~ Visit the official JAMsj website ~
AAPI & Japanese American Museum of San Jose
Digital Archive

Ash Kalra

Date: February 24, 2023
 Interviewer: Yvonne Kwan and Ellina Yin
 Interviewee: Ash Kalra (1972 - )

Ash Kalra is a child of immigrants whose work as a public defender grew into that of public service through boards and commissions and eventually San Jose City Council and the State Assembly. His legislative priorities include criminal justice reform, environmental justice, and racial justice.

Transcript of Ash Kalra

Click on any section of the transcript to jump directly to that segment of the video. This feature lets you quickly access the content you're interested in without the need to manually search through the entire video. You can also click on the tick below each transcript to expand the text and read the full content without playing that segment of the video.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 00:00 >> 5:24

Ash Kalra and I was born in Toronto, Canada, January 21st, 1972.

(Interviewer) All right. And your father's name and place of birth?

Sathya Pal Kalra. And he was born in Lahore, which is now Pakistan. But at the time it was India.

(Interviewer) What year?

  1. So he you know, when he grew up, he was a little kid when the Partition happened in India. And so they had to flee, and they lost everything that all their property and everything. And so they were kind of like refugees in their own country for a while. And he grew up in a little tiny little town that had no electricity. And up until he was basically into his high school age and then moved to the big city, which is Lucknow, even to this day is a very big city. And the government gave them a house there to try to, you know, replace. It was a program that took many, many years. That's why it took so many years for them to finally move to Lucknow. But then they got a house to a place of all the property that they lost in what was [is] now Pakistan. And so that's where he lived, through his high school years. And somehow he was just he's just very smart. And studied very hard, like by kerosene lamp at night and went to, you know, all the public schools and ended up going to University of Lucknow and got his bachelor's degree and then multiple master's degrees there in physics, chemistry and English and ultimately he got a scholarship to study aeronautics at the University of Toronto. And that's where he got his Ph.D. in aeronautics. And so it was very uncommon for students that were public school students to be able to achieve that kind of success. Most the students that came here with scholarships went to private school their whole life and had some privilege. But he was able to just focus, and he really loved to learn and loved school. He had three brothers, four sisters, and you know, who, you know, didn't have that same aptitude and, you know, he would tell me about how his his sisters would take care of like, you know, bringing tea at night when he was studying and all that stuff. And I think they can sense that, you know, he was just a little different and in a good way. And ultimately, in 1968, my parents got married the year before. In 1968, they went to Toronto for him to study University of Toronto in aeronautics. And at that point my brother had already been born and my brother was still less than a year old. And so he was an infant. And then they went to Canada.

(Interviewee) And of all places why Toronto?

Because he had a scholarship at the University of Toronto. He actually, from what he told me, got scholarship offers from Harvard and University of Toronto at that time, two of the top aeronautic schools in the world and chose Toronto. And oftentimes people choose based upon what they hear from others that may have gone or what have you. And even back then, you know, a lot of Indians were going to Canada and particularly Toronto. And so he chose Toronto and that's where he lived and kind of the downtown area. And that's where I was born, in a hospital in downtown Toronto. That is no longer a hospital now. It's a Salvation Army, some kind of health care facility that Salvation Army operates.

(Interviewer) And how did your parents meet?

It was quasi arranged so that my dad's older sister connected them and but they talked on the phone for like almost a year. So it wasn't like arranged where they just met each other the day before their getting marriage or something. They got a chance to get to know each other a little bit, but it was kind of like I say, quiet, kind of quasi arranged through family.

(Interviewer) And can you say your mother's name and place of birth and around date of birth.

Her name is Christen, and she was born in Bangalore 1948. Yeah. You know, she was from more of a middle-class family than my my father and her. Her father worked for the government. They had a good, like, civil service job with the government. And they did move around a little bit because of his work. So they were in Bangalore where she grew up in south India, even though she was North Indian. And then, you know, the family moved up to New Delhi at some point. There was a point at which in India there's a lot of even now, but especially back then, a lot of corruption, a lot of, you know, kind of under the table operations that happened. And my grandfather was very ethical and wouldn't wouldn't do anything that was illegal. And so he had folks that didn't like him for that. And there was even an attempt to poison him. And he had a lot of neurological damage due to that. And they had to spend a lot of their money on treatments that back then they probably do work, but they're experimental treatments that, you know, just cost a lot of money. And so they had to spend a lot of their money on that stuff. And but it was just my mom had three sisters that, you know, got married and had them scattered around India. Some of them actually, one of them came here to the U.S., you know, many years later, just like my mom did. But yeah, so she and then she got her bachelor's degree as well while she was in India.

Systems & Power Timeframe 5:24 >> 9:43

So, yeah, So my my father's from context, I mean, because this is very common. And he arrived in Canada with $8 in his pocket. And I remember many years later I was talking to someone in my office to see how this guy, known as the father of the intel chip like him, and he was working on something with the arts. And then I was asking about his story and he said, Oh yeah, I read to America what they did in my pocket. Something like this, something kind of curious. Like they all say the same thing. But it was a program where the government would give you $8 when you left. They would give you $8 and just to help you when you got there.

And that's all you had. And his scholarship. But the scholarship didn't pay for housing. And so it was really tough for my mom because she had a little infant baby, my older brother, when they arrived in Canada, they didn't have a place to live. And so they were literally just like living in people's homes and guest rooms, staying in people's living rooms for a week here, a week there. And professors would be nice and let them stay a little bit. And after several months, their name it got to the top of this list of affordable housing, you know, kind of apartment in apartment building. In fact, when I went back to Canada last, I went by there and it's the it was kind of that's one of the many reasons I'm very much a proponent of affordable housing because it allowed that stability and allowed him to be able to focus on his studies and, you know, graduate.

And my mom could actually have a home, a place to live and raise my brother. I was born right when my father was finishing his Ph.D. in 1972, and then he started working with the university in the aerospace department there. And then he actually decided to make a kind of shift into the nuclear field because it was very hot in the seventies. It was a big field, and aerospace in the 70s wasn't as much, and it was something interesting to him. So in 1975 or so, he took a job at the Chalk River Nuclear Research Laboratory in Ontario. It's about three-and-a-half-hour drive from Toronto, and we lived in a tiny town called Deep River, and that's where I lived with my family until six years old. And, you know, almost every weekend we would drive back to Toronto, even though it was a very long drive, because all the friends that we had in the part, a lot of Indians were in that apartment building, too. And, you know, so that was kind of the social life there as opposed to going to Deep River only had 3 or 4000 people.

So to go from the heart of Toronto to Deep River was a lot, especially for my mom. And so every weekend they would drive back. My mom was a very social person and my dad, I mean, they're all friends. So it's like we're going back to see friends all the time or would meet halfway sometimes with some of our friends there.

