problem." And all of them can say, "Oh, it's, it's the, it's the problem of the person itself."

Sid: The industry keeps working. The industry doesn't stop.

Rachel: The pandemic has exposed the cracks in our society. When I think about the question of moving forward, I feel like it's a hard path, like it's not, you know, this is a yellow brick road that we could follow. I feel like there's a lot of branches that we need to encounter before we fix our divided democracy.

JAMES VO: I don't want to dismiss the lives of Americans that will get better when President Trump steps down. I can name a dozen things that will immediately improve just by having Joe Biden in the White House.

JAMES VO: But I think of the 2020 elections, and this entire year, as a snapshot of where the country’s really at.

JAMES VO: Donald Trump might be the most honest face America’s ever put on its problems.

JAMES VO: The brutality against Black lives, the xenophobia against Asian people, the massive inequity of the pandemic, and the suppression of Black, brown, immigrant, and working-class votes... they’re all continuations of the full American story that's been buried, rewritten, sanitized, erased, and ignored.

JAMES VO: And often I have a hard time believing that story’s gonna change.

JAMES VO: Some of why I feel this way is, honestly, just my personality. Some of it is what you just heard the phone calls that I made. 

JAMES VO: Some of it is the challenges and the lack of care that I've been exposed to, as I've tried to get involved with making the Democratic Party more inclusive where I live, in Brooklyn.

JAMES VO: But if I had to name one thing in my life that's most lowered my expectations for American democracy…

MUSIC begins

JAMES VO: ...I'd have to point to my first Presidential election. In the year 2000.

SEGMENT 1: FAILED JUNIOR STATE

JAMES VO: I grew up in Diamond Bar. It's a suburb at the border between Los Angeles, Orange County, and the Inland Empire in southern California.

JAMES VO: Over the decades it's become a majority Asian city. And when I was a kid, most of the Asian American families I knew were conservative Protestants who reliably supported the Republican party, or just stayed out of politics altogether.

JAMES VO: Here’s how my mom puts it:

Myung: They believe what they've been believing, so there's a line. They don't want to cross it. So we try not to talk about it and we start arguing. So we can't even ask just, “Did you vote, or who did you vote?”

Myung: You know, we don't talk about it because they never complain about the politics right now, what's going on.

Myung: They don't care about the country. And they don't care about the democracy. They just talk about their own cultures.

JAMES VO: I spent the first 17 years of my life in that town. Including my senior year of high school, when Al Gore was running for President, against George W. Bush.

JAMES VO: Gore technically lost that election by 537 votes in Florida, even though he received over 547,000 more votes than Bush, nationwide.

JAMES VO: That election was the first to end this way — with the winner of the Electoral College vote actually losing the direct vote of the American people — since 1888.

JAMES VO: And even though my friends and I weren't old enough to vote, this was the first election where we really felt the stakes.

JAMES VO: I talked about it with my friend Anthony, who I met in junior year.

Anth: You know, it was like, "Oh wow, what a weird system this is" that we learned in school, in our, like, history class. And now it just shows like, "Oh, this is totally... wrong."

James: what you just described as a process of being a teenager, spending a year in AP government, learning how the system works and then watching the system work exactly like it was written in the book... to fuck everybody over.

JAMES VO: I also compared notes with our friend Amit, who I’ve known since the fourth grade.

Amit: I remember being appalled at the electoral college and the fact that our democracy is not as pure a democracy as we are led to believe. 

Amit: It just completely felt like we got robbed, and that like democracy was dealt a severe blow and that, um, the promise of America was kind of dead. 

Anth: I think it's understandable that a lot of us were, like, somehow psychologically affected by that, and maybe not so wide-eyed and you know, optimistic about making change or anything like that. You know?

JAMES VO: But when Anthony, Amit, and I were teenagers, I actually was determined to make change. I was deeply inspired by punk music and counterculture in a way that's really never left me, personally.

JAMES VO: That's why I asked them to help me start a chapter of the Junior State of America, or JSA. It was basically a civics and debate club, which we were rushing to get off the ground just as the 2000 election was kicking into high gear.

Amit: My sense memories are of having a classroom to ourself and creating like posters, like working with markers, and trying to distill like how an election works. And what the issues are.

MUSIC ends

Anth: I remember the t-shirt. I had a big hand in designing the t-shirt. 

Anth: It was an Altoid can...

