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Ron Wakabayashi was the Regional Director of the Western Region of the Community Relations Service from 1999 to 2020.
There are 3 parts of this interview and a summary: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and The Summary This is Part 1.
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0:00 Heidi Burgess And I think we're recording. Okay Hi. This is Heidi Burgess. I'm with beyond intractability and the second phase of the civil rights oral history project.
I'm talking today with Ron Wakabayashi who was regional director of the western region of the community relations service part of the US Department of Justice from 1999 to 2020. And Ron has graciously agreed to talk to us and tell us about his wealth of experience during that time.
So Ron, I'd like to start backing up from 1999 and ask you about your background before that time, your career before you got into CRS, and what prepared you for that, and what interested you in that, and where you were going.
1:08 Ron Wakabayashi Okay. Well, let me start with this. I m of Japanese ancestry. I was not born in the concentration camps, but I was, I was conceived in the concentration camps and born in you know, outside of California where my family originally resided because California was part of the exclusion area where Japanese Americans were not allowed during wartime.
I wanted to point out that I'm unusual in the sense that my father was first generation and my mother was second generation American. And in the Japanese American Community our... you know, our generations tend to be very stratified. That you were first, second, or third. And I'm kind of anomaly in being one and a half generations in the way we counted. And significant to me that you know, like, because my father was foreign born, you know, and my mother was American born, I think, you know, and my cohorts are generally like treated this third generation with American born parents. I think I had a different exposure and even like culturally different experience by being at a place. And I think it has relevance to my work later on.
Anyway, we return to Los Angeles. I grew up in initially for a bit in South Central Los Angeles. And then in the Boyle Heights East Los Angeles area. I, it was in a neighborhood that was very diverse: Jewish, Russian, Latino. You know, and Japanese. And I attended an all Japanese Roman Catholic school, even though I was Buddhist. It was the only Catholic mission in Los Angeles. You know, they had that status officially.
And then you know, I think if I just fast forward a little bit. The era that I'm growing up is in is the period of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the United States. And I think they were very influential. And in fact, so influential that in the 60s there was an organization of people just coming out of college or going into college of Japanese ancestry that convened to explore the question you know, what does the sense of racial and ethnic identity mean for persons of Japanese ancestry. So, I became involved in some very early stuff in the late 60s in the first pan Asian kind of organizing. And I ended up being on, the county and city of Los Angeles had a joint powers board to fund, you know, Johnson's war on poverty. So, it was the greater Los Angeles Community Action Agency. 15 Member board and I occupied one seat on that board even though I was I think the youngest person on the board. I was in my 20s. The agency focused overwhelmingly on Black and Latino communities. And it was just fascinating to me that that you know, one: is that the exposure that comes from that experience and you were aware of my relative placement was.
Like in that, in after the fact I kind of recognized they placed me to kind of run the Personnel Committee, you know, and things like that were that put me in sort of the middle of some contentious issues, particularly between Black and Brown communities. And in hindsight, I do think that there s a good deal of that has to do with kind of Japanese or Asian Americans being viewed as white adjacent or model minority. But I think a lot of experience comes out of that.
But part of also that timeframe and experience you know like, I became involved in exploring what the status of Japanese Americans was. And what we ran into was... the wartime internment issue. And... for my generation, most of us did not have an idea what that was. There were only two books out at that time. One was Illegal Tomb by Ten Brook at Berkeley. And another was kind of a popular history by Roger Daniels and it gave a quick flyover view of the internment. And it was enough information to just kind of feel like, that just doesn't seem right. You know, we know our community. You know, like our grandparents and parents it's just hard to imagine them as a military threat to this country. Right
Heidi Burgess: . Just being on the inside, saying you know, these people have their flaws with that, yeah that wasn't one of them.
But that rolled into like two things. I could become involved in community building as the organizer of a number of community service agencies, in drug abuse and in [inaudible] disabilities and so on. But it was also involved in this campaign that then eventually reaches the mainstream organization in the Japanese American Community, the Japanese American Citizens League. So, what you had is like kind of a bunch of outlier young people who were pushing the issue of the wartime internment and raising the issue of redress and reparations. It doesn't mainstream. It's kind of a you know, like I said, an outlier issue until the very late 70s when the Japanese American citizens is finally kind of put in the position to have to adopt a position support.
And... in that time I become active again with the JCL to work on that issue. It takes me in 1981 to become the national director of the Japanese American Citizens League while we run a campaign. And I do that for eight years.
And after we have the Reagan signature, you know I... personal issues. My... son was ready for elementary school and all that. I wanted to come back and be in Los Angeles, where there's a support system of family and so on.
We came back and then I had an interesting job as, at united way, as the Vice President of Community Problem Solving. And had the interesting kind of opportunity to kind of work on AIDS. So, AIDS Project LA. And work on early immigration issues with the Campaign for Humane Immigration Reform in Los Angeles. So, it gave me some broader experience.
And then Tom Bradley asked me if I would come on and be the Human Relations Director for the city of Los Angeles. I did that for five years and I took a leap up to the county Human Relations Commission, which was a larger entity. I did that for five years.
And after that five years I was you know, invited to come to the Community Relations Service and served there principally as the Western regional director, which has Hawaii, Guam, California, Nevada, and Arizona. I had short stints. I had six months as the Acting Deputy Director of the agency when the deputy resigned or retired.
And during the latter administrations where we were, where CRS was being, you know, we had... kind of imposed riffs or reductions in force. It ended up that I had the additional regional assignments. So, I had region 10, which is the Pacific Northwest: Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, Washington. And also got region 8, which is the mountain region. So you got the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming. I think I had about 14 states by the time I reached a retirement period.
So... that's sort of the work history and journey.
10:01 Heidi Burgess So you were regional director the whole time, the region just kept on getting bigger and bigger.
10:07 Ron Wakabayashi Right or else I double duty. You know, like when I was the Deputy Director, I also had kept up regional responsibilities.
10:14 Heidi Burgess Okay. Oh, so you were Deputy Director of all of CRS then?
10:20 Ron Wakabayashi Correct. Well, we had a retirement and I was supposed to fill it for a month. But federal governments lie. Or they don t know how to tell time.
10:30 Heidi Burgess Right. So when was that when you were Deputy Director?
10:36 Ron Wakabayashi Gosh. That was back about 10 years earlier before this. So that was in the, over on 2010.
10:46 Heidi Burgess Okay. So you survived that and then went back West for another 10 years.
10:50 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah no but actually I kept both. I was commuting for six months.
10:56 Heidi Burgess Oh wow. Okay. That sounds really tough... You were recruited into CRS you didn't choose it on your own. What made it of interest to you?
11:21 Ron Wakabayashi You know I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I really understood all of it, you know. But... you know, as I... mentioned, I was working in human relations. And human relations is an interesting field in the sense that you know, like we used to talk about it as a field without a discipline. That, what people expected from human relations people is that we want to get people to hold hands and sing kumbaya. And as a practical matter if you look at human relations commissions at the municipal level for the most part, I think they were decorative, symbolic, but not particularly meaningful.
What Tom Bradley did is pulled me into, you know, the cluster of public safety agencies. So I was under the supervision of the Deputy Mayor and I had the police, fire, EMTs, you know. Whereas most of time human relations commissions were stuck with youth, senior citizens, and you know, cultural affairs. And it gave a different perspective and a different exposure to the kind of, particularly with law enforcement. You know, as you may be familiar, like I think this Northeastern study that that some 90% of our civil unrest is tied to a police use of force incident that gets out of control. And... so that put me in... close contact with... law enforcement. And that was in a particularly challenging period. I mean I was there during Rodney King.
12:59 Heidi Burgess Okay, I was wondering where that played in.
13:01 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, toward the tail end of that, so. You know, it's interesting because, like, the police function. I think... the Rodney King case really kind of brought the police... work into kind of a public study to look at you know, like the role of the police. You know, and I think that's grown since then. But I think that's where it starts.
13:38 Heidi Burgess Interesting. So, were you involved in dealing with that incident when you were with the Human Rights Commission?
13:43 Ron Wakabayashi I was. And the aspect that I had a primary or dominant relationship was like if you remember in 1992, you know, the first days of the civil unrest were described as a... protest against police misconduct. Three days into it, it was called the Black-Korean riot. Right
Heidi Burgess: . So, it morphed and the morphing was really an interesting process. That was, you know, a huge lesson. But, and part of that was also looking at like, when doing an analysis of why that took place, that morphing took place. And... what you know, and how it was continuing to play out.
And, for example, the, we got... you know, one of my earliest things that we would call a mediation, or anything like that, was pulling... together the Brotherhood Crusade from the black community, which was well established and had been doing, you know, fundraising and support for social services and advocacy for... several decades.
On the Korean side you know, there was not the same level of infrastructure. Right,
Heidi Burgess: . The 1.5 generation that the young folks that were English speaking and were more culturally literate and could interact. And you know, and engage you know, the black community. You know we can convene them and pull them together, but they had no authority. The authority still resided with the elders. With the Korean Federation, you know, the Korean Council and other organizations that consistent of their elders who are largely first generation. Limited English speaking at best. And so, you know, the Koreans did not have the agility in the negotiations, you know, nor the experience.
And so, you could, you know, I could sit in there, you could see that kind of imbalance taking place there. There were small interventions that you could do. One of the things that I learned, there... was the... pastor of the... First Amity Church, a Reverend Chip Murrey, Cecil Murrey. Was, is almost a saintly figure if you re ever in his presence. You know, like you just, he just... feel his goodness. I asked Chip if he would... serve as an observer during these meetings. And I asked him like after we'd gotten into the meetings. And... I was..., correct in sort of assessing that the behavior of all the parties, you know, elevated in his presence. You know, I mean people were much more statesmen like in their positions, in their statements, then they were then without his presence.