And so although my dad, like the work was very isolating and, you know, I just remember all the snow and going to kindergarten, all that and, you know, kind of walking through snow and you'd be all bundled up and could barely move and all that. And so the first half hour was just teachers getting us out of our clothes. And the last half hour was getting us back into our clothes before we go back out in the snow, like the layer, many, many layers. And but there was at some point my dad took a business trip with my mom here to the Bay Area. And so once they came here, they said, well, why are you living there? And and that's when you kind of looked for an opportunity out here.

My memory I do remember that apartment complexes probably more when I used to visit on the weekends because they were still all living in the same, you know, building that we were in. And so I definitely have memories of it. And when I went back and visited and saw it, I was just back in Canada about a year and a half ago. First time I had really gone and seen the hospital I was born, the street where my parents first lived when they got there to Toronto. I went back to the apartment building, went back to Deep River, which I hadn't been back to since I was six years old. And so it was a really interesting trip for me. I went to University of Toronto and bought some stuff.

There's some stuff here that's like, I got a bunch of stuff, my dad's University of Toronto, the binder there and all that and, and but yeah, so I had the opportunity to actually see it and it did bring back some memories. Yeah.

Timeframe 9:43 >> 13:10

Well , I, I remembered the snow, but when I went back there, it was the fall, and I didn't realize how close we lived to the river and how beautiful it was. The leaves are all orange and red and yellow and the beautiful place. And I just remember the snow part because that's the most dramatic. We used to build igloos and all that stuff. So it was the snow, the same thing that kind of made it harder for my parents to live us. When you're a kid, you love it, right? Although the snow everywhere. And so when I think about the being in Toronto, I don't really think much about the big city. I remember being in the apartment building and just like playing with the other kids, we still were friends. To this day, we're still family friends, like some of the families that we met in that apartment building.

I, I remember someone in the I remember someone named I can't remember a name right now. I remember a couple of people. I remember Marianne and this other. I remember a boy and a girl that were my age, that lived in my neighborhood. Marianne and I can't remember the boy's name right now, but yeah, that's all I remember. Those. Those two people.

(Interviewer) Okay, so you moved to the family, moved to the Bay Area after you were around six years old. Okay. And so can you describe, like, what was the community like here?

Well, it's very different and when we first got here, we didn't have a place to live quite yet. My father got a job at Electric Power Research Institute, which is in Palo Alto in the Stanford Research Park. It's a nonprofit energy think tank, and he was working in the nuclear division. So they first put us up in this kind of hotel for like a month or so. And still there it's it's on El Camino. It's changed names a couple of times. You remember the name right now. But it's it's it's really strange. I go to events there, but I don't really remember because we were there for such a short period of time. I just remember running down kind of the hallways there, the outdoor, these outdoor hallways.

And then that summer there's in 78, we then had an apartment that was in Mountain View, and we only lived there for a couple of months during the summer. And I just very vaguely remember that. And then by the time we got to the fall, we moved into a home here in South San Jose because even back then it was way more expensive in Palo Alto than it was here.

And you were able to get a new home here as opposed to, you know, for for a cheaper than getting an older home in Palo Alto. And so we got a home here. And even though it was a lot for my dad; that's a pretty long commute, especially this is before [Highway] 87 and 85 were built. So it was it was a long commute for him to be able to get to 280. This is back when he first moved here. One on one wasn't even connected. It was 1 to 1. You take Monterey, you're going south and 1 to 1 you have to take Monterey. And it's called Monterey Blood Alley because there were so many deaths, so many accidents there because people were driving like it was off, like there were still on going to one. But going towards Palo Alto, my dad went out to take the Monterey Highway to San Carlos to get on to 280 and then take that up to Page Mill Road. And so he had a long commute, although there was at least one other person that he worked with. I lived in our neighborhood as well. And so they would carpool.

Timeframe 13:10 >> 16:38

Well, we soon met a lot of other Indian families. There weren't as many back then as there are now, which in some way is good, because then you can really build a closer bond with those that are here, as we have five families, five Indian families, that basically every weekend we would be at someone's house. That was essentially every single weekend we would be either our place. There was another family that also lived here in South San Jose, one that lived closer to Oak Ridge Mall, and then a couple that lived like a couple of families lived more like in Sunnyvale, Sunnyvale, and like Cupertino area. And so every weekend we would be at one of the five homes and just, you know, at least one of the nights on the weekend. And so that became a very regular kind of occurrence. And they're all like, you know, they're all like family now. We all grew up together, and I was the second youngest of the group of of of kids and most of most families had two sons. So just like my family and three other three of the other families also all had two sons. And then one of the families had one son and two daughters. But the older son and daughter were were back in India going to school. So it was just the until high school was just the younger daughter, who was the youngest of all of us. She was she was just a few months younger than me and then, you know, arranged all the way up to the oldest who was probably ten or so years older or so maybe.

They first met… at least a couple of families first met at San Jose State because they were showing Indian movies there. So it was on the weekend where there was an Indian movie there. And I know that. I know that our family met at least two of the families there at San Jose State, before you can go to Oakridge Mall and watch an Indian movie.

Well, it was all boys, right? Except for my my, the youngest of the group. So we play sports all the time, like we would play sports and board games, so we'd be playing football out in the street until midnight one in the morning because these were all late night things. I mean, looking back now, I realize our parents were all partying. I didn't realize it at the time, but there is all this kind of drinking and having fun like, you know, and in the night with some with some chai. But I think looking back now, I think we realize what was happening. They're just having fun, you know, And they can have fun because we all occupy ourselves, right? And so we were playing football outside. We play basketball down the street, you know, and it was in the daytime we go, you know, to depending on where we were, sometimes we go right here to Hayes and play. If we were hanging out at our home and yeah, yeah. And then we played... But when we got dark or when we were asked to come in and we would play board games, usually Risk, and that's and then sometimes video games. But there's so many of us and not everybody was into video games as much back then is like the eighties and everyone it seemed like everyone had an Apple II computer. My brother was really much, really into computers as a software engineer now, but everyone had like an Apple II. And so one of our friends had an Atari, but the rest of us didn't. Our parents wouldn't let us.

Timeframe 16:38 >> 17:58

They were mostly spoken English at home. Although my parents would speak Hindi to one another. I picked up on that probably more than my brother did. But my father speaks Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu and but at home it was English with a little kind of smattering of Hindi.

(Interviewer) And so why did you learn more language than your brother did?

I just paid attention more. [chuckles]

(Interviewer) And then just to clarify, one thing is that you have one older brother. Yeah? Yes. Who's a software engineer. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then last question for the set is that as a young person, how did you interact with media in particular? It like television or movies? And you mentioned a little bit about video games.

Yeah, I wasn't a huge video game guy, and the video games weren't like they are now. So, you know, I will definitely watch a lot of TV, you know, come home after school if I wasn't out playing basketball, something we watch, like whatever the sitcoms were after school and then in the evening watch TV, I would watch every single night and watch the CBS Evening News with my dad every single night, and then every weekend, we’d watch 60 Minutes. And so I think I was probably more informed than most seven or eight year olds. And, you know, it kind of just doing that every literally every single day, even if I didn't always understand, you know, what they're talking about, I definitely have memories of seeing all the major news events over the years because I was I'd watch it every day.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 17:58 >> 20:13

(Interviewer) Was there ever a time you noticed, like, Oh, there might not be as much representation of people who look like you in the movies or on TV.