JAMES VO: Yeah. Our club t-shirt was a hand drawn box of Altoids. Except in place of the word "ALTOIDS" were the letters, "JSA." And next to them, a silhouette of a person raising their fist in the air.

Anth: Oh, was that a rage against the machine thing? That logo?

James: I think it's one of those things where we essentially appropriated a pop culture image without having any context or real understanding of the real image, of like the real history of it. (laughs)

Anth: Oh, absolutely not, no. (laughs) 

Anth: It was like, "Oh, that's cool. I think we're all pretty much like Rage Against the Machine fans."

Anth: We’re like, "Let's use that. Use, use that image from the album cover and put it on this t-shirt.”

James: We staged a presidential election for our student body, where the high school could decide who they wanted to be president. And in order to do that...

Amit: Between Gore and Bush?

James: Between Gore, Bush, and Ralph Nader, who was played by me.

Amit: I remember so little of that, man. (laughs)

JAMES VO: I called up our other friend, Nick, to rehash more of the details.

James: Jonathan Ou was Al Gore, which is pretty fucking good casting Annie Xiao was George Bush, and I was Ralph Nader.

Nick: Right, Nader was there. He was on the back of the shirt. 

James: wait, are you serious? Okay. 

Nick: "Yep his quote's on the back of the —

James: So you still have the shirt.

Nick: I'm wearing it right now! (laughs) I thought you asked me because you wanted me to wear it.

James: (laughs) Okay. Wait, wait, can you turn on your camera? Can I see that?

JAMES VO: The back of our club t-shirt had a quote from Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate that I had played in our mock Presidential election.

JAMES VO: The quote says, "There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."

Nick: Yeah. Real foresight and still relevant. 20 years later. 

James: (Laughs) God, I don't know where my shirt is.

Nick: It's a nice shirt. It's like, they don't make Hanes beefy tees like this anymore.

James: And then we had the election day and there was essentially like the worst idea I've ever had…

James: ...to have a PA, the school PA brought out there, and then essentially do candidate stump speeches, to like sway the vote on the, on election day. And it was, 

James: It was, it was a rude awakening trying to give political speeches to people trying to eat lunch, who didn't even realize, like, what was going on.

James: And then it just like this wall hit me where it's like, "Oh yeah, no one gives a fuck about any of this."

Anth: Oh, I see. I see.

MUSIC begins

JAMES VO: I think I brought up all these memories because the experience of trying to get my classmates to care — about our right to vote, about the issues we couldn’t see on TV, about the needs of the powerless — felt like a failure, and a letdown.

JAMES VO: Just like the real thing.

James: Do you remember counting votes at Jack in the Box?

Amit: … No? (laughs)

James: That's such a fun memory. It could do so much good for you. If you had this memory. It's so fun.

Amit: (Laughs) We had a lot of fun memories at Jack in the Box, man. 

James: Dude, I miss Jack in the Box so much.

JAMES VO: In case you don't know, Jack in the Box is a fast food chain from California, that might be best known for three things: An E. Coli outbreak, a really fun corporate mascot during the 90s, and selling two deep-fried, hard-shell tacos for 99 cents.

JAMES VO: It’s also where my grandiose teenage mission, to bring students into the democratic process, to pick a President who would represent us... came to an end.

James: We went to Jack in the Box, I think a couple days after the election and the real results were not in. and then I think at the time we were also doing that thing where we bought a big bag of Sun Chips, and then we'd take extra Jack in the box, hot sauce and then eat the hot sauce on the Sun Chips.

James: It was like, the most cost-effective snack...

JAMES VO: Al Gore won our election by margin of 20%. It was a direct vote, counted in the corner of a fast food restaurant, next to emptied packets of hot sauce.

JAMES VO: A few days later, the Supreme Court stopped Florida from doing a statewide recount of votes, and George W. Bush became the President-Elect.

JAMES VO: When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I was definitely surprised. But New Yorkers all around me broke down into tears, stuck post-it notes on the subway station walls, and kicked off four years of reminders that “this is not normal,” or “this is not who we are”... I never felt that same punch to gut.

JAMES VO: Because 17-year-old me had internalized that this is normal. This shows who we are.

JAMES VO: And 20 years later, I’m still struggling with how we can do more than cast a vote on the right side of history.