16:33 Heidi Burgess And that was true for both the blacks and the Koreans?
16:37 Ron Wakabayashi Right.
16:38 Heidi Burgess Interesting.
16:39 Ron Wakabayashi Chip had an interesting, you know, when I say that you know, like I never, I don t know if you've met Reverend Vivian. Who is awesome. No
Heidi Burgess: . Yeah, but you know, I bet, I had the honor one time of moderating a panel with Rosa Parks. There's just some people that just have a kind of presence that you just feel that... there's just a goodness there that... sort of just calms people. Interesting
Heidi Burgess: .
But you know, and... you know, and while... that was not, you know, like in... outcome terms I don't know if that was a successful mediation. You know, I think it was a step forward. But I don't think that we, you know, reached a conclusion that... resolved things in the long term. The Korean Committee actually ends up moving out. You know.
17:31 Heidi Burgess So did this take place after the Rodney King... I would call them riots. I know that that's a loaded term and there was lots of dispute as to whether they were riots or not. But. So it was afterwards trying to somehow make amends between those two communities?
17:51 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, to try to get, you know, like, well continue the work. Even... during that period of, you know, prior to the King incident. So the Rodney King kind of gets some media, one level of like, because it s such an egregious you know..., and it s one of the earliest captures of a beating like that on video. Right
Heidi Burgess: .
But what's going on in the Korean community is like if you think of in that timeframe,in that timeframe, you have the African American Community in Los Angeles was located further... East actually. You know, into the hardcore area that we would call Watts. And then if you look and look at sort of the... kind of like migration or geographic change of the black community, it moves about a mile westward every decade. Okay
Heidi Burgess: .
Right? And that's moving forward.
And... by the time that we get to the 70 s. Okay and we mark the 70 s. In the 60s, you know, has the Civil Rights Act. And one of the pieces with the Civil Rights Act is also the impact on immigration. So the number, you know, the number and source of migration, you know to this country changes, you know, with the Civil Rights Movement in the US.
And by 1981, you know, the dynamics are... Well, two figures. In 1981, salsa, you know, outsells ketchup in the United States for the first time. In 1981, trade across the Pacific exceeds trade across the Atlantic. In 1981, the migration patterns of where people originate from becomes trans-Pacific rather than trans-Atlantic. Okay
Heidi Burgess: .
So that's the demographic change that's happening and impacting the coasts in particular. And the West Coast even more. So what I described as saying like South LA where there was an African American concentration of about 90% at one point, changes. So, there's advances. See what you get is middle and an upper income in parts of the community moving to outlying areas where they can buy larger houses. You get more bang for the buck for money. And you escape some of the inner-city grief. Right
Heidi Burgess: .
Incoming is the Latino population. You know, the high percentage of undocumented. You know in that mix of population. And that has certain dynamics to it. You know they're... vulnerable. You know, they don't use banks because they don't have documents. And so, they're vulnerable targets for a black community that has become a much more concentrated underclass. You know, the Koreans come in there, you know as merchants. There were 700 Korean owned stores.
20:54 Heidi Burgess And this is in the same geographic area?
20:57 Ron Wakabayashi Same geographic area and same time frame. I mean that s kind of the demographic change that takes place. So, you know like, and most of the, the Korean community, you know, migrates in that time period. Most of them come in as merchant class. So in that time window like Asian Indian, South... Asians, folks from India, come in in about the same numbers. But they come in as medical professionals. So they're upstairs. Right
Heidi Burgess: . The Koreans come in downstairs. So you know and they come in this merchant class. So, you start noticing the Korean stores, markets. And you know you get that stereotype developing. And also like in the Korean Community, the parts of the Community that came in earlier and that had more resource place their stores in more middle income and affluent neighborhoods. It's the later population, the most recent arrivals, that you know, take what's left, and that South Central.
And so, South Central you know, the pattern is you work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and you're really relying on family labor to make that work. So the first-generation immigrants, you know, they could work for them. But at the same time it's high crime. It's a high crime meaning, you know, petty crime, shoplifting and those kinds of things. And those kinds of things created a dynamic where there's tensions between the Korean store owners and you know, black consumers. Yeah that's disrespectful. You know that guy wouldn't even hand me the money. He puts the money down on the counter and shoves it at me. For Koreans it's impolite to touch people. So there's, you know, there's a cultural misunderstanding and also just the shoplifting. You know like, only one of you can come in at a time. That feels like you're being disrespected. Right
Heidi Burgess: .
You know, and then you have like sort of the, at the same time media silos. And I'll use a Latino example. I'd like the, there was a World Cup, you know, final game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Mexico vs United States. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . Mexico won. Huntington Park, which is a city with about 90% immigrant population, oh they're celebrating. Right
Heidi Burgess: . So, if you read the LA times, it seems like the Mexican immigrants celebrating, you know, get out of control. They were drinking, all and the police had to use force and they impose a curfew. If you read... the Spanish language newspaper it said like the police strip the Mexican flag away from celebrants, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. Depending on which media you read, because they were silos, different bad guy.
And you saw the same thing with the black/Korean conflict. You know the Sentinel newspaper, which is closely associated with the Brotherhood Crusade. And then with... the Korean community, I mean there s things like radio Korea. Like if you're familiar with the civil unrest that was almost a command central for the Korean folk, you know, grocers mobilizing.
You know, but the Sentinel story, in like the shooting of Latasha Harlins. Latasha was twelve years old. She goes into a grocery store. She goes to the refrigerator, opens up the refrigerator, opens it and takes a container of orange juice, uncaps it, takes a couple of sips out of it, and walks over the counter.
There's a camera but there's no sound. Mrs. Du is behind the counter. The interaction really appears like she's scolding her for opening the orange juice before paying for it. I said Latasha was 12 years old. She's 12 years old but she weighs 180 pounds. So Mrs. Du, you know, in the altercation, you know she... socked Mrs. Du. Mrs. Du goes down. She turns around. Mrs. Du comes up with a gun. The gun has been altered. It's got a hair trigger. We don't know if it was an intentional shot or just misfired. Anyway, kills Latasha. That goes to trial. Mrs. Du ends up getting probation. On that issue the black community is outraged. The day of the verdict that story is column left in the Sentinel. The next column is that an African American man got five years for killing a dog. Wow
Heidi Burgess: : That's juxtaposed. I mean those things, kind of more, kind of more dramatic sort of highlights.
But there's a lot of dynamics that are taking place that divide communities that... you could see. You know I mean this, it s sort of the measure of like what are the characteristics of newcomer communities. What... kind of institutions do they bring from the old country initially. And when do they form more out facing organizations that are socially and politically, you know, oriented. You know it comes in the second and third generation. Doesn't come in the first. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: .
So, you know, there s a bunch of incongruity that takes place. But we're inexperienced with it. You know we would run around saying you know, we're the most diverse place in the country and diversity is wonderful. And in fact, you know, like when I was the County Director, the one time I had, what in the language that we would call today is viral, where the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal quoted me. The quote is: the Los Angelas Human Relations Director says that diversity is not an asset. And what I said was: that diversity is neither an asset nor a liability. It simply is. And that the social, you know, public policy question is how do we extract its assets and minimize its liabilities? You know because I don't think everything about diversity is wonderful or everything is awful. It's like, and there's... a potential for both. And people need to think and work on that. You know? Because they re... both kind of facets to it like with everything else. But you know, it's an interesting time period that we came through.
So, I think the human relations experience was really helpful for me. And in fact, because of the experience that we had, I started, you know, we created the thing called the California Association of Human Rights Organizations. And inside my own HRS, I started cutting mutual assistance agreements with other human relations commissions within the county. So I'm the County Director and I've got 88 cities in my county. But most of them you'll want to hold hands and sing kumbaya and hold poster contests. And that's all fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Every once in a while they have an advocacy issues come up because some... incident takes place. Some critical, what we would call a critical incident. And learning is not, when they had critical incidents, they were... conflicted because they had one role as they understood. The pushing diversity and the outcome and everything's wonderful. And this other one of trying to sort out the conflict where you might have to take a side. Or you might have to sit people down and be a neutral. And they weren't used to being neutrals. And so we had a lot of the work to do. And but we created a mutual assistance network that kind of tried to study that and train on that. You know cities didn't want to kind of go in that direction because if they had a conflict of that sort it's bad PR and it s bad for property values and business. So they would rather have it go away.
But I think it was a learning experience for us that you know, of one, if you look back when I was describing as the kind of dynamics in black/Korean conflict, you could see stuff. And in that same time because the county human relations had responsibility for an annual hate crime report. I had the good fortune of running into an academic, a geographer. And what he did for us was we, he took all, you know, other demographic data like, you know, zip code maps of communities that had extracted. Give me the communities where the population has flipped from one dominant population to another. And then we geo-coded hate crime. Racial hate crime. LGBT. And you know, the racial hate crime, you know, coincided with the demographic shift maps. The LGBT...
30:13 Heidi Burgess It did or did not?
30:14 Ron Wakabayashi
It did. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: LGBT hate crime didn t. And when we... start picking up data like where are the victims and where the perpetrators came from. You know, like racial hate crimes really tend to be very much neighborhood. Where people are contesting over space and other resources. LGBT hate crime, folks drove a distance, and in groups, to go do, you know, their mischief. Very different phenomena and much more a pattern of violence. You know where religious hate crime was vandalism. So I think that work prepared me a whole lot to go to the CRS and be able to read things, you know fairly quickly.