All the time. Yeah. And I would get I would get bullied and teased because of it, too. I mean, I remember when Gandhi came out, the same families that we are family physically all went and watched it. And it was kind of like a moment of pride. And, you know, they're actually showing a movie that has to do with India and it's with Gandhi. And but I get teased all the time at school, and I always got got teased because, you know, racists aren't especially but little kid racists aren't very knowledgeable about geography with the Ayatollah's and Iran and all that stuff. Right. They were just teasing me and all because there weren't that many of us that looked like me. Even when I went to Oak Grove, I graduated high school in 89, the school had almost 3000 students by 27, 2000 students.

At that time, they applied ten Indian students the entire school. I remember ten years later, my cousins had come from India and started living with us and they were going to Oak Grove. And this literally like ten years later, and they said they asked me if I wanted to come to some Indian like program that they're doing at the school. As with who? Like, there's no how are you guys doing this? I went there and there were just 100 and issues and it multiplied so quickly. It was so different than when I was going to school, and it was very noticeable that you know nothing about what I experience was being taught in the schools, was being shown in the media. And this was very stereotypical. And, you know, I think it was it was very noticeable that you felt different and that kind of two different lives, the one where a family, friends and, you know, we had had our prayer, our pujas and all that we'd go to or we do certain cultural things that and you felt fine doing. It was still, you know, as you get older and from a teenager, you don't want to go with your parents on that same old thing like all kids go through. But it was a different world than the one that I was experiencing at school. I wouldn't really always talk that much about…You don't really talk that much about what other people don't understand.

Timeframe 20:13 >> 21:59

(Interviewer) The dynamics I think, of the Bay Area have changed a lot, especially after representation of different races and backgrounds. What might be different between those who are growing up now in Santa Clara County, you know what it was like for you before? And because you know, I work with a lot of students at San Jose State and they often go like, oh, no, things aren’t so bad.

Well, they're not. I mean, that you can literally, you know, be on Facetime with your family at any given moment back then, calling back to India was incredibly expensive. And so usually my parents would call their families back home maybe once a month and just for a few minutes. And it was all letter writing with those blue envelopes and it was the letters back and forth and back and forth. So it was very different. You didn't have the food, the grocery stores, everything that you can get in India, you can get here now. And that includes all the TV stations, the exact same programing. So there's nothing really that you miss in terms of culturally. You can get all the same things here and now. The population is so big, each kind of different culture. Each region has their own organizations, their own celebrations. So it's a very different experience now that I think it's good. But, you know, I also think it was a very interesting time to grow up here when you didn't have those experiences and are more a part of the earlier generations here trying to figure it out. And I think it brings a certain value to connect…connecting with other communities here, I think with a lot of the immigrants are coming from India now because they have everything they need and don't feel like they have to go outside of their comfort zone at all. And there's a lack of of connectedness to other cultures and communities and races right now.

Timeframe 21:59 >> 23:45

When I came here for one year, I went to Dickinson Elementary and then went to Hayes Elementary, which is right around the corner when it first opened. And then after Hayes Elementary, I went to Herman Intermediate School and then Oak Grove High School, and then I went to De Anza college two years and then UC Santa Barbara and then law school at Georgetown.

Yeah, I think that when I think about K-through-12 teachers, my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Ridgeway, who taught me right down the street at Hayes, I remember her probably more than most of my teachers from my younger years. And when I was at Herman, you know, I remember some of my teachers there and in high school, my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Taylor.

And there were some of the teachers that I still am somewhat connected with. There had been some at some point years following high school, really, but really more so when I got back in the city council and sort of reconnecting with my old schools. But I think about Mr. Barryessa because I was on the mock trial team and he was the teacher coach. I don't know if I actually had him. I mean, actually I may have had him for one class, but it was more through that kind of being the mock trial coach more than anything else. And yeah, I, I don't have that many other distinct memories of my teachers that stand out to me that I think about very often.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 23:45 >> 25:46

Well, I did feel and I felt supported by teachers. I mean, I think pronounce my name because my my full name was Ashu. So I went by Ashu Kalra really all the way up until essentially college or was end of high school, one of my friends started calling me Ash a lot and then that kind of just stuck. I don't know why folks do that sooner because it was kind of right there. But and so, you know, I would get teased a lot for it, especially when teachers didn't say it the right way. But, you know, that was, I got used to you know, people make fun of my name my whole life. So I was like, that was whether it was a teacher or not, teachers wouldn’t really make fun of it. But, you know, they wouldn't always take the time to ask me how to properly say it. But I felt very supported. I think in general I was, you know, when I was younger, I was going through the GATE [Gifted and Talented Education] program, and I ended up skipping third grade. I think a lot of it was part of the support I got from Mrs. Ridgeway.

And, you know, back then we're doing the notebooks and all that, and I was doing like fourth grade notebooks when I was in second grade. And I think she really encouraged me and my family. And really you have to have someone come to your home and I guess they do psychological tests and all that. I don't know what they do. And exactly I remember being asked a lot of questions. You know, if those IQ tests done and all that stuff. But eventually they allowed me to go from second to fourth grade, which academically is good. But it was very challenging for me because kindergarten through third grade was separated from fourth through six in terms of the area of the school. And then with the playgrounds you play on the time of your recess. And so all the friends I had in second grade, I go to fourth grade and now they're all in a separate group. And so I'm there with and I'm already really small is on there with older kids and in a new environment. And so I think it was good for me academically in terms of, yeah, I was able to end up kind of advancing one year academically. But I think, you know, it was a little more challenging on the social front.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 25:46 >> 29:38

Yeah, well, I think going through through all the way through the middle school, not really. I, I didn't really do much. I mean, I would come home after school, and we'd go play basketball. I play sports, but with friends. And my parents didn't want me to do sports because they didn't want anything to distract from school, and so even though I wanted to and never really happened in high school, I played tennis for a couple of years. I did track for a year, and I did a lot of I played a lot of basketball during that time, but not like officially on the team or anything. I just would play a lot and I did the Mock Trial Club. I wasn't very motivated by school, and I think part of it was that the Indian community, especially back then, it was just so competitive, and all the parents would talk about what their kids are doing and I didn't like that. I kind of rejected that. And so I got to a point, especially at the high school, where I just I didn't really care about school in terms of, oh, you know, I got to get into good colleges that the other I didn't. But I kind of rejected all that because I saw the superficial nature of how everyone was competing with one another. It wasn't like genuine about, oh, I mean, I want to learn or let me do this because I really want to do this for my career, that my career was more just competition. And I never really felt connected to that aspect of learning. And so I would do a lot of reading of things that were assigned to me before I would do the things that were assigned to me.