MUSIC ends

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AD MUSIC begins

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SEGMENT 2: NO VOTER IS AN ISLAND

JAMES VO: A few of the folks I called after November third were people who live in this country and contribute to it… but aren’t allowed to vote.

MUSIC begins

JAMES VO: Earlier, my mom brought up how people in smaller states are overrepresented in the Senate. Well, at the same time, there are several million people in places like Puerto Rico, in the Mariana Islands — hell, even in Washington, DC — who for all intents and purposes are American... but either can’t vote for President, or aren’t represented in Congress the same way as people in our 50 official states. Or both.

JAMES VO: Crisdel Aguila, a student at Cal State Los Angeles and part of our community panel, grew up in American Samoa.

Cris: The more I started to realize that the reality was I wasn't going to be going home for a long time.. it just sucked.

Cris: Like I, I'm, I'm still a kid, and as much as I do, like these kinds of work, I just want to see like my mom and dad, you know?

JAMES VO: If you’re not familiar, the islands of Samoa were colonized by European and American governments in the 19th century, and have been a non-voting, non-citizen U.S. territory for over a hundred years.

JAMES VO: One way that people from American Samoa become citizens is to become residents of a state. So for Cris to gain the right to vote, to represent the place she calls home, she had to leave that home.

JAMES VO: Then, after she moved to L.A. for school and got the naturalization process started, the pandemic shut down travel in and out of American Samoa. Right now, she’s staying with her aunt and uncle in northern California.

Cris: The Island being closed also means that people aren't getting the medical attention they deserve. There's a lot of school issues, a lot of financial issues. People are losing money. 

Cris: And seeing so many people not care about COVID or not take it as seriously when I'm currently living so impacted by it. Like, I can't go home. I can't see my family. I can't see my friends. My mental health is so impaired because I'm so disconnected from the folks and the land and the community that, you know, gave me so much energy...

JAMES VO: Cris pointed out that the day we were speaking was also the day that the U.S. officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

MUSIC fades out

JAMES VO: It’s one of many decisions that President-Elect Biden wants to reverse as soon as he’s inaugurated. But even if the President gets us back into that agreement, Congress won’t be obligated to meet any of its goals. And without official ratification by the Senate, whoever takes the oval office in 2024 could withdraw the U.S. just as easily

JAMES VO: Meanwhile, people in the Pacific Islands are staring down die-offs in the oceanic food chain, more intense hurricanes and cyclones, and a relentless rise in sea level that’s already caused a handful of small islands to disappear into the ocean.

JAMES VO: So Cris is frustrated. By how her family won’t have an official say in massive problems that acutely impact Pacific Islanders, like climate change, and pandemic management.

Cris: I have to deal with those consequences. Whereas there are still so many folks that don't care. Again. They're not voting, they're still partying, um, they don't think COVID is a serious issue. They think Trump is a great guy. It just all just doubles down on that frustration.

Cris: And then, after seeing those poll results at 2:00 AM, I was absolutely crushed, because I realized that the country that I had hoped we were living in, maybe that's not the reality yet.

James: It strikes me a lot that the communities who are most directly impacted by the conversation that drives the policies.. they are often not permitted to be in it.

Cris: Mmhmm.

James: Or when they're asked to be in it, it's like, very much like, you know, asking for their vote, but not asking for them to actually be a part of it.

Cris: Exactly.

Cris: Folks from these spaces that the U.S. colonized, they were not meant to vote. They weren’t meant to have a voice. 

Cris: And in the conversation around climate change, I think that's such a frustrating thing because that is such an impactful issue going on right now, and the fact that so many folks that genuinely really do, care about this issue and are very concerned about how, um, the presidential election will affect how the U S response to climate change… It's very frustrating that now we don't get a voice as well, to, you know, say who we want to be spearheading all of this.

Cris: (laughs in exasperation) It's I totally hear you with what you were saying that, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, that I think that's what was really bringing me on the brink of tears, was like, the reality of who's living in this country. And who gets to really dictate how this country gets to look, you know, and operate.

James: How is it that you proceed? Like what, what is it that you do? Because that's something that I'm talking to everybody about. I simply don't think that voting is enough. I just think it's, it's just one piece. And it clearly has not gotten us far enough.

Cris: Amen.

James: So what is it that you are focused on? What has been in your space, I guess, for participating? 