And, you know, and then, in my CRS experience, you know, I think I got to CRS in... I don't know how to describe. My internal sort of description. I think we had... a period of the CRS where we had kind of a frontier agency for a long time. That, it didn t have a whole lot of rules. Uh huh
Heidi Burgess: .
I remember running into one of the old timers you know, and I asked, you know, like that, because I want to know the story about the early days in the 60s. And people tell me stories like they gave me a letter, man. They gave me a letter like, said like alright you have Alabama and you re now officially, this letter says that you re Department of Justice. All right, and you want to be available to kind of to intervene in conflict. You re a mediator. Conflict resolution. That's all they told them. He says, you figure it out from there. Right
Heidi Burgess: . And then they told me stories of like there were marches where you had like, a civil rights march going, and then they get word you know, there's a Klan march. It's going to intersect it. And so, one of the guys told me this story that he went to the march organizers and said: this is a little unusual, but you know I'm a preacher's kid. I wondered if it'd be okay if you d allow me to lead the group in prayer before you go any further. Now as a fed you're not supposed to do that. Right? Right (Heidi Burgess). What he did is he stopped the route long enough for the... Klan folks to crisscross and not intersect. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . So he told me I'm like, I think, I don't think you did the right thing, but I think you did the right thing. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . You know it's, yeah, I think that's something I'd rather apologize for, okay I'm sorry I did that.
33:05 Heidi Burgess Right. Easier to ask forgiveness than for permission.
33:12 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah. But it was an earlier time period. I think when I get there one of the things that I think I brought to it was to look at it and say hey you know, like, there's some patterns to the work we do. And I think we benefit from systematizing a little more.
You know, for example, like, there s a map that they still use. Like, I have a line drawing where, of a protest, where I break a protest into four segments. That there's an assembly stage, a march stage, a rally stage, and a disband stage. And it's really looking at, like just seeing those a number of times and saying you know, they have distinct stages and they're really almost four different events in terms of the risk for something to become problematic. You know, and that and then, if you can plan on that basis. You know, like at stage one, with what kind of things you want to make sure you have.
And so, it resulted in us developing some methodology. Like we ought to have the organizers and the cops meet, if we could, beforehand. Have each other's communications information. Have an understanding on the assembly area and if the crowd becomes larger than what you anticipated and spills into the street, you know, do we have an understanding with the police what the contingency for that is rather than to enforce something at that time. You know, just kind of...
And it's evolved over time. Even like things of creating, you know, like police would have their command post and because we were Justice Department, generally we were allowed in. But the community would never be allowed in there. In fact, I had one case where actually you had a tribal situation where there were tribal police and the Sheriff's Department and the Sheriff wouldn t let the tribal police into their command post because they were not certified, you know, post certified. But it just would, you know like, if you guys would just talk to each other it would just save a lot of grief because just the three Indian deputies, you know killed by Sheriff's Officers in a border conflict. So, we got them to agree, like, would you go, you know, would you be willing to go side by side, you know, because these were outdoor command posts. Basically tents. And we put them right next to each other. So you know one wouldn t let the other inside the other. But we can talk across the table. Okay
Heidi Burgess: . And then we created our own community command post where we can have protesters, clergy, you know..., other assets, the police. Yeah, I'll come into the same space and problem solve like the situation that would you know, during a protest.
But so, there were things like that that developed I think in our era. So there s much more, in some ways, much more methodological. You know, organized in the way we looked at things. I think it went off the deep end in recent years where then, you know, they went too far. That only these seven off the shelf programs are what you can do. You know and that doesn't work. You know, situations are too different. I mean, I think the prototypes are good to give us a framework and understand. So that's sort of a quick overview journey.
36:55 Heidi Burgess That s a great overview and I've got some questions. I want to pause us for just a minute because I've been double recording this using the zoom recording and then a backup recording to my own computer and... Okay
Ron Wakabayashi: . Three minutes ago I got a message that the backup recording has failed because I'm out of disk space and I want to just see if I can fix that. I'm pretty sure that the zoom recording will work, but I hate to lose it. So let me just fiddle around for a minute here.
37:34 Ron Wakabayashi Go ahead. Are you in Colorado or are you back east?
37:40 Heidi Burgess I'm in Colorado. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah did she go to school here or what.
37:39 Ron Wakabayashi Okay. My wife, she s a buffalo. Yeah she got her bachelor's there and social work degree from UCLA. Okay, so.
37:42 Heidi Burgess Oh yeah? Yeah
Ron Wakabayashi: . Did she go to school here or what?
37:46 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, she got her bachelor s there. Her social work degree is at UCLA.
37:53 Heidi Burgess Okay. What years?
37:55 Ron Wakabayashi I don t even remember. Like, she's 73.
37:57 Heidi Burgess Okay, we were probably there at the same time. I m 71. Okay
Ron Wakabayashi: . And I did my undergrad and grad work here and we left for one year and went to Boston and decided we like Boulder too much and so we came back and made a life here. So yeah.
38:20 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah she gave me kind of a quick ride through Boulder the other day. We were there. Boulders sweet. It was a nice place.
38:25 Heidi Burgess It is a very nice place. So I'm doing the backup recording again. We'll have to take that middle part out of the zoom recording. Okay so we're back in business now, I hope.
Okay
Ron Wakabayashi: . So, I want to go way back to something that you were talking about early on. Before you got to CRS you were talking about the mediation that you did between the Korea shop owners in LA with the Rodney King situation and the blacks. And you said that you weren't sure it was successful because I gather the Koreans ended up moving out. What was your goal there? What were you hoping to accomplish?
39:06 Ron Wakabayashi You know, I think, and the,... Let's see, I'm not, I've kind of felt this to my whole career that... the word resolution doesn't really fit in our business. And we can... advance things. You know, you can make it better. But fixing, you know like, is sometimes so complicated. And so the fixing, you know like for the black/Korean situation if we do, you know, like you know, we assess why there is a conflict. Because you know, in looking at it differently, you know, the Koreans didn't live in South Central. They just had their shops there. There s not much interaction. They actually did hire from the community. But they didn't understand that you know, like the kid with the red bandana and the blue bandana shouldn t be put in the same spot at the same time. You know, so there's some literacy on... their side that helps you know, can help out. There s like the misunderstanding that I described in like just seeing how they give change. Right (Heidi Burgess).
You know, and in also in that time period, you know, the there's an awareness in... the black community that there is an overabundance of liquor stores in South Central. And there's a push back against them, you know. And so there is a social interest in the black community to reduce the number of liquor stores but there's an economic interest in the Korean community that you know, we paid a lot of money for those liquor licenses. And to survive. And you know, that it's... you know..., it's like for the Koreans, you know, it's... a, it's not anything you can waive a wand at.
But part of that process I think is to help the Koreans understand what the context in the US is. You know, like what a shop in South Central versus Diamond Bar suburb, you know. And what the implications of that are. And you know, like you know, it's... less overhead to start a store in South Central than Diamond Bar. But it has other consequences. But it's kind of an education. So we got Small Business Administration involved to help do some... training in the Korean community so they can understand it. There were some community-based organizations that did the same kind of thing, you know. Just for them... going into a business to recognize what they need to have in their business plan that's beyond like, you know like, profit and loss and inventory and those kinds of things. It's... a you know, there's a different ingredient here.
And then we arranged to like, to get, one of the agreements that we got was to get the Sentinel and to, and the Radio Korea, to have staff from the other, you know, news agency placed with them. You know, is kind of the idea that they're talking about in newsrooms now. That kind of the diversity in the route newsroom can help them interpret what that, what something means.
You know, because there's a good part of it that's misunderstanding. So, the idea was to just kind of peel it down, you know, And so when I say resolution, you know, I can do resolution is it's like you know, how do you get to a total fix?
And even with my work now, or like, you know, the... conflict model that kind of, the basic model in my head is like: is this a critical incident? You know, the... sequence is like: okay, do we need to kind of get this to just plain stop? Meaning suppression. Okay. So Heidi you grab that guy, I'll grab the other guy and we're going to suppress it. Okay. And the containment, next phase, is like you said, like, look if I let go of you, you promise to quick hitting, you know, and fighting? Right
Heidi Burgess: . Okay, so now you got, now you got containment. And the third phase is... kind of an assessment. All right, what started this? Okay. And depending on what the assessment is like, well that sounds like some of that can be helped but if you, if we all talked. Would you be willing to sit down and talk? And then you get to engagement. For me, for me, engagement is the goal. Okay (Heidi Burgess). Resolution is like really extra because that could take decades, or even centuries, or a millennium. And... You keep running into the same conflict in a little bit different form. It just kind of spirals through if you're in a space long enough. So engagement was, is kind of like my measure of what I want to get.
Even in the short term. Like we had a shooting in Sacramento. So the police kill a young man. He's killed in his grandmother's backyard after he s run from them. They encounter him because there's a call that there s, that someone s vandalizing cars. They spot this young man. He runs. And he runs and he eventually finds his way into a yard. It happens to be his grandmother's yard. Pursuing officer ends up shooting through a fence and kills them. So then, you know, and there d been some prior incidents too, right. It's not the first, it s, but this is one that's kind of, that's triggered a lot of reaction. So my folks going in I said like, what we want to do is one, you know like, we want to assess who's doing what. So you know, and nowadays that there's a difference that social media will give you a window into who's doing what where. And what I mean by that is that you could see like social media in one neighborhood that's really grieving. They knew him. The sadness is anger. You know it's personal. In another neighborhood, the protests who have aggregated there, you know, are people who've been around a while and want reform. You know, they want changes. So, you know, kind of parallels more Black Lives Matter folks. And then there's a third neighborhood where these folks are like what we might consider ANTIFA or alt right. These folks want to trigger something. Right
Heidi Burgess: . So there's at least three different crowds there.