Well, it was there was a lot of tough conversations. I think once I started the Mock trial Club, and that was my last two years of high school, I felt for the first time that being a lawyer is something that I may want to do, and I would kind of try my parents crazy because they would ask me what I wanted to do and I wouldn't have an answer. I would just say, I just no matter what I do, I'm going to be happy and I just want to serve. I want to help people. Which drives Asian parents crazy because it was no, it wasn't an act for them. It wasn't an answer. But for me it was because I didn't feel like I needed to know at that moment. And I felt that that's part of the process, supposed to be part of the process of going to college and kind of figuring it out, as opposed to having everything scripted because that was never me is still is. I mean, I don't like living in that manner. And so there was a lot of attention due to that. But, you know, I would always somewhat turn it around of my parents because when I was younger, they had me go to get their classes and just learn a lot about Hindu scripture and all that. And I would just repeat a lot of what, you know, Hinduism says it, which is really not being attached to all these other things that that people seem to focus on, whether it's material things or things on the surface that may bring positive attention, but don't be attached to these kinds of worldly influences. And so it kind of turn around on them and they like that all the time. But yeah, that was my way of trying to figure it out.

I think I started I started in high school was thinking about it more and more and I continued to think about it more when I was at De Anza. I think that at that point, if someone asked me, I probably would have said, I'm probably going go to law school, but didn't know for sure. I took a couple of legal classes. I do a couple of law classes when I was at De Anza, but otherwise was just just taking the regular general ed classes and trying to still kind of figure a figure it out and not be so worried about whether people were doing.

Timeframe 29:38 >> 32:38

Yeah. And so I, I left here. I was 19 years old and then transferred to Santa Barbara, and it was cool. I think I liked it. I liked being out of the house. I liked the social environment. I was very shy when I was younger, but when I got into college, got more and more social. And so I liked that aspect of it and I liked being able to pick my classes. So I did have to get up in the morning. And so I would always try to think a little later of the class the better, because I've always been a night owl. And so, you know, if I could be up to two or three in the morning and not have class until noon, I would set it up that way.

And I started working. I had worked when I was at De Anza, but when I was in Santa Barbara's are working at the dining commons. And that was great because I didn't have to worry about food, you know, I don't buy groceries or anything like that. And so I worked there, but usually I was like washing dishes and scrubbing the pots and all that, and I like that. So I was like, be in the back. And then during our breaks, we played basketball because that a little basketball court on the side there and yeah so I liked the the just focusing on the the the work of… It's interesting I actually I've never I never really studied hard it's never been my thing I've never enjoyed studying just for studying sake.

I like studying things I like studying. But that's not always the case with classes, right? So you have to take classes and take general ed. You know, sometimes what's interesting, it wasn't. And so I was really just having a lot of fun in Santa Barbara and working. I work at the dining commons as well as concessions like selling Cokes at the baseball games, stuff like that.

I, I started, I did the honors program, which I didn't even start to my last year. It's usually it takes two years to do If I did it in my last years, complete everything I needed to do for that. I was doing several different internships during my last year, so I was just doing everything I couldn't and still partying and you know, all the stuff you do at Santa Barbara. So I was just, you know, I think people think I still have high energy, but if you imagine me in 19-20, I had a lot of energy and so I was doing all of it. And studying was probably lower on the list, but I was just going at cramming. So I would just then in the quarter, I would just spend the final couple of days just kind of everything.

One thing I would do though, I wouldn't miss class. That was that was the the trick that I tell some folks would just miss class. Oh, yeah. Let me get your notes. I would go to class, and I would pay attention in class and that, but I would absorb most of what I needed to absorb then. And I would take notes and then I would just go over my notes. You know, the night before the test. And that's what I would do. I even had paper. Sometimes I wouldn't even start to like ten or 11 at night, and then the printer would be printing out like eight in the morning and I would take it and yeah, and I would make a lot of my friends upset.

Systems & Power Timeframe 32:38 >> 35:56

(Interviewer) Did you still do pretty well in the papers?

Oh, yeah. That's why I made them upset. I remember when my friends, my history classes get so mad at me because even I spent all this time studying and yeah, my grades. But. But I'm going to tell you something. I mean, you know, there's there's but there is an experience that was very visceral. We had counselors there, and me and my roommate, Justin's a great guy, still a good friend of mine, even though I don't see him as much because that's what happens when you get older. But he also is a public defender down in Ventura County. But when we were studying and, you know, taking the LSAT and all that, at this point we're doing practice tests with our son, but we have some sense of where our score is going to be. And, you know, my GPA is probably one full point higher than his. And he went and saw the counselor talking about law school and he he said how encouraging he was. And there was a white man that was this counselor with the career counselor. And he came back and I was so excited because he was so excited. He's like, Yeah, this guy was great. He told me all these different schools I should apply to. He even said that when I get my letter of recommendation, he'll mail them out to each school and all this stuff. So I was so excited to meet this guy and like, wow, you know, I don't know how someone, you know. Yeah, it's place a lot of students for him to offer that kind of service is pretty amazing.

And so when I went to him and I went to him with a list of the schools that I was interested in, it was a wide range, you know, from local like Santa Clara to Loyola to Harvard, like everything in between, right? Because I really didn't know I actually ended up playing to like 17 or 18 schools because I had no idea where I wanted to go.

But I showed him the list and then he literally just writes crossing on all the names and Oh, no, no, no, no. And then like, for Loyola, Yeah, yeah, you might have. And I'm like, I'm okay. At that point I knew as well because I know what the numbers are, you know, and I had a high point, I don't know, like, like 3.7 or something GPA and was testing like 90th percentile. Now that 90th plus percentile. And so I knew he was just full of it. I can you can tell the attitude wasn't supportive and and then I said, Oh, I heard you how you can help us by mailing out letter Look, next. He was like, You know, I don't do that. I'm like, Oh, well, my roommate says he's like, Oh, no, I don't. I don't do that for anybody. So it was just very obvious. Every time I got into a school, I'd go and let him know. And so he had to congratulate me that every time by doing a couple times.

I mean, obviously, I think race plays a role. And, you know, I believe I yeah, I certainly think race played a role. I was a guy that was showing up like in a heavy metal t shirt. I had hair all way down my back. It's like I was I looked very different than than the expectations of someone that's going to go to law school. And in fact, I remember when I told my parents, I told my friends like I was going to go to law school and like, okay. And then when I saw I was going to Georgetown, they were like, shocked. Like, you're going to talk. Like, how did that happen? I'm like, I don't know. I applied, and they accepted me.