Cris: You know, I'm not Pacific Islander, I'm Filipina ethnically, but because I grew up in American Samoa, I want to see that community get the attention that I know it deserves. And so as a student, what I try to do now is to make space for Pacific Islander voice , especially in terms, when we're talking about things like climate change or we’re talking about these larger systems.

Cris: There is this very abstract narrative around Pacific Islanders where, you know, finally they're getting recognition in the climate justice movement, however, the only narrative that's really circulating around them is them as being victims.

Cris: When you know, the reality is Pacific Islanders have, you know, long understood climate change is something that's actually natural. And I think that's also a really big misconception with climate change, is, you know, people assume it's something that's so dangerous and catastrophic.

Cris: And although the consequences of climate change are climate change in itself is a very natural process that, you know, Pacific Islander folks and folks all over the world have been adapting to  and the problem is  I think that historically humans have tried so hard to fight the environment and fight against the environment rather than working with it.

Cris: It seems especially tough because that's the most abstract thing for a lot of people, not yourself, obviously... but how has it been trying to make that something concrete for people to join you and be really involved in?

Cris: Oh my gosh. Incredibly frustrating. I am not going to lie having these conversations with my friends is honestly what pushed me really to, you know, go into research in the first place.

Cris: Next semester, what I'm hoping to do is actually organize a panel with, um, Pacific Islander climate activists from either California or different parts of the us to, you know, come in to, um, Cal state LA, where I go to school and to speak about the work that they do.

Cris: And, you know, my hope for the panel is to connect pacific Islander students that are already on our campus with larger networks of Pacific Islanders throughout the country, And I want folks from my community to feel like they have each other, even though they can't really see that directly...

MUSIC begins

Cris: What I'm really concerned in is working directly with the community and making sure that, um, a lot of the voices that were silenced, like the voices that are being silenced right now during the election, that somehow people are still hearing their voices.

JAMES VO: Cris is a good example of Americans who have to push for change, and do a lot of that work outside of the electoral process, because they have no other choice.

JAMES VO: The next listener I spoke to does have the status to vote, but he’s been deeply troubled by the polarization that’s trickled down from the two major parties, and by the pressure his friends were putting on him to vote for Joe Biden.

Karl: I am feeling distrustful, and confused, and also desperate. 

JAMES VO: That's Karl Kristian Flores. He’s in his last year of college at USC.

Karl: I'm feeling desperate because I feel like as a young American, I sort of need guidance and to be educated by a voice that I can trust. And I kind of have a hard time finding that. Especially on the internet, but also just people around me.

Karl: Freshman year of college, I would meet people who were pro-Trump in my college dormitory, we were just talking to dining halls and people would be like, “Oh yeah. You know, I think, I think Trump is so cool. Sure, he said some racist things, but, uh, I really, really like how he's not a politician.” and those same people…

Karl: I swear to God, James, those same people are on Zoom right now to this day, acting as Trump haters and, and liberals and Democrats like "Fuck Trump."

Karl: And I agree that no one should, no one should vote for an amoral president like Trump. I'm just so shocked that people are hiding themselves. Because they don't want to be bashed on by everyone else in the country.

JAMES VO: Karl goes to a prestigious private university, where he pours his energy into theater, and poetry.

JAMES VO: But he has a perspective on living in America that most of the students around him don't… and it's deeply affected how much faith he can set aside for politicians.

MUSIC ends

Karl: I come from a low-income background. Single parent household, went to school up and down California renting rooms, pretty much lived 21 years without money. My family was raised on food stamps...

James: How do you feel the life that you've lived shapes how you see our democracy and where you fit into all of these conversations that have been all over the place for the past several years? 

Karl: Yeah, so it shapes a lot.

Karl: My father was a meth addict and left my mom. And me and my sister, when I was three years old, and my mom had to drop us to school and she had trouble paying rent, and she was finding jobs and getting laid off of jobs, and had a hard time. 

Karl: And so we were on food stamps and I didn't know how big of a deal that was until later when I just realized that every food that I ate was never hot food. It was always canned or groceries.

Karl: When I was in college, it was a huge, uh... a huge eye-opener because my rooms were clean. And everywhere I... where I lived either had rats, cockroaches, or ants. There was just infested with insects. And so I'd be like, “Wow! This is, this is what a room could be?” It was so different.

Karl: So having that experience, I care about people reducing families and individuals who are on food stamps as lazy or pathetic, when there are so many circumstances that fall into a person's situation.