45:56 Heidi Burgess Now did you see those crowds back earlier as well... the names you're using now clearly are names that are active now. But back in the 60s and 70s were similar type organizations?
46:11 Ron Wakabayashi There's some. But... the growth of what we would call alt right and ANTIFA is different. Like... right now like, if you look at Portland. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . I mean that s being treated as mutual combat because you, in essence the folks that you would call reformers or protesters, you know they're not going out in that stuff because this is now mutual combat between groups who ideologically are not committed to nonviolence. Right
Heidi Burgess: . Right? So that, before you know the, I mean there was always a degree of anarchists and we would watch for them.
But they tended to be in certain geographic areas. You know it wasn't always the case. Like the Bay Area, San Francisco, I would look for them. In Phoenix interestingly there's... a population of folks that you would look for, you know, even historically. But for most protests that's... not a large element. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . You know, and so, but still, you should look for it and especially now you should look for it even more.
47:18 Heidi Burgess Right, I want to get back into that later quite a bit more. But let me finish up with the early days first. Okay
Ron Wakabayashi: . So you said the mediation wasn't successful, but it sounds to me like it probably was successful at doing the engagement phase. Just not reaching an ultimate resolution. Would you?
47:44 Ron Wakabayashi I think so like, if using that language of resolution means that you have any kind of, permanent is too strong a word, but even like some kind of like stable... resolution, stable piece. I think we can get to an interim piece. And these things keep needing to be refreshed.
48:03 Heidi Burgess Right. But if you'll just get to the point where you have some understanding, some better cultural understanding between the groups, and maybe a process going forward for responding to incidents. Which brings me to the case that you sent the articles about. And that goes back, I think, to your discussion of templates and patterns of situations and how to respond. Sorry?
48:36 Ron Wakabayashi Are you referencing Inglewood?
48:39 Heidi Burgess Yeah, so what I want to say for the camera is that Ron sent us a newspaper article and document that I believe you created for CRS talking about the Inglewood case and what could be learned more generally from that case about how CRS should respond to similar situations.
We will post those documents if Ron is agreed to that along with the interview. But what I'd like to ask you to do now is to just give some background on the case. The articles actually didn't give all that much background to tell us a little bit what it was about and how you proceeded to engage in that one.
49:32 Ron Wakabayashi Okay well Inglewood California is historically an interesting community. Right now, it s the home of the LA rounds. And you know, but it's gone through a number of demographic shifts. It's gone from a white community to a black community to a Latino community. It s shifted quite a bit over time.
At the time of the Donovan Jackson incident, this was like a 14-year-old young black man who is you know, in a vehicle that was stopped by Inglewood PD. Is riding with this father. And... they were pulled over and their vehicle was located in a... gas station. There was a man with a video camera in the motel that was adjoining that caught this on video.
So what the... visual that they captured was this young man, 14 years old. He's... a very slender young man, you know small stature. Is handcuffed behind his back. And you can see it s an officer who's pretty well built, you know, who was in back of the young man. And what, the video captures the officer taking his head and slamming it on the cruiser, on the trunk of the cruiser. And again, the visual you know, went viral and became the case.
The context in Inglewood is that Inglewood was a community that was going to transition at that point from a predominantly black community to like a large, you know a growing, a very much growing Latino community. And there's tension going on between those two communities, particularly at the gang level. There was, they were headed to an all-time high in terms of level of homicides taking place in that city. So the concern was you like, you know when you have incidents take place, or you know, any kind of unrest it, you know like, the unrest is, you know, like when I... would describe like looking at an assessment of a... situation, there are those who have you know, like a direct interest in the situation, people who are grieving or know people who want a reform. But there are other interests that also are in there. There are people that you know, like in some communities they want to pay back somebody else and it gives them cover for them. Or you want to get a television set, you know. There are other forces at work.
But so the conflict between the Latino and black gangs was one of the interest that we wanted to kind of be conscious of because there'd already been a significant pattern of homicides already. You know that I said it was already headed towards like probably an all-time high for Inglewood.
52:30 Heidi Burgess What year was this?
52:33 Ron Wakabayashi
Yeah, gosh, I can t, it s early, it s 2004.
52:36 Heidi Burgess Okay. And we can get it off the article so I was just curious for the immediate discussion
52:46 Ron Wakabayashi So Inglewood is a... blood city. Meaning, you know, it's Bloods rather than Crips. Okay (Heidi Burgess). Okay so the insignias are red. It's Crenshaw Mafia is the dominant black gang. And it's... working with that. The Latinos are not, you know, there's gang activity but they're not organized into by one major group. You know their side is more neighborhood still. But that's sort of the context that gave worry to people that you know like, this thing could inflame you know, much larger than the original conflict. So there's... a number of trials that go forward. It s... one of the few times you know, in that era, you know that police even got to trial. So it goes on to trial. The outlook for, you know, the third trial was still like, it's tough. You know, across the country there's...
53:50 Heidi Burgess Let me stop you for a second. I know what you're talking about because I read the article but people who are watching this and haven't read the article might not know that the first two trials of the police officer were hung juries. Right
Ron Wakabayashi: . So if I remember the article right, they ended up not... Did they try it a third time? I thought I remembered that they didn't.
54:15 Ron Wakabayashi No this was the third one. Okay
Heidi Burgess: . And so, you know like, people are already mistrustful that they'll get anywhere. I mean you have, you know, one: trials are rare. Convictions are even rarer. They're unheard of. Right (Heidi Burgess). And our expectation is that the same disappointment is going to occur again. You know.
54:43 Heidi Burgess So, were there riots after the first two?
54:47 Ron Wakabayashi No. There weren t. You know, it was contained. Well, they were disruptions. They were disruptions. You know like, it's sort of like, how do you find a riot versus a disruption? I mean like, you know, like it... I guess I'm trying to measure scale. And it didn t go on for days. You know, it was... a flare up. There was... violence. There was destruction. But it, you know, it was not, you know, it was in sort of the central business district. And it didn't... persist for days and days it just...
55:25 Heidi Burgess Okay. Did CRS get involved at either of those earlier events?
55:29 Ron Wakabayashi To some extent. In those earlier ones, the, we were involved all along. In those earlier ones we were involved with more local community. You know, because what... you see in sort of the third trial builds over this whole time period. Okay
Heidi Burgess: .
So there were things that were early examples. So there was an active ministerial alliance. So that element was in place. You know, we started working with the schools. The location of Inglewood High School was such that kids dismissed from school, you know the dismissal we d ride into that civic center area and... there were some businesses like indoor Swat Meets that were... historically victimized and just as a kind of type of business are vulnerable. They're hard to lock up. So, there were some things done at that point, you know, to work interventions with the... school district.
I guess the concern is over time, over the multiple trials, the concern was that the frustration was building. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . And so, you know, like the... that third trial, we really had geared up and there was... this kind of this buy in from the much broader sense from municipal leaders, from church leaders, you know, school officials. By that time there was enough time to put together a pretty broad-based plan of a community responding. Because I think if you read like kind of what was existing on the day of the verdict, because and that gives you the peak of it. Virtually every church in Inglewood, you know, the pastor didn't, been getting bullet points to help with the sermons, that each church marquis virtually had, you know, peace after the verdict on their on their marquis and the church's... Storefronts throughout Ingland, particularly downtown area, had signage with that messaging. Schools, you know, were staggering the release of the kids on that day and embedding teachers and directing them in a different direction away from downtown, you know, Inglewood. You know, we had the ministerial alliance set up. They had a parking space at the court set up for them. You know, their microphones, camera places with you know, like, you know the parking spaces were limited up there. But you know, but to get the ministerial alliance to be the first voices out, you know, after you know, there s any kind of verdict announcement. You know, it was set up.
And then probably, what I described, what I think was the biggest piece, is that we in gotten the gang members, you know, to do leafleting for a peace or prayer vigil at the end of the day. So, you have Crenshaw Mafia guys running out in yellow t-shirts saying Peace Ambassadors, you know, in four areas of the city leafleting, calling for people to come to a prayer vigil at the end of the night, calling for peace. Where I think that was instrumental is you know, like the, when you think about civil unrest, how does civil unrest start? You know, what's the mechanism? You know like, there isn't someone that goes out and says, all right, everyone go riot. You know, it doesn't happen that way. You know, what are the mechanisms?
And you know, actually like you know, like the guy I've... The Inglewood case built on kind of some of the thoughts by, you know Thomas Shelling? Shelling like is known for Nobel Prize for game theory in economics. Running the Harvard Business School. But he wrote stuff up on conflict because he was involved in conflict. But you know, he pointed out that you know, like the way that, one of the ways that riots go forth, even in the old days was by media. And so you know, there were some 20, you know, sound trucks, satellite trucks even out then in front of the courthouse. But you know, so we get the first sound bites out. Right? We have... the ministers out with the first sound bites. They're the first ones that they're, that s gonna go out. Who did the media want to follow? They wanted to follow the gangsters in the yellow. shirts So, in a sense, it's a distraction strategy. You know, to say, you know, and a messaging strategy.
And then we had our own command post set up like in case, if it went to stupid. You know, we wanted to control where all the talking heads would go. You know, because sometimes if you get different people talking from different places, they send different messages. We wanted to concentrate a place where we could get more alignment of message so when we arrived there, you know, saying like this is what was just said, this was, you know, to kind of help script it.
1:01:01 Heidi Burgess And the media was willing to go along with that?