Timeframe 35:56 >> 37:17

At De Anza [I was making] side money. I was living at home and you know, and it's not like things were that expensive. And so I wasn't working the whole lot. I was working at a print shop. I and also I used to write for the paper and so I was like, get a couple hundred bucks to deliver the papers and around campus. And then I worked for a minimum wage at a print shop that was in Cupertino that was near De Anza. Yeah. And so it wasn't an extensive amount of hours necessarily at Santa Barbara. It was kind of a dual purpose because you're still getting paid minimum wage, which was for something an hour or whatever it was, wasn't. But I did have to pay for food, so it's kind of a double bonus, right? So you're getting paid. You don't pay for food and and it help offset some of the costs. And so even then, I mean, UC wasn't incredibly expensive. So when I left, UC, you know, I would spend a lot of what I made. I would spend more on my rent and things like that. And then my parents will help with tuition, which, you know, wasn't an enormous amount given it was UC. But when I went to Georgetown, I had to take out major loans, like six-digit loans, which was a lot back. And I went to 93 or 96. It took me a long time to pay it off.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 37:17 >> 42:06

(Interviewer) And when did you start focusing on being a public defender or what kind of law you wanted to?

I developed that specific goal while I was in law school. I was taking different classes. I was doing different clinics. And so one one was teaching high school. I'm in schools in D.C. through street law. So I taught at Anacostia, which is southeast D.C., which at that point was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. And actually, I take that back, I first first year I did it. It was my second-year law school. It was a school that was kind of the opposite. It was a magnet school that was near George Washington University, where students would come from hour or two away on a bus sometimes to get there, and they had a test to get in and all that.

So I did that my first year. The next year, the professor who a couple of weeks into school said, Ash, we have a problem in class. Yeah, but two of the law students dropped out and we need somebody. And so they paid me by minimum wage as well, just because they didn't have a lot of money to go to pay someone to teach, to take over that class and so I taught at Anacostia as well, that third year law school, my that were my last year law school.

And so I was doing that, learned a lot from those students, and especially because I was 22, 23 years old when I was teaching them. So I wasn't that much older than them, but I was coming from a very different world than they lived in. And the situations where one of the students, you know, one of the students and his younger brother literally saw like three or four guys right in front of them get shot and were in shock. And so I talked to their mom and her mom that stay with me that weekend. We just played video games and ate pizza all weekend just so they didn't have to be in that environment just to give them a couple of days. But that's kind of trauma that these students are going through. I had a student who a Central American student who was 19, and he was still in high school because you start you came to America, immigrated and wanted to get back into school with you, wanted to finish his high school diploma, but he had to work. And so he worked every single night until like three in the morning, just dishwashing or clearing tables, all that stuff. And so he got pulled over one time at two in the morning. And because he smelled like alcohol, because he was cleaning up stuff, but he didn't he wasn't drinking it, but he called me from jail and I said, Just get out. He was like, What should I do? I don't want to pay the bills. Like just you don't want to stay in that environment. So he gets out and he drove to my place and we talked from like three in the morning at six in the morning. But those are the kinds of experiences that the students were going through, right.

I was teaching. And so I learned a lot about myself and including kind of guiding me towards being a public defender as well, because I did look at the entire justice system, including prosecution. I did an internship my second summer in San Diego. The U.S. Office in the Dangerous Drugs and Narcotics section. So I learned a lot. And the attorneys were, I believe, ethical. There are good attorneys, but I had determined at that point that I couldn't do anything that would contribute to locking people up. And there's this is like a mid to late nineties, which is kind of the height of mass incarceration and certainly in California. But I think around the the the nation as well. You know when you know after they really got tough with in fact Joe Biden was a part of it as a senator and Bill Clinton you know they went really hard on crime and that you know so I determined that I want to be a public defender, which is not a job that you get a lot of support from the law school and getting the help people that want to get clerkships with judges or law firm jobs. But when I went to the career center there, they basically just dropped a directory of public offices in California. Oh, here it goes. I mean, that was it. There was no other kind of help or assistance. But by the time I graduate, I knew that's what I wanted to do.

Well, I think from law schools in general, they get and part of the ranking is how much your average salary is when you get out and how prestigious of a job is. That's how they recruit more students. And so they don't get a benefit for well, for those of us who go into public service. And so I think there's a kind of an odd disincentive to really push the corporate type job on law students or getting some fancy clerkship, because that is also something that's monitored. How many clerkships do graduate students can how many law firms or the big law firms, how many get hired, the big law firms? And so there's not that same support for going into any kind of public service.

Timeframe 42:06 >> 49:16

There wasn't one point. I think it all started, you know, when I was young. I think it all started even in high school and even younger when I was eight years old or so. Yeah, when I was eight years old, I remember going to India and I remember seeing little boys that looked just like me coming up to me, you know, begging me for money. I think that was the beginning of a turning point, as strange as it seems. I mean, I wouldn't say articulate it, you know, I didn't I just felt different. I felt lucky, certainly. But I felt like a lot of sense of obligation and I think that never really left me. And so that's part of the reason why I didn't really gravitate towards school in the same way, because I didn't see, you know, the incentive to be just a good person and do good things. And when I went to high school, that mentality continued. And so I think it just kind of grew over the years and every experience added to it. And certainly teaching was a huge part of what added to that collection of experiences. (Interviewer) And so can you share a little bit about how you balance family and public service at the moment.

Well, it's just me and my dad. It is. There's no doubt that the way I approach my work is I think is very much a full-time job. And really for the past, I would say 16 more than that probably I would say 17 plus years I've worked essentially actually more than that. I take that back play for close to a quarter century, if not more. I've worked basically seven days a week for the most part. When I was a public defender, I'd be in the jails on the weekends, at least one day of the weekend. So six or seven days a week has been pretty for me since 1997. And so that makes it challenging on the personal life front. But more recently also with my father, who's self-sufficient to a great extent, but in some ways is it? And so I have to also fit that in the best I can, especially going back and forth to Sacramento.

I think once I decided that's what I wanted to do, and actually I remember even before that, when I was in high school a bit, so much pressure with young grades, grades. I told my parents my second year, I'm just I promise you, if you just leave me be, everything's gonna be fine. Just, you know, to put that kind of pressure on me, I'm not I don't respond to that. Right. And so they did, Especially my my, my father, who was always more gentle about it anyway, kind of backed off in that sense. And then asked specifically about grades, more so about my classes and things, you know, a little bit more substance than the surface stuff. And when I started starting to talk about law school, I think at least gave some sense of direction and when I got into Georgetown, I think they were very proud of me and started going to school in D.C. And I think that kind of remained up until the public defender's decision, I think, you know, was was perplexing, especially because, I mean, I interned for nine months with no pay until they hired me. And so going to let's consider procedures law school and then coming out and choosing not to get paid in order to get a job that already pays a lot less than other jobs that are made available already getting paid less than other jobs that are made available didn't make as much sense, I think, to them.