Karl: And that's what I learned from volunteering in homeless shelters. For the longest time I've been going to food banks and tutoring, low income kids, and I know their stories. I know. When their parents were on drugs. I know if they just suddenly lost their job. I know if they had mental health problems, I've seen it.

JAMES VO: Karl volunteers for his immediate community, and he accepts a deep level of community support to get by.

JAMES VO: But he doesn't think of himself as politically active, and he had a really hard time voting for either candidate in the general election.

Karl: If you voted for a candidate, you were selecting a candidate. To vote is to choose. because when you're avoiding Trump, you are voting for Biden. And then you're voting for a person who does X, Y, and Z. And so that's why the day, literally the day before elections, I didn't want to vote because I didn't want to contribute to that.

Karl: And it sounds lazy. It sounds complacent. And it kind of sounds overprivileged. I see all that and I recognize that all that, but what was basically in my head was just a guilt that if I were to vote for Biden, I would be voting for someone who I didn't agree with.

Karl: And what makes it even more hard lastly, is that I would, of course rather have Biden President than Trump President. That is no question. And people are like, "Oh, duh idiot. Then you got to vote for, you got to vote for Biden. I would rather have him," you know, it's just obvious mathematic, duh, but I still didn't want to, because of that obscure truth, because of that weird integrity that I would just feel guilty for, so I wrote in Bernie Sanders.

James: Well, you are in California, so there are many other things to vote on. 

Karl: Oh, right. Yeah. There were all those propositions, and yeah, I've, I voted for that.

James: What do you think it would take for you to feel represented?

Karl: When I look at, “Oh, who is going to be the President of America,” they have to care about healthcare. They have to care about students who just want to get an education.

Karl: Someone like AOC or Bernie Sanders, or honestly, my favorite politician of all, Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda Ardern, pays attention to her country, she understands what's fair. She's articulate. Even in interviews, she will say, you know what? I didn't answer your question, but I'll answer it next time.

Karl: And she shops at Target. She'll get her groceries at Walmart or whatever New Zealand supermarkets., And she's just an ordinary citizen.

James: But I'm wondering where do you not, are you not able to see that more immediately around you just locally? 

Karl: No, I don't. I don't see that. Maybe it has something to do with being a student and not being satisfied with what we're taught in school. 

Karl: Maybe that has made me a little cynical towards our leaders.

James: I'm curious to know like, You are coming back repeatedly to, you want to be able to make a choice of a person and you are inspired by certain people and disgusted by others and distrustful of others.

James: Do you see your participation in this democracy going beyond just picking people? 

Karl: That's a really good question.

James: Do you not perceive you going to the food bank? Do you not perceive you volunteering or tutoring as political

Karl: No, I've never thought of it politically. I've never thought of it politically.

MUSIC begins

JAMES VO: When people tell me that the 2020 election is the most important election of our lifetime, I agree with them.

JAMES VO: But what I’m waiting to find out is what people do after the votes are counted. Whether we’re ready to stop acting like consumers of democracy, and more like “daily citizens.”

JAMES VO: And as the votes started piling up for Joe Biden, I started feeling more anxious about that uncertainty than the uncertainty around the election itself.

SEGMENT 4: Future Heydays

MUSIC shifts to a full, energetic arrangement

SOUND: James walks out his front door to the sound of children marching down the street, chanting, “BI-DEN! BI-DEN! BI-DEN! BI-DEN!” 

JAMES VO: When the press did call the election for Biden, I stepped outside for a minute to see folks in my neighborhood cheering and dancing in the streets.

SOUND: Brooklyn residents gather, cheer, and shout at cars that are honking their horns as they pass

JAMES VO: I tried to give myself permission to accept some of that relief, to let out some of my disbelief in change.

JAMES VO: And to hope that all of us, who’ve showed up so vocally to vote Donald Trump out of office, won’t disappear behind the less shameful, more recognizable face of our new President-Elect.

SOUND: The celebration continues

MUSIC strips down to a breakbeat

JAMES VO: My last conversation in the days right after the election was one that I didn't even plan on having.

JAMES VO: And it felt like a message — that history, like elections, does work in cycles — but also that a cycle isn’t necessarily the same thing as a repeat.

JAMES VO: After I got off the phone with Karl, I saw an email from an editor at my old high school paper.