1:01:14 Ron Wakabayashi It was a great thing of the visual, of seeing you know, like gangsters doing a prayer. Because what's going to happen, you know, like in... after... any verdict, even that one, the media is going to run out with their microphone and run up to people and say well what do you think of that verdict? Right
Heidi Burgess: . If you're a young person, you know, if you don't say the right thing, you know, you're gonna get beat up. Right
Heidi Burgess: . Yeah, I mean that's just crazy. That s the dynamics, no matter what they individually thought of it. So we wanted to create a different dynamic. So, you know, you get a different first question. But I think unless you have an assessment of how these things work, it's hard to build a plan that addresses them.
1:01:56 Heidi Burgess Totally agree. I'm just really interested that you were able to get the media to not ask the question of what did you think of the verdict or did you did they ask that, and you managed to get the kids to know to say well I'm disappointed, but we're trying to maintain...
1:02:15 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, the kids had that message, because they went through a training. You know, and like the training was interesting to me, part of the training actually was transformative in terms of the relationship with the police department and the gangs.
Because there s a guy, the guy who did the training was an old buddy of mine, Bill Burgess. Burgess is in the wheelchair. He's a wheelchair because, you know, he caught a bullet a long time ago. You know, and he was involved in earlier riots. I mean he told me stories of like yeah man when they started, I saw on the news I was in Phoenix and it was starting to burn, you know, I felt obligated to start a fire in Phoenix. But he says, you know it's hard to start a fire in Phoenix. You know, and he couldn't do it. But it told me of like sort of like the contagion and how that works. So I'm having Bill do the training. He can tell his own story about it, right, as he s training the young folks. And he's got... their respect because he's an OG.
But you know like, I had Inglewood PD in the back of the room. You know, saying hey come check it out, you know, because I know you guys are suspicious. So Bill run these trainings that the young men. He's saying look, you know like, no weapons. I don't want anyone carrying, packing, nothing at this thing. We don't want a distraction from the message. The message is we, this is our neighborhood and we want to keep it safe. We don't want it to burn. So they're kind of refining the message for them. And they're reinforcing it, saying okay we don't want you packing. And then he says, if any of you guys have a warrant, I can't have you here. Stay home.
And then he took, and this is kind of the convincing line, he tells them look, see those guys in the back of the room? You know, those are the pigs. That's the Inglewood PD. Right? They're required to respect your rights. I'm not. If you guys are packing, or you come here, you know, and you got a warrant out, I'll kick your ass. And the cops are seeing in the back of the room, all right. You know, I think it was transformative in their relationship. In fact, the day when... the verdict was coming in, they helped those folks get parking in the neighborhood that they were going out in. So, you know, and you know like, you know, there's a, I had serendipity too. You know I was working with a guy named Kalid Shaw, who is one of the founders of the crips. And he had created the Stop the Violence Foundation. And he had what they call street credibility with the kids. You know and Shaw I close friends now, but we got close then.
But in a sense like, I think in our work, all of us like depending on the environment we're going in, we need co-signers. And I'll give you an example. You know, on... when this case first broke, they were doing prayer vigils down at Inglewood City Hall. Right, I went down there. I went down there every night for a month and I couldn't... make entry. And finally after a month, you know, this... one woman took pity on me said yeah I see you down here every night. What s up? So, I talked to her and she was... my guide in. She was a cosigner and it was a vehicle.
Like, I know in my office James, James is six three. Wears his head in dreads. Grew up in that neighborhood. He would have gotten in there in a hot second. But me, it took me a month to get in.
1:05:58 Heidi Burgess So that brings me back to a question that I was gonna ask, was what was CRS s role in all of this and what had you brought you to going down there every night for a month without getting in?
1:06:15 Ron Wakabayashi I can t tell you, I mean like, one is I think my own stubbornness. You know, I wanted to get in. You, know, I mean because I've recognized, I mean I think all of us. Well let me do this a different way.
You know, when I was the Human Relations Director, you know, they were, they would ask me to do diversity training in different departments. And I didn't want to do it. I said I don t want to do it. I don t do diversity training. But I'll do a thing that I call identity management. And they said, how is that different? I said well, diversity management, there s too many different flavors, you know. You can t give a content-based training on cultural diversity. There's just too much information. You know, what we have 160 different language groups. You deserve several PhDs to be literate in all that. But what you can do is like, the one constant in every transaction that you have is: you. You know and we all have that experience. Like when I wake up in the morning and I have a meeting, you know it's like I think about how does this Japanese face, at this age, you know, gonna play when I'm, you know, going to this meeting. And I tried to think through how it's gonna play. You know when I first went to United Way, there was a young woman who became one of my best friends. She wouldn't come out of her office because she automatically assumed that I would be uptight and conservative because I was Japanese and that would be difficult to work for.
So, it's learning to manage your own identity through it. And I think it's different at different times. It's situational. You know, but I, it's a process for me. Like..., as long as like, when I went out there like, I you know I didn't, I wore my CRS shirt. They could tell I'm government just by my dress. I wasn't concealing that. So, they didn't see me like as undercover or you know, or someone who is, you know, it's just open. And you would talk to me maybe one person, one night, and make a little headway and so on. But I, you know, but I wanted to make headway in this.
You know, and like so much of our work involved working in the black community. And it's not, it's as true with other communities. I know like when I work with law enforcement, when the cop asks me hey what department did you come out of? You know, then I feel like you know, like you know, I'm authentic enough that he feels like I've been there enough that... I understand. And I think you can get, and I find that in so many places.
When I was in Katrina, they sent us out to Katrina. You know, to work with the destabilized communities. And I just noticed that there were all these Latinos out there, right? And I looked and the census said there were only 10,000 the whole area. So why are there so many? You know and so I went out there just to talk to them. But I also contact the Western Union and said hey what's your count, you know, on folks sending money, you know, out of this area in the month before Katrina? And how many people do you think that involved? And they came back with an estimate that was 100,000 people. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . Then I talked to FEMA. I said, hey, you know, like, I know what the census is. This is what Western Union tells me and then I went out and when I saw those guys out there, I started talking to them and I'm not a Spanish speaker. You know, but I have a little bit. I have vocabulary. And I heard them talking. And I heard one guy use the vos form of you. So I knew enough that that s, you know, that s from El Salvador. So, I talked to him and he says..., this is my friend, he s from Honduras. I says oh chachos. Which is their nickname for themselves. And... that was enough for them like, you've been there, you've been with us before. And they let me in. You know, and so it's just learning stuff like that.
There's, you have to manage your identity. I mean the negative side, like when I was the Japanese American Citizens League Director, when I would walk down Union Square in downtown San Francisco with my suit, the hookers would come up, want a date? And I'm going I'm not a Japanese businessman, leave me alone. I learned to throw the jacket over my shoulder and strut and talk loud, hey what's up. You know, just to... But I think we've learned parts of that all the time. But I just think we can refine it.
Anyway, you know, like so Inglewood was that kind of challenge for me, initially. I mean I just got stubborn after a while. You know I want...to get in. And I started meeting some few people. And you know it's like that. You know like when we enter cases, you know, sometimes you'll enter very marginally. And you think you've got the universe of what's involved with the case. And you got nothing. You got an edge. And you just don't realize that you only have an edge. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . This... time I just could realize I only had an edge.
1:12:06 Heidi Burgess So what was your goal to... what were you trying to accomplish to get in? What actually was your role once you did get in?
1:12:12 Ron Wakabayashi Well, I think you know, it's..., my attitude is that you..., have to base what you do based on an assessment. And particularly not just your assessment. That your assessment helps... inform the communities that you're working with. Right (Heidi Burgess). Right. And because, and you can do that by asking questions. You know like, hey I see this or I don t understand this. Help me understand this. And you know I could hear their concerns. You know, the concerns I shared... with you about that there would be a larger racial tension with Latino gangs that would, there d be more stray bullets and people are concerned about that. Or you know, that the economy would drop further down and people wouldn't have jobs. You know... a bunch of things. Or the police, the police, would become much harsher in their treatment of folks. There's a lot. You can hear their concerns and some of it was, that's nicely stated. Some of it was just saying you know those MFs this and that, that's there too.
And then we started convening meetings to build this assessment. And the assessment becomes kind of a group activity. And each informs the other. Because it's like, I don't think any one of us has the lens to cover everything. And even like, even if even with differences people disagree, people say, you re just not seeing it right. But you know, you get... closer to a composite picture. And you also get closer to a composite response. Like you know, the idea of the of the ministers putting up signs on their marquees, of doing weekly bullet points and sermons. Out of that came like well, more people need to understand, you know, why this is a tough case.
You know and Inglewood... is the home of a radio station, KHLH. It s owned by Stevie Wonder. You know and it's predominantly a music format station, but he's going to talk section to it. But you know we got the talk section of that to bring on government attorneys, civil rights attorneys, activists, to talk about Peace Officer s Bill of Rights. You know, as one topic. To explain why that exists. Like police officers are required, you know, to make a report after one of these incidents. But those reports are not available to the public or to the Court. And the community is like, why not? You know, saying it's a fifth amendment thing. You know like, if they're giving up their right to self-incrimination, but the protection is that it can't be used against them. So, in exchange for us getting information on what happened, you know, they're protected. You know, we'd have to give it some other way. And you know more people buy it than don't. You know, and understand, they understand the dynamics of it.
But some of the things about whether our protections about police, you know the, even what are coming up now, you know, are brought up so that it's, in some ways it's to kind of frame the expectations that people have of the outcome. I mean they can still be upset. Right
Heidi Burgess: . That's part of the conversation. But it's saying like, you can be upset, but this is, you know, this is what you want to change. You know, you can't expect that this, because you know, the rules are just this way right now.
1:15:44 Heidi Burgess So who else... was involved in these meetings?