I think eventually they figured out my father, certainly. But it took a it took a turn because I think, again law school that I think can work for something firm, international, of whatever, you know. And so there's a different perception of what it means to go to law school for most people versus me when I went in there, in fact, when I went to law school, I was in a section three is an experimental section, is law school split up into sections and Georgetown, there are five sections, one is an evening student section. There's four day to day program. And Georgetown is a very large school student body wise. And so you really get a good sample size of what kind of career trajectory folks take. And so I applied for and was accepted to this experimental section that taught the law in a very different way. So most law schools teach excuse me, so most law schools teach the law based upon Harvard's like 18th century, 19th century format of how to teach the law. And so it's very structured contracts, you know, towards civil procedure or criminal procedure. This section was far more, I guess, progressive, for lack of a better idea. But it really looked at critical race theory. It looked at what was happening at the time that these laws were being passed. So instead of, you know, typical constitutional law and what have you, we had a class called Democracy and Coercion instead of we had a Bargain Bargain Exchange and Liabilities instead of Contracts and Torts.

But that basically means we're looking at things from a different perspective. So I think it was very it was great for me. And it's just that one year, but one year was very different for us than it was for the rest of the student body. And a lot of the people that were in that class, you can see a couple of people just came back from the Peace Corps and definitely, you know, had long hair and a couple other people did, too. It's very different, very progressive type folks. But 90% of them went on to work for law firms. And so that's what law school kind of does. And I'm grateful that it didn't happen to me that I was able to resist a lot of them, the flow of the water, so to speak, because we are all in debt, too. So I get that kind of pressure.

I mean, I'm very happy I didn't waste years doing something that I didn't want to do because of either monetary or academic pressure when doing the same thing as everybody else. Being a public defender to this day is still the best job I've ever had, and it was an incredible job and it was a very difficult, especially at the time that I was a public defender. From 1997 to 2008, the height of the three strikes law, the war on drugs. And I saw how our system treats people, which is poor people, working class people, people of color. And it really helped to inform much of what I had been studying in books. I saw firsthand in front of me, and it really helped to develop my character. I mean, I don't think I was someone that was too judgmental before, but there's no doubt during my time as public defender that I definitely would hesitate to judge anyone. And that stuck with me to this day. Everyone has different experiences.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 49:16 >> 50:36

I mean, all my clients, regardless of how severe the charges against them, had, their own trauma that they grew up with, lived with or abused, what have you. And so it really speaks to my experiences throughout my life where you might have an uncomfortable experience with someone, but you don't necessarily know what they're going through that day or what caused them to become that kind of person. And so I am very much informed by those experiences, even in my work as an elected official, as a as an assembly member. And I do a lot of criminal justice reform work and a lot of work to uplift our community and to bridge the economic divide, in much part because I saw firsthand what happens when you create a two different societies to some extent, and how we are here in Silicon Valley, which is in many ways a tale of two valleys. And yet most people don't see the other half, whether they're working class or whether they're wealthy. They don't really see how the other half lives. And I have had an opportunity to kind of see the whole spectrum of life in Silicon Valley.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 50:36 >> 57:33

I could probably write a thousand-page book on the interesting experiences. It's yeah, that's part of I like the job in addition to the mission behind it, providing individuals a vigorous defense representing the Constitution of the United States and making sure that everyone felt like there is someone in their corner. There were so many experiences from small, little minor experiences to very emotional and difficult experiences that, you know, I went through that I saw that I experience with my clients or saw them go through.

And from very what would be considered certainly today, very minor incidents of drug possession that caused clients to face 25 years of life. You know, I'm talking about possessing 0.15 grams of cocaine; it is not even usable. And yet the DA’s office would charge them 25 to life because they had residential burglaries ten years earlier when they were younger. That's the kind of cruelty that I saw happening every single day. And the experiences that came from that were incredibly intense and educational for me, seeing people redeem themselves, seeing people fail and get back up again was extraordinary. Even now, I haven't been a public defender for 15 years and there are occasions where I run into a former client who's doing really well, and it's great to see that.

Of course, the ones that aren't doing so well, I don't see. And that also sits in the back of my mind too. And when you're doing drug court now, it was interesting because I was one of people that loved to do drug court and it was considered a rest assignment. And what I mean by that is, is usually we had or felony tours or trial tours usually lasted about a year to a year and a half or so. That summer doing trials, three strikes cases, serious felony cases. And so they would give us rasp because, you know, you need to take a break from that. And one of the rest assignments was drug court, where you would be in court pretty much every day and you'd have a stack full of case files. Many of your clients would be eligible for treatment. It was Prop 36 treatment. Back then, at least, there are probably other programs now available in addition to Prop 36. But we would basically go through these cases and some days would be the first court appearance and other days it would be or other clients it would be for them deciding if they want to plead guilty or not.

Some of the mornings or afternoons would be for reviews where they'd come back and basically let the judge know how they're doing. And I really liked it because I felt that there was a very redeeming quality to the work. I learned a lot about myself. I also like the social work aspect of it, of making sure that my clients were getting the treatment they needed, getting the help they needed, and triaging them on that.

I used to go to the jails on the weekends. As I mentioned before, a lot of people in those assignments wouldn't go to the jails on the weekends, especially if their clients are about to get out the next court date because they got Prop 36, which essentially means that they plead guilty, they they get released and go into a program full, oftentimes outpatient treatment. They get tested and they have to come back to court every month or two. Just to show how they're doing and the classes they get progress reports from the from the treatment program and what have you. But I would put myself in my client's shoes thinking that if I'm in court, don't know what's really going on, confused. And some random guy comes up to me and says, I'm your lawyer. I've been assigned to represent you. I'm the public defender's office and I'll see you in a couple of weeks and two weeks later you're trying to tell them, okay, just plead guilty and you're going to get out. You know, I think to myself of how confusing that is, as well as a sense of understandable mistrust in the system that oftentimes has already failed them from when they were children.

And so I would take the time to go and visit them, even if I was, you know, half hour or 45 minutes, an hour to sit down with them and kind of go over the Prop 36 process, what they can expect, go over their case and say, look, you know, the drugs were found in your pocket. You know, you certainly have the right to go to a trial if you so choose. But usually when they heard the whole kind of menu of options, they would agree that, yeah, you know, I probably will take the treatment I need, the help, what have you. And so when I saw them again, we've already had that conversation. So when I have 30, 40 cases to go through, I'm not just rushing them through. Just plead guilty to sign this line here. They're initial there and you're going to be out by tomorrow or I'll be out later tonight. That wasn't good enough for me because it wouldn't be good enough for someone that was in my family if they were in trouble and had a lawyer assigned to them. Now I get that that's probably a different perspective. A lot of folks not necessarily have that much time on the weekends. Maybe they have families and kids and all that, and so I get that it's not a judgment on anyone else, but that's how I approached it.