JAMES VO: I'd asked him if the Junior State of America chapter that I had started in the year 2000 was still a thing. He wrote back with a phone number for Mingyu Liu.

Mingyu: I am currently 16 years old. And in JSA, I mainly play the role of JSA chair of Diamond Bar High School debate club.

JAMES VO: It turns out that students at my old high school have kept JSA alive for 20 years.

JAMES VO: And right off the bat, I could tell that this new generation of the club is way more capable of getting students engaged in political action — not just for the Presidential race, but wherever government affects our day to day lives.

JAMES VO: Oh, and by the way, the Junior State of America is a nonpartisan organization that welcomes all political affiliations.

JAMES VO: But Mingyu and I are both Asian American Democrats — and all that background shows in what you’re about to hear.

MUSIC ends

Mingyu: The map right now, it's, it's a win for Joe Biden, but is it a win for Democrats? I would say no, it's definitely a warning sign. I think the Democrats have been doing a pretty lousy job in my opinion at reaching out to certain key demographics. For example you have Latino reachout.

James: And how do you relate to what's going on today and what has transpired as an Asian American?

Mingyu: We were really helpful with a couple of states. I mean, Georgia has what, three, 4.1%. Asian-Americans. And Georgia has flipped by about 7,000 votes.

Mingyu: So every single vote from Asian Americans has counted. It's not just African-Americans, who've helped propel Biden to victory in Georgia. It's, you have Hispanics, you have white suburban women, and most importantly, the Asian voting demographic that is becoming an up-and-coming political behemoth in American politics.

James: And do you feel like you're a part of that? Do you feel empowered? 

Mingyu: I mean, I definitely do. I've worked on the campaign that’s also in District CA-39; I've interned for Gil Cisneros.

Mingyu: Gil Cisneros does represent a district that has a, have we sizable Asian American, uh, population and for politicians to actually acknowledge that, yes, this is a demographic that exists and yes, we should reach out to them.

James: One reason why I think I'm having all these conversations following the election is because I think like you, I'm very uneasy about how much we can accomplish in the next year, in the next two years, in the next four years.

James: And so I'm having conversations with people to imagine, you know, what is it going to take? And, and what gives you the motivation? 

Mingyu: I think one of our first big gains in JSA was actually interviewing a local water board candidate.

Mingyu: His name is Kevin Hayakawa, and he is — he ran, actually won, for Walnut Valley Water Board. And so it was really interesting to interview someone who's actually, you know, Asian himself, and he was from the area.

Mingyu: So I think that if we try to find ways to engage Asian Americans, I think we can potentially increase civic participation and JSA participation in Diamond Bar.

Mingyu: It’s something that will probably reach the heydays of it was back in your era.

James: So when you think about previous generations of students or previous years of students, and knowing that JSA had existed in the past, like, what do you imagine that to be?

Mingyu: I definitely think that those students, there were probably a lot more of them, there was definitely a lot more of them. I think that JSA in his heyday was probably really active on campus. And I think that. There were a lot more students being connected to being civically engaged. 

Mingyu: And that's something I hope as JSA chair, along with my co-Presidents and amazing officer board, we have that we were able to bring it back to its heyday, or at least try to, and make a gallant effort at attempting to do so.

James: How did you and the other folks on the leadership choose to engage classmates around this election? 

Mingyu: We definitely came in there with a lot of limitations.

Mingyu: We actually planned to do a lot of things during this school year. But unfortunately, because of coronavirus, we were planning to host a mock election, which would've been amazing, but then that was called off because it's virtual. We planned to do a voter registration drive that was scrapped because it's virtual.

Mingyu: We really wanted to host the mock election because that's the best way. Getting young people to experience what it’s like to vote.

James: Um...

James: So…

James: I'm going to tell you a story.

James: You're describing the heyday of JSA. I actually don't know what that is. Because I started this club in my senior year of high school.

James: I was motivated by the fact that this was the year 2000 and there was an election coming up. 

Mingyu: Yep. (chuckles)

James: And so... We did the mock election...

James: We put so much into trying to bring this election to the campus and get students to express their voice in it, express their interest in it. And what I largely experienced was that nobody was interested. And it was extremely frustrating.

James: And so at the end of the year, we passed on the club to whoever was up for taking it over, And then I just never thought about it again.