1:15:49 Ron Wakabayashi Like I said, the ministerial alliance. They were there. I mentioned Khalid Shaw from Stop the Violence. County Human Relations. James, you know, at that time did not work for me. He worked for the county. And you know, I had him at those meetings. There's a young woman who was part of like the Latino gangs who is now running for Mayor of Inglewood.
You know, there's a woman named Vicki Lyndsey, who just passed away. Vicki was a bus driver and she had... a group where she had pulled together mothers who had lost their children to violence, either cops or gang violence. And it was an amazing group to me because like, this was a multi racial group. I didn't think it was going to be when I went. It was multi racial. And I saw the bonding between these different, very different, women. You know, both racially, class wise, geographically. They were very diverse. But the shared experience of losing a child had such a bond. It was just, you know, a learning for me. Was just, is learning for me to see that. You know, I know, sometimes like you know when you break up groups into like, count off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I've done things like people who had, you know, like a baby in the family in the last year, go over there you re a group. And people that have death in the family, go over there you re a group. I ve seen them bond so much faster. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . You know, so, but, so, the group kept growing that way, you know. We s bring another minister for another denomination. But, and Stop The Violence had an office there, and then the mayor had his staff there, and the police started coming.
1:17:29 Heidi Burgess So what I'm hearing from you is that the people who were coming to these meetings were all people who had constituencies over which they could influence their behavior. Yeah (Ron Wakabayashi). So, they were trusted spokespeople for one element of the community. Yeah
Ron Wakabayashi: . And if you got enough of them in there, then you'd have all of the major players of the community covered.
1:17:57 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah. And then there's a tone setting to that in a community, you know. You know that... the theme of peace after the verdict.
You know like, there's another shooting much later on in Oakland. Oscar Grant. But if you look at the, when that event was, you know, like that was being disrupted and they were clearly anarchists who were there, you know like edging it on. It was challenging that way. You had, you know, Bay Area has a large contingent of anarchists that they could mobilize. You know, and they were doing some serious property damage and so on. But, you know, but, you know, that night of that event, you know, the people, the young people of Oakland, they held defense in their own neighborhoods away from that downtown area. They had... the local neighborhood throwaway paper that had the big headline you know, that was on all the news racks saying, Peace After the Verdict, or, you know, Justice is not violence, Violence is not Justice. You know but they had a whole theme on it. You could see it all over.
1:19:07 Heidi Burgess And is that something that they came up with independently or is that something that you helped urge on?
1:19:16 Ron Wakabayashi The newsprint they did. You know..., we taught them like, how about doing things in a neighborhood that pulls the crowd away just to diminish the crowd. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . Yeah and then they say yeah, well yeah, and check this out, we're doing this.
And then this particular outfit, and this, this was a center that had a lot of profile. In fact, President, I think Obama early in his term, had visited. And some money followed that. So, they had their own video equipment, you know studio and all that. And they packaged PSAs, calling for peace that the young people did. You know, they call, you know, they set up the events outside in the neighborhoods away from downtown. So you get this tone that young people, you know, were trying to protect their community. You know...
1:20:05 Heidi Burgess And what do you do with the anarchists?
1:20:10 Ron Wakabayashi Isolate them. They don't, like they went downtown, you know, so with the downtown folks is that like, you know, we talked to the government folks: can you do an early release of people that day when we have a verdict? You know, private employers: can you do an early release? Okay. Ministers, you know, are you willing to hold like a...
1:20:27 Heidi Burgess The goal is to get everybody out of downtown.
1:20:33 Ron Wakabayashi Take away the crowd. I mean that s part of like, there s a kind of diffusion to bring it down and there s a kind of diffusion to spread it out. They both contribute.
1:20:43 Heidi Burgess So basically, the anarchists don t have anybody to watch them. Nobody to egg them on.
1:20:49 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, and you want to take away the crowd.
1:20:55 Heidi Burgess Does that seem to calm them down or do they keep at it anyway?
1:21:01 Ron Wakabayashi They re gonna keep trying. I mean, I think that's why the tactic has moved now, like in Portland, where you see anarchist groups versus ANTIFA groups doing mutual combat. That the other protest folks, they're not there anymore. They're working on other stuff. You know, I think tactics change.
I mean early on, like what we're calling alt right, I think were strategic be very good at triggering critical incidents. I mean I know one that I ran into early. A couple guys, just a couple guys, they call up a senior center and say hey we want to take the old timers on an outing. Would that be cool? And they say Aw, how nice of you guys. You got an outing. Then, you know, and what they had planned was, it was a light rail station that had some artwork the contained some language that could be read as pro-immigration. And they were anti-immigration. So, you know, in California we had the Minutemen and that sort of business going on. So, they... contact all the most nationalistic of the Latino groups. Say, we're gonna be there protesting. You know, and what they want to do is trigger a counter protest. Right? And then they called some of the older folks in the Minutemen and the militias, and say okay we're doing this. Come on out and support us. In fact, you know, were your American flag jackets and park over in this area. Well, if they parked in that area then they would have to walk through the Latino crowd with their American jackets, and their flags, and your signs. So it's just agitation. They talked to the cops and say, you know, we're doing this protest and we re worried that we have some very elderly people. You know, and they get the sympathy of the cops. The cops have a special squad to take care of the old folks because they're concerned for them.
But what they've done is they have triggered a counter protest. Counter protests are different than a protest. Does not have a command and control structure, you know. If you're doing a protest, you organize it. Like these are the rules, you know, these are the models, this is what we're going to do. Counter protest is everyone comes in reaction and there's no control. You know, I mean technically I think it's smart. I don't like it. But I think it's, I think it's clever.
1:23:29 Heidi Burgess So there's no control over the ANTIFAs? It s all everyone for himself.
1:23:36 Ron Wakabayashi There's very little control. And you know, it's changing. You know, before, there was a time period when you go back at the time of Charlottesville and you ANTIFA, that was not an organization. That's only a grouping, it's a category. An antifascist group. There are groups that now call themselves ANTIFA. So depending on what we're talking about, the groups, people who just generally, as a general category, are ANTIFA. I mean, their ideology is anti-government. You know, and they re not opposed to violence. You know, and the fact, there's a documentary out now called The Baldies. And they're skinheads but they're anti racist skinheads. And they're the ones doing battle in Portland. You know, so on one aspect, you know, they don't reject violence, but they're not racist. They re consciously not racist.
1:24:33 Heidi Burgess So, what is their issue?
1:24:36 Ron Wakabayashi Their issue is that they re anti alt right.
1:24:40 Heidi Burgess Okay. Complicated.
1:24:46 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah it gets more and more, because you know, like during the occupy period, right, when we had all these organizations go flat. You know, we have no leaders. You know, we're all leaders. Right
Heidi Burgess: . You know. But they adapted like really interesting strategies. Like you know, they have just people sign up, you know, on social media. Have people assemble at one spot but move them into five different directions. Right? If you watch the CNN, like they would just kind of mill around for hours. You know, in its own way it's brilliant. You know, they have ongoing reporters to talk to for three/four hours to make their case.
You know, I think it's smart for what they want to do. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . You know, and you saw it early on, like even before occupy. The Sean Bell case. Those protesters in New York. They did the thing of like they announced five concurrent assembly areas in New York City. That's just to spread out the cops. You know, in some ways this is like playing football. You know, like how do you spread out their forces? Right
Heidi Burgess: . You know, create a weakness, you know.
1:26:04 Heidi Burgess So I m thinking back to the earlier interviews. We did 20 interviews. Oh, oh.
1:26:15 Ron Wakabayashi Sorry, we got, that s an amber alert.
1:26:17 Heidi Burgess I was gonna say, sounds like an amber alert. Okay so. You ve managed to turn that off pretty quickly. We did, I m just looking at the sun coming in and blasting my face out. I ve got to move for a minute. Whoa. Well that didn t even help. That s interesting. Let s see if I can move it. I don t want people looking at me anyway. I want them looking at you.
1:27:02 Ron Wakabayashi Well. I think you have more shade over to your left. At least in this... and this is this. Fair yeah. That works for a little while we'll see how long that last.
1:27:08 Heidi Burgess There. That works for a little while. We ll see how long it lasts. It's been a sunny place anyway.
I m thinking back to the old interviews that we did with CRS and you said some things earlier that reminded me of the same thing about meeting with the organizers of the protests and, or the marches, and getting them to meet with the cops so everybody was kind of on the same page and everybody knew what to expect and there weren't surprises. And this dispersion technique sounds like that makes that whole process very difficult, if not impossible, if there aren't leaders and everybody's going every which way and doing their own thing. Makes CRS s role much more...
1:27:57 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah it changes, you know. I don t know about CRS s role. I mean, I think part of what we need to do is like, when we're hitting a protest situation, is to do an assessment and if we're looking at like, kind of the protest of an earlier era, where you go from point A to point B, you know, that's really old school protest. And that's still done sometimes. But those are the, you know, those are the safest kinds. I mean, those people are, you know, that's really a first amendment model. You know, to do that. And even those can get sideways and you can improve that. But, and the more recent first amendment model, what I described, is the milling around. You know, but generally, you know like, I think most of the groups are still, you know, nonviolent oriented. And you want to help them pick up their theme.
Like, you know that like, even to do the separation between anarchists, and anarchists, and alt right. I mean people who are doing protests don't always make that separation. Because you know, like within anarchist groups, there are groups that want to exploit the situation and trigger. Like after Ferguson, you know, like you saw many of the protest groups issue statements that say you know, open letters to anarchists. Look, we welcome your support, but we don't want you taking over our stuff, you know, and exploiting it.
And what they would, you know, things that would go on is they would... kind of infiltrate someone else's march. You know and use it, you know, and that would just, that's stealing, right? So you had this whole struggle, where you know, like, you have like a lot of voices, you know, like coming out. You know in social media, that these folks read, that scolding them like, that s just wrong you guys. You know.