And even with the more serious cases, like three strikes cases, so a three strikes case when they're facing 25 to life, there's a process called Romero Motions, which is basically the opportunity to try to convince the judge to strike their strike priors for the purpose of sentencing. And so they may have four or five, six, seven strike priors. Oftentimes residential burglaries. You know, they got in trouble when they're younger, and they have a bunch of burglaries on the record in many cases. Well, before there was even a three strikes law. But now they're facing 25 to life for whatever felony they're being charged with. Could be drug possession. It could be petty theft with the prior. So they just shoplift something. But because they had prior theft cases, now it's being charged as a felony. Now they're facing 25 to life. And so I would really put a lot of time into those cases. Oftentimes, defense attorneys will have a very kind of standard template and they would just like plug in a few paragraphs here and there and submit their seven, eight, nine page, what's called a statement in mitigation. But I would actually go and visit my clients repeatedly, talk to their families, get and put together like 20-30 page biography is basically their life. And so when I submitted my statement mitigation, it would be 30 or 40 pages and the judge would be through it. And I would want to really personalize my clients to the court. And I had a really good success rate of getting strikes stricken, I think in part because I really got to know my clients as well.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 57:33 >> 1:01:42

So there's no doubt that it's a rarity [being a South Asian American public defender]. A little bit less rare now, thankfully, than then. But it was definitely very rare for a South Asian, especially a man to choose public service in that sense. And so there were very few of us when I was in the public defender's office for the first few years, I was the only South Asian public defender in Santa Clara County office, which we had, you know, well over a hundred attorneys. There was one prior that I had never met but had heard of. But she had she had left, I think, couple of years before that. So I was probably the second in the history of the Santa Clara County office. But there were thankfully others that came and followed. And I do think that there was definitely a link to my sense of social justice and in being a public defender with my upbringing, with me being Indian as well as Hindu, I do think when it came to interacting with my clients, you know, it took probably a little bit more work on my part to really show that I can relate with them and they can understand a little bit more about about me and who I am as well. But I think more that had to do with age than my race. And I was pretty young, you know, sort of interning the public defender's office and I was 24. And so I worked on cases when I was 25, started working as a lawyer. There was 25 between three strikes cases that happened 27. And I looked really young at that time, so I didn't even necessarily look like I was as old as I was. And, you know, taking on some pretty heavy responsibility in terms of consequences for my clients.

So I learned a lot in terms of own personal growth and especially as it applies to I learned a lot, especially especially as it applies to kind of connecting with different communities. When I went to Santa Barbara at the time, it was over 90% white and it was a very different kind of environment than I was used to growing up here in South San Jose, an incredibly diverse high school. And I did feel like in other oftentimes what I mean by that is I was always reminded that I was Indian or that I wasn't white, very least pretty routinely. I didn't realize it at the time. But I think as I went on to school and when I went to law school and then I'm going to school at Georgetown, most of my friends there were black and I didn't get that same sense. I felt much more of a kind of much a much warmer kind of sense of community.

But I did learn a lot just in general, kind of in my early twenties. And I came back here and started working as a public defender. And then I also started teaching Lanai in 2000 at San Jose State University. I started teaching classical law in the Black community, and then I started teaching at Lincoln Law School class called Race and the Law. And I saw it really as something that was an offshoot as much for my own personal education than what I learned in classes. And I definitely took African American studies classes. I was Indians and what have you. But much of what I learned was kind of on my own, some of it in law school, we did have some critical race theory, but it was really much of what I kind of read and studied on my own that I just started teaching, you know, at some San Jose State and Lincoln Law School.

I mentioned that because I think that also helped me in my work as a public defender in kind of breaking down barriers with different communities and with clients that come from different backgrounds, both socioeconomically as well as racially. And I also was very involved and got involved with the Bar Association. I was on the Bar Association Board, I was on the South Asian Bar Association Board, Asian Law Alliance Board, Lifelines for Youth. This was all happening late nineties into the twenties. And so I got really active and I think all those different experiences really exposed me to a lot of different communities and cultures and what kind of struggles and what kind of issues those communities were going through.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:01:42 >> 1:04:55

Yeah, I never wanted to be an elected official. I think the evidence of that, especially back then, was becoming a public defender. I think now is a little different where someone who's a public defender can run for office. But back then, especially when the tough on crime era was happening, being a public defender was was not the route to go, if that's what you wanted to do. Although I would have friends that told me even in law school that they thought that that was something I would do someday. I never saw it for myself. And when I was back home teaching, working for these different nonprofit boards, working as a public defender, I also got on the Human Rights Commission around the year 2000 of the city of San Jose, and I did that for a few years, and then I joined the Planning Commission in 2005.

And so I was on the planning Commission for two and a half years before I joined the City Council. And when I got on the Planning Commission, I kind of told myself that if I don't like this, that I probably won't like being a councilmember, because a lot of the work that you see on the surface of being a councilmember, it oh, I told myself that if I didn't like being a planning commissioner, I probably wouldn't like being councilmember because a lot of the work is land use. But I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. I like learning about a new area of law, a new area of policy, and I also had started a Neighborhood Association here in the Hayes neighborhood where I live. And when I started the neighborhood association, I also got a greater sense of the different neighborhoods that are around the district as well. And it was through that experience that I really started thinking more and more about running for City council.

Well, I knew that I wanted to get more and more involved when I came back home to sounds like I knew I wanted to live in San Jose, even though I went to school in. But that was part of the reason why I went to school in the East Coast because I figured that would be my only the East Coast experience. And when I came back and got more and more involved, it is something that I felt rewarding. You know, being a public defender, there's different ways people respond to that work. And for me, when I wasn't working, I responded by getting more involved in community. Although I don't blame anyone for doing the opposite, for not wanting to do anything when on the weekend or just spend time with their family and friends because it's a very draining job for me, it had a different effect. It wanted me to get more active and engaged and involved in the community.

I started to learn how the city operates. I really didn't know much about these boards and commissions until I joined the Human Rights Commission, and I learned how much influence you can have, but I also learned how much influence you don't have, that you make recommendations and they're ignored by the council all the time. You know, a recommendation on the moratorium on the use of Tasers. And, you know, they didn't really listen to us. And but that was one example of many where you know, there are some situations where, you know, listen to you. But there was a lot of occasions where we weren't and I included to be on the planning commission, which is a very influential commission. But at the end of the day, it's up to what the council wanted to do and they would find a way to do what they wanted to do anyway.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 1:04:55 >> 1:08:39

Yeah, I started getting more and more involved in the broader Asian American community, not just when I'm on the South Asian Bar Association, but Asian Law Alliance and other organizations. And when I was in the Bar Association as well, working with the different kind of ethnic bar associations. And so I learned a lot through that. I also joined the board of the Silicon Valley, Asian Pacific American Democratic Club, where I first got connected with through Paul Fong and then Mike Honda and Margaret Abe-Koga and others that were part of it. And I think that connected me to a broader AAPI community. There weren't a lot of South Asians that I remember are part of that organization. And so, you know, I brought something a little bit different to the organization that that didn't have that much participation from South Asians. So it was good to bring in a different perspective as well.