James: I don't know whether there's ever been a heyday. I don't know whether it got more engaged, whether there was a big amount of activity because I wasn't there to see it. So I was, I was surprised to know that... you are here today.

Mingyu: I mean, have you thought that more  Asian Americans and more students in Diamond Bar High School have actually been more aware of political issues and have been engaged since the time you left? 

James: I had no way of telling. Um, I would assume no.

James: I think if I had any default assumptions, it would be that it would just stay either an apolitical or Republican environment.

Mingyu: I think you're what you're describing.

Mingyu: I think it's almost the opposite now. We had a BLM protest, and we had a huge crowd. We had protests in Chino Hills.

Mingyu: This election' s super contentious, I'm not gonna lie, and... 

Mingyu: This first year of Biden's presidency will also be a very contentious presidency, so I think that one thing that's changed maybe during your time was that Asian-Americans and students of Diamond Bar High School generally are forming opinions. They have their opinions.

Mingyu: It's just, they may not necessarily want to volunteer, or they may not necessarily want to vote, ‘cause I think that more people are engaged, just, you know, on making Instagram stories that say "Vote Biden" instead of Trump or "Vote Trump because X, Y, and Z." I just don't think they're actually getting their boots on the ground and making calls that we need.

James: You're describing an environment where it sounds like people are not as civically engaged as you would want. Do I have that right? 

Mingyu: Oh yeah, I've...

Mingyu: I think that if Diamond Bar High School engagement student engagement was truly up, I would see a lot more Diamond Bar High School students at campaign events, or volunteering, or phone banking, and I just don't see the numbers , but we still have some very contentious seats in Diamond Bar and we still have some very contentious elections on the state level.

Mingyu: And I think that if we can connect diamond bar high school students who are interested in politics, who may not necessarily know where to volunteer, to go and volunteer for these campaigns, I think it's a first step to. Putting them into a pipeline that eventually leads to more civic engagement.

Mingyu: I mean, that's mainly our goal.

James: Well, I have — I have one thing to say, in response to that, which is we never did anything that you're describing. We never had any contact with local elected officials.

James: We didn't create those access points. We did not phone bank for candidates.

James: You know, we did the mock election, but besides that it was kind of insular.

James: And that was, um, a shortcoming.

James: So I, I'm, just happy to hear that. Any of that is happening. The fact that that's even a goal is, is a big deal to me.

James: Because getting people to do those same things doesn't get easier after school. I think it actually gets harder because there's always something, some pressing need that people have to prioritize. 

James: And… because I'm actually still dealing with the same thing today.

MUSIC begins

James: You are miles ahead of what we ever did when we started. So I think that's a big deal.

James: Your compass is set, so... yeah, I would just say good luck overcoming the challenges. It sounds... it sounds great.

Mingyu: I mean, thank you so much for just giving me that piece of encouragement, I... I mean, we thought we were in a bummer hole coming into 2020, cause we were faced with a very declining membership.

Mingyu: So I guess just thank you for all the encouragement. I think... I think you'll see a lot more from Diamond Bar JSA now. (laughs)

CREDITS

JAMES VO: Today’s episode was produced by me and edited by Julia Shu. We were mixed by Timothy Lou Ly. And our theme music is by Dorian Love.

JAMES VO: Thanks to Anthony, Amit, Nick, Cris, Karl, Mingyu, and of course my mom, Myung Boo, for being a part of today’s show.

JAMES: And big thanks to Joshua Chou for helping me confirm that I’ve done at least one good thing with my life.

JAMES VO: I also gotta shout out to everyone who hopped on the phone with me while we were waiting for the results to come in: That’s Alex Laughlin, Dorian Love, Justine Lee, Melissa Sebastian, Marissiko Wheaton, Rachel Ramirez, and Sid Gupta.

JAMES VO: And if you want to be called randomly by a Self Evident producer, asking about how you voted and whether you can give us all hope for the future of democracy, you can join our Community Panel, at selfevidentshow.com/participate.

JAMES VO: Self Evident is a Studiotobe production.

JAMES VO: This is James Boo, filling in for Cathy Erway. And if you hear someone accusing you of being a Communist because you want Medicare for all, just have them call my mom.

Myung: “Oh, they're, they’re Communist.” You know what the Communists? I came from South Korea. You think this is Communist?

Myung: Stupid electoral system.

JAMES VO: Until next time, keep on sharing Asian America’s stories.

MUSIC ends