And then... you can develop even some tactics to keep them out. Like some of the protests, we said look, if you're gonna do it and you you re gonna have contingents from different groups, you know, you keep those together in groups. Like keep them you know like, in certain colors. So makes it harder for people to infiltrate into.... those groups. Just... you know, you can keep them separate. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . You know. So there's... things that they could do if they're concerned about it. But... it's like making that separation.
Like the, there are folks that are anarchists that maybe in, you know, have the same interest as the protesting group. But the difference may be like that they're willing to go to violence and the other group is not... It s fair of us, but you need to disclose that (. Or, and you know, if you're the organizers, just as a planner to look out after your folks, you know, you need to know who might be out there and who might...
You know because, even in a situation of when you're doing symbolic protests, like you're gonna, and people are gonna get arrested, but it's symbolic. You know, most of the time, you know, that's just orchestrated. Like we would put stickers on the people who were gonna be arrested so the cops know: blue stickers and they won't go limp. They'll go. You know just give them a ticket and you know, you can ticket them out. So it's all theater.
But the risk, and even in some of those, is sometimes when you're doing those, somebody else who's just a viewer, a participant, gets enthused enough they want to, you know, be arrested too. But they don't know the drill, or the crowd, and they jump in. And... that could be well meaning but it could... You know, it's like cops don't like surprises. Right (Heidi Burgess). So you want..., you know, talk to organizers about protecting against that. You know, but you're, you know, because most organizers, you know, when you ask a question like, you know, are we concerned about people s safety? You know, the ideology questions are harder. Because if they try to press us, where are you guys on this? You know, we're neutrals. You know, we can't talk to them. But you know like, but where we're not neutral is, you know, we want everyone to be safe. You know.
1:32:18 Heidi Burgess So if you ask most of the organizers if they want people to be safe, I assume, unless they're anarchists, they re gonna say yes.
1:32:28 Ron Wakabayashi Yes. But even anarchists want their folks to be safe. Okay
Heidi Burgess: . Yeah but most of time they won't talk to you. In all my time at CRS, we have one guy who can make entry with the anarchists. One guy, I mean it's really rare. I can make contacts to another contact. I can't make a direct contact. But I've got a few of these secondaries. I only know one guy in our ranks who's been able to work with them directly.
1:32:56 Heidi Burgess So how many cases would you say that you would deal with in a year that were like Inglewood? Is that a rare situation or a common situation or?
1:33:09 Ron Wakabayashi No that's rare. You know, like when I ve been espousing for CRS in terms of its main mission, is if CRS can stop the wildfires. And by wildfires I mean things that flare into where there is... a kind of upset and some disturbance that goes on, and but it s limited from becoming wildfires, which means full blown civil unrest. I think we earn our keep just doing that. And I think that's very doable. You know like, civil unrest just doesn't happen. You know it builds, you know, that upset. So if... we keep that as our mission that we want to stop these brush fires from becoming the wildfires. Because the brush fires are really important, in the sense that, you know like, they're like pain, they tell you something's wrong and needs to be addressed. You know I mean, you know, they're even helpful and constructive in that way. Because left unattended, they turn into the brush fires, you know, the wildfires. And... so I think if we cultivate like an agency that embraces, you know, that kind of conflict as both natural and even useful.
Like conflict is natural. It's, I think it's unnatural for everything to be in equilibrium. And that's the goal. Right
Heidi Burgess: . I mean nice to have but most of the time, you know, we re gonna have some disequilibrium taking place. That's just kind of the. You know, I'm Buddhist. So like that's part of, sort of my world. The world impermanent. It's constant change. And I think that's true in the work as well. And that s why I don t get to the, like an end state solution. Right
Heidi Burgess: .
But so, I do think that if CRS played, if only that role, it only would occupy about 5% of our time. And then, you know, with the other 95% I think we can build infrastructure. I think we can build methodology. Help train people. You know, because like, you know like if, you know, most of the time when I talk about engagement is like if you get local communities to grab ahold of the problem and work on it. One of the things about being with the Department to Justice is sometimes just with a phone call, if I call the city manager and say: hey I read this this incident that happened in your city. You know, and then just asking questions. That's part of an assessment for me. I learned that what that does is that city manager after that phone call is over is calling together his staff. Says hey man, justice department's looking at this thing. We need to get our arms around this thing. Interesting (Heidi Burgess). Who calls there...
I think there's things that we do to help tone things down. That you... can do that consciously. Like even if we had like a duty officer, like on their duty date, hey just make these calls and just ask questions. We read about this, you know, are you guys doing on it? Do you need some help? That would just, we re kind of a catalyst.
1:36:34 Heidi Burgess I think you just answered the question that I had, but I'm gonna go back and ask it anyway to see if I'm right.
You really surprised me when you said that dealing with brush fires would be 5% of your work. I would have thought that there's brush fires all the time. And you were saying that you were covering a bigger and bigger region. What we haven't gotten to yet is how many people you had to cover that region but I know enough about history of CRS to know that it probably was fairly small. And so I was wondering how in the world do you decide which bushfires to cover and which not. And I was figuring that it was gonna be a triage situation that would take up 100% of your time, not 5%. So, I think I'm hearing you say that a lot of it you can delegate essentially with these phone calls. But how do you choose which ones to go into and which not?
1:37:34 Ron Wakabayashi You know when they talk about floods and things like that. They say like this is an 100 year event or a 50 year event. Well our last civil unrest was 92. So what is it, a 30 year event? You know.
1:37:55 Heidi Burgess That was the last one?
1:37:58 Ron Wakabayashi It takes... a lot of energy to feel something like that, you know. And I do think you can see it coming. And I think you can do interventions earlier. You know like in 92, you know, I think we were derelict, we you know, it wasn't done. We had really an unfortunate situation where you had, and you could have it again. You had public officials that were triggering it, you know. I mean Chief Gates had a major role I mean, in triggering that. You know, like, so like, I know even talking to the mayor then, you know, he said, hey this, you know, it s not, you know like, you just can t put it out that quick once it s on. And if you re gonna stop it, you need to stop before.
The additional thing that we, I think people didn't anticipate was said and morphed into the black corinthian. They thought it, but even if you look at now, right now, like you know that we have a period of a spike in anti-Asian hate crime. And that the Asian community s very nervous about it. and if you go deeper, if you go into Chinatown, especially like Oakland and New York, you know, the gun buying, and the gun clubs, and all that are escalating. The Proud Boy leader in California is a guy named Tony Kim. But he goes by the moniker Rooftop Korean. That goes back, you know, the language of 92.
And, I know what I would be concerned about is that, like let's say this ??? case becomes one that sparks protest, like the George Floyd thing did. And if you had, you know, like a splinter of folks that go into Chinatown to loot, we're gonna have rooftop Chinese. They're gonna be ready. And they're gonna shoot. And if they cap a couple people, you know, the way that plays in sort of the bifurcated media, is that we're gonna have a very racialized situation play out.
1:40:11 Heidi Burgess And in fact, that probably must have happened in quite a few places.
1:40:17 Ron Wakabayashi So thankfully it hasn't yet. You know because we haven't had, like, but you know, one is like in general, I think the general public is not conscious that, you know, the Asian community, Chinese community in particular, is really on the gun buying spree. You know, heavily. I mean like what used to be the gambling trips overnight to Las Vegas, you know to ride the bus, go to Vegas, gamble overnight, come back. Those are now gun buying trips. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . Even if you look on Facebook, you'll see Asian gun buying clubs formed on Facebook. They're just popping up. Wow
Heidi Burgess: .
1:40:53 Heidi Burgess Wow. And whites, it s my understanding that whites are too.
1:40:56 Ron Wakabayashi Yep. In seeing then, I mean you think about the Asian immigrant groups, most of them come from countries where there was a draft, a mandatory draft. They're trained. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . And it's, I think it's... And like New York is a place I worry just because as a backdrop of the Peter Liang case, you know.
1:41:19 Heidi Burgess I forgot that one .
1:41:20 Ron Wakabayashi That was about five years ago. Liang was a second year cop. He's... on patrol. He comes to a call in a tenement in Harlem. You know, he has, they're searching the stairwells in the side of the tenement. It's dark. His gun discharges. He kills a man on a ricochet shot. Okay. But then he gets taken into trial. So first trial in New York in 100 years of a police officer. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . Hundred thousand black people mobilized because it's the first trial against, you know, it symbolizes not just case, it symbolizes a whole lot more. Right? For the Chinese community: hey, this is a ricochet shot. This is a second-year cop. You know..., this is not intentional. You know? Like you know, like... yeah, he should... be reprimanded. You know, there should be some punishment. But it's not like, you know, it's not like...
1:42:22 Heidi Burgess It s not number one.
1:42:24 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah. And so the, both communities mobilize over 100,000 people during that. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . So, you know, and during that kind of mobilization some of that, you know, they re polarities that take place.
You know when you have ongoing protest, like the protest I went, I was involved in, in Arizona focused on Sheriff Arpaio. Between the Latino community and you know like, some of the Minutemen and those folks. Those protests became personal after a while. It was not, you know like..., we're against 1070, we re you know..., open borders or closed borders. It wasn't that. You know it's like so and so's an asshole. I mean literally. You know, it personalized.
1:43:14 Heidi Burgess So, can you rally those folks around a message of that we want peace in our town? It sounds like that would be hard.
Ron Wakabayashi No. No. But I think you also link them from people who don t carry that around and have people recognize look, this isn't, you know like, there's some... craziness in our... town. Like Portland people recognized there's some craziness in our town. Most of people who do protests, are social justice or reform oriented, on both sides, you know, have pulled away. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . And the hardcore, you know, people with guns and weapons they re going at each other. So I think you could, you know like, people, you know, you can generally get some separation with people saying look, this is safe.. You know like, these aren't like, you know, like your other folks.
1:44:02 Heidi Burgess So you got to separate out what I would call the sensible ones. Yeah
Ron Wakabayashi: . And then you just have to let the crazies have at it.
1:44:13 Ron Wakabayashi Sometimes. You know, like they won't talk to us. I mean I don't know what you can do about them. Like in some ways, like in terms, it's not in my lane. Like I think, you know, with some of them I would 51/50 but, you know, I'm not a therapist. You know, but I would not be against therapists taking a look at some of them.
1:44:34 Heidi Burgess What happened with the New York case that you were talking about there were 100,000 people out there?
1:44:39 Ron Wakabayashi He got convicted. You know, got two years. But, and this upset, they're still upset with it. But it's not like, you know, if he caught 15 years...
1:44:53 Heidi Burgess You said he did get 15 years?
1:44:55 Ron Wakabayashi No. Let s say if he did. I think, then, like Derek Chauvin got, right? I think there would be a different reaction. Two years, they re upset. But it's certain degrees. You know. You know like... That's a hard one. You know... like... an accidental gun discharge in a dark stairwell, second year cop, ricochet, you know, there s some training issues there, right?
1:45:32 Heidi Burgess Yeah. So what happened? Did he get off or was he convicted?
1:45:34 Ron Wakabayashi He was convicted. But he didn't... do a lot of time and the community was able to get him other employment that was, where he could take care of his family. You know, I mean if that was a... tragic story that continued that might feed more into it. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: .
But you know like, what I'm concerned about is like after the protests, there hasn't been that much healing activity that's gone on between the two communities. You know, because sometimes you don't like, you know like even with like sports or whatever, you re on opposite sides, but you can even get some degree of healing.
1:46:20 Heidi Burgess And that seems like a role that CRS could play.
1:46:24 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah, and I've talked to Matt out there and you know like, he's conscious of it. You know, he's conscious of the whole situation, you know. Matt's got good sensitivities.
1:46:40 Heidi Burgess Is he regional director out there?
Ron Wakabayashi He's not the regional director, he's a conciliator. Okay
Heidi Burgess: . Because the regional director, a new one just came on yesterday. I don't know the new regional director.
1:46:52 Heidi Burgess Okay. So, you say he's aware of it but have they tried to do any long-term process there or not?
1:47:05 Ron Wakabayashi I think when you say some, I think the answer is yes. Okay
Heidi Burgess: . And in, and some of it s, in some ways it's... Incidental. Like the kind of work going on because of the anti-Asian violence, puts you in touch with the organizers that you need to be in touch with. You know, so it's a twofer. You know right now the focus is on the anti-Asia violence. But the anti-Asian violence even things there... I think a lot of the focus is on like folks not turning into militias and the other is just like that there's so many seniors who in combination with COVID are not getting food, medication, and you know other things. Just more kind of just basic humanitarian stuff. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . Communities are working on.
So there's other things that you know, like LA has not suffered as much as that kind of... Although we have one guy who is agitating. But we just kind of went through the celebration of the, or the recognition of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Chinese massacre in Los Angeles. Which is the, I think the largest recorded lynching in California. Wow (Heidi Burgess).
You know, so... And even that plays an interesting kind of way. You know like when I was saying something earlier about Asians being model minority. There s a, the model minority, and another frame of that is saying you re white adjacent and mistrusted because you re more like white folks because you re model. For Japanese Americans there's an asterisk because of the internment, you know. You guys were really screwed over, you know. And you got the first redress bill. And then there's a large contingent of Japanese Americans working on black reparations that s a roll over from that.
The Chinese massacre stories and Chinese exclusion... The Chinese, when you kind of like really focus on, they re the only group that has had federal law specifically excluding them. You know. And these massacres. And if people got deeply into Chinese history, Chinese American history, it's... pretty horrible.
1:49:45 Heidi Burgess Just like people are complaining about how we don't know black history, when you mentioned that Chinese massacre, my thought was boy I've never heard of that. So, we know even less of that I think.
1:49:53 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah and you know like, with bridges, with the divided communities, you know I ve been working on the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Because when they learn, like that the Japanese American redress that Commission was the closest thing to an American TRC. So they brought me into that process.
And you know I do think, I mean like on, for the African American community, there's a lot of data. A lot of stuff captured on Black history. But you know, the kind of... more intimate storytelling has been lost. I mean it can be recaptured in different ways. But even like the kind of thought of, you know, you live your life and at any moment you could be separated from your family. You know. You know if people could just really tap into what that's like living every day. You know, it's stuff that I mean you could see with the... with kids. You know like when they're separated from their families. Like we saw stuff like in... Afghanistan when people were handing their kids up, like take my kid. You know, because people who are parents, you know, like that's just wrenching like. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: .
And I think it's stories that touch there. Because right now like, even with like, with, and in fact this is another area with the black reparations issue. HR 40 is having a push to get a floor vote by the end of this fiscal year, December 18. I don't know if it's gonna get it or not. But you know, there are 24 different municipalities with some stage of TRC in process. And the California one is very close to a stage where we're going into a community engagement stage of public testimony hearings. And the initial population that's been following reparations is really a hardcore much more narrow audience that have been interested in reparations. You know, and I mean very narrowly. So, there's groups like Cope, N COBRA,and NAARCthat most people haven't even heard of. But... these groups, you know, like have an interest much more in having reparations focused on direct descendants of slaves. So it's... a focus on slavery as opposed to racism. Because racism would, you know, would include other folks that have been impacted by, you know, all of the bad things about slavery, negativism, prisons, redlining. That's not just descendants of slaves. But there's a potential split in the black community around interests.
And I think that, you know, I mean I saw that in the Japanese American case. Like you know the initial phase of things like this even in the larger population is like brainstorming. Everyone has their idea and everyone thinks they're right. And they think the other person is wrong. And then you add testosterone into the mix, you know. And it gets worse. And then it tends to become kind of a cottage industry, some clustering of interests and of points of view. But that's sort of a normal process on these things. But people who are right in the midst of it, it's hard to see process. Right
Heidi Burgess: . You know. And I think one of the things we can contribute is to help people see process.
1:53:56 Heidi Burgess And help facilitate the process.
1:53:59 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah like, on like direct descendants, you know it s like thinking about like, okay, what s a direct descendent?
1:54:06 Heidi Burgess And how do you prove it.
1:54:08 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah well, DNA helps and it s a lot further than before. But you can't, it's not an absolute right? And then... it raises other issues like you know, like American Indians did not enroll most of the blacks that were tribal members. And that's starting to come up. In fact, Maxine Waters is starting to raise that as an issue. So some of this I think is like looking at forecasting weather issues coming.
1:54:38 Heidi Burgess Right. And what you can do to keep them under control before they...
1:54:45 Ron Wakabayashi Yeah or keep, you know like, you know I guess I think conflict is natural. Right
Heidi Burgess: . It s only if, when more people have context, you know and... can understand process.
You know like and for me having gone through the Japanese American process, you know, I know, you know, very directly that at the very beginning the insider information is: you don't have a chance of getting any legislation. You don't have a chance. A 1.5 million bill back then, in 1987, 1988, with no member of Congress around at the time of the internment. And deniers and everything else. You know and it's not as bad of a Congress as we have now. You know, but... all the Japanese American members of Congress, you know, told you privately: we don't have a chance. Yeah
Heidi Burgess: . We don't have a chance. Five years into it, it changed.
1:55:49 Heidi Burgess I was kind of thinking it came around.
1:55:51 Ron Wakabayashi It came around. And you know because I was gonna, I said I'm gonna give this five years and then I m gonna come back home. And then you know [inaudible] says Ron you got to stay. And so, I stayed for the, until we got the bill and we got the signing. But it, I am glad I did. It gave me like a wonderful seat at the process, you know, of watching the community being divided and passionate about their own perspectives. Or how different people saw a remedy. You know, somebody said no amount is enough. No, $1 million dollars to everyone. $1 million dollars to everyone except the Idaho farmers. Which is side story right?
And then, then you watch who turned out to be heroes and heroines. The most unlikely people. You know, and it tells people like you know, don't count anybody out, man. You know we were just surprised. You know, who did things. There was a skinny old lady, man, who just went to the archive every day and found the book that the commanding general, one of 10 copies, nine had been destroyed, she found the one copy with marginal notes that captured his lies. That literally captured his lies. Wow
Heidi Burgess: . You know, it's like who knew she was gonna become a heroine?
1:57:21 Heidi Burgess Great story. Yeah (Ron Wakabayashi). Well, we've gone close to two hours now, I think. And it seems like this might be a reasonable place to break off. Okay
Ron Wakabayashi: . We want to continue to get some more general thoughts on your CRS and procedures and all. But why don't I let you go now. And thank you very much. Okay (Ron Wakabayashi). I look forward to continuing this soon.
1:57:52 Ron Wakabayashi Alright. Be fun. Take Care.
1:57:54 Heidi Burgess Alright. Thank you. Bye bye.
1:57:56 Ron Wakabayashi Bye.
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Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project Phase 2 As a public service, Beyond Intractability hosts this site in conjunction with the earlier Phase I of the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project. IRB statement for Phase II interviews “Research conducted pursuant to Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices IRB protocol 2021E0493.” |
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Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project Phase 2 As a public service, Beyond Intractability hosts this site in conjunction with the earlier Phase I of the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project. IRB statement for Phase II interviews “Research conducted pursuant to Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices IRB protocol 2021E0493.” |
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