Well, I think that it's not. Well, I think first to understand why the older generations have the views they do and they don't have the same exposure that we do to a much broader array of the diverse community. They're much more insulated, understandably, and their views are based on a different in some cases, and they're more narrow in some cases the more self-selected environment. But it's not wrong for them to think the way they do, given the experiences they've had. So rather than just say they're wrong, I think try to expose them to new things, to new experiences, to education on what other communities have gone through because they didn't grow up here with the same education system that we grew up with. They didn't grow up around other cultures as much. Maybe at their workplace, maybe. But it doesn't mean they're necessarily socializing and understanding about the culture of those that they work with. And so I think take them outside of their comfort zone, whether it's going to different events to the community events, watching documentaries or movies that can share different experiences that they may not be aware of.

And so it's not a matter of not wanting to be understanding, it's a matter of not being exposed. Oftentimes you think about the migration, especially the sixties and seventies, migration of Asian Americans coming from India, China and other countries. It was only allowed and only became allowable because of the Civil Rights Movement. Well, a lot of folks that came here didn't know that, you know, they and really, how would they? They just were eligible to come here. And so they came. But the reality is that the Immigration Act was a direct offshoot of the Civil Rights Act. And so talk about that. So the reality is a lot of people, a lot of Black people died and fought for the ability for us to come here and to understand kind of the ongoing struggles that still exist to this day for so many in other communities.

It's not like that the AAPI community doesn't have its own struggles, but there are different kinds of struggles, and I don't think that we have the same kind of barriers or the tougher barriers to advance as some other communities. It doesn't mean we don't have barriers, and even amongst the AAPI community, it's very broad. I think you see far more barriers for Southeast Asians than you will for South Asians or for Chinese Americans. And that's part of a racial hierarchy that's been built into the society that I think we're better off if we have an understanding of it.

Timeframe 1:08:39 >> 1:13:03

There wasn't one moment it just kind of was a collection of work, really, because when you look back on it, my work in the community, my resume was well suited to running for city council, but it wasn't developed and put together to run for city council. My work was just my work and then it ended up being of the nature that it set me up to run for City Council. And that's why when people come to me now and say, Oh, I want to run for office, you know, it. And that's like their goal. I don't understand it. Like for me it was never like that. And so I can't give advice for that. I can give advice on if you want to serve, if you want to do work for your community. And one of the first questions I always ask is if there's a neighborhood association where they live 99% of the time, some of the ask me about running for office can't answer that question. And they might be going to all the quote right places where the politicians are, but they're not going where the people are.

So when I ran, there were five other candidates. I was not the favorite. The incumbent councilmember was supporting someone else, and that was for us Forest Williams. He was supporting Jackie Adams, who was on the school board at the time, African American woman who had been on the school board for well over a dozen years. At that point. And so I was running with a very little support in terms of elected official endorsements and what have you. But I did have a lot of neighborhood leaders support because I'd cultivated that over three or four years, you know, throughout the district. And I think that was far more helpful than having elected officials being supportive. And I just worked really hard. I mean, I think one of things I knew that I didn't know if I was going to win or not, but I knew that no one's going to outwork me because if I was going to do this, I was going to take it that seriously.

If someone was going to contribute a minute of their time or a dollar of their money, that I wanted to honor that. And I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and, you know, walking around the different neighborhoods. I walked the entire district more than a couple of times and just kept knocking on doors. And I had my campaign office in my garage. So just being very mindful of not wasting any money. And when it came down to fundraising and sales, he still has the in a good way, those very strict rules about fundraising where you can't even solicit until six months for the election. Well, that bell around December 7th, which is a really tough time to fundraise. But I remember the second I was allowed to, I dropped like three or 400 envelopes in the mail, had an event December 15th, and at that time the maximum was $250 per contribution. And this is in 2008 and I remember by the end of that month. So in a three week period, really only two weeks is it takes time to get the word out to folks. I had all these checks coming in and I raised almost $30,000 in that three-week period. The next close was $3,000 from Miss Adams. And by the time we got to February, I think I had so much momentum. And although she'd been in the school board but she never run before, she was appointed. And then she ran but kind of ran unopposed after that. And so by the time we got to February, you know, even though she had filed after filing, she withdrew. And but her name was on the ballot, which ended up being a good thing because she ended up in second place. And so the November primary, the November general election, you know, became a little bit easier in that sense. But for the June primary, we worked really hard and didn't get a 50% plus one that got about 43% of the of the percentage of the vote. And, you know, we were able to to win.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:13:03 >> 1:17:41

Well, I was in the political minority the entire time. Mayor Chuck me in the mayor of Sam Liccardo, much more moderate Democrat. I think Chuck Reid really was more of a Republican, even though he had a D next to his name. And so it was a hostile environment in that sense where, you know, I was not supported as much by the mayor and the majority or by the Mercury News, who was very anti and still is very anti-labor, and they went after the unions in terms of pension reform in a way that was unconstitutional. And I became the loudest voice against that. And in addition, you know, was very vocal in terms of raising the minimum wage on LGBTQ rights on a wide range of issues that made the power structure very uncomfortable. And, you know, I remember in 2012 running for reelection and this is right after reelection, because that's when they were putting the Measure B ballot initiative was on the ballot that June. So a very low turnout intentionally. They put it on the June ballot to do pension reform in a way that was very anti-worker and unconstitutional. And so I was the loudest voice against that. I was also the loudest voice in favor of raising the minimum wage. I was working with some of the San Jose State professors and students and getting that on the ballot. And in May, there was an option of either putting it on the ballot in November or the council could adopt it outright. I put a motion to adopt it outright. We lost on the eight to three vote and folks like Chuck Reid, Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and Sam Liccardo; they all voted against adopting it outright and but I still proceeded to put it on the floor for a vote.

And then on top of that, our mayor was the only big city mayor not to sign on to a letter in support of marriage equality. And so I, I pushed the issue so that we would call on it. We would bring it to the council to call on the mayor to sign on to the letter. And if you wouldn't, at the very least, city of San Jose would. Unfortunately, I made a majority of the Council. As much as they talk about being a support of LGBTQ rights, declined to put the matter on the council agenda, which all we needed was a majority vote to do it. But there were more protective of the mayor than they were of the community. And so that's where like folks, again, like, you know, obviously, Chuck Reid because he's not in favor of marriage equality, but Liccardo and Madison Nguyen refused to put it on the agenda. And yet they'll show up to pride events and talk about how progressive they are when it actually comes to standing up for people's rights. You know, they chose their own political expedience and their political friends. And so I learned a lot about that, about how, you know, people are on the surface versus who they are in reality, when they would show up to unveil the Cesar Chavez, you know, walk, you know, placards and yet would vote against workers the next the next council meeting.

And so the what people say versus what they do are two very different things. And I'm grateful that I was always kind of aligned both for me, what I said is what I did, but and it's still the same way to this day, but I saw how politics and the power either changes people or I think more accurately exposes who they really are. You know, I would question those who are elected officials just because they show up to an event. Don't give them all the accolades and praise them as if they actually care about the issues. You care about. And so you can be very direct on where they stand and ask for direct answers. Oftentimes, if someone is not going to answer the way you like, they get very indirect answers. But that, I think, indicates where they are on the issue. And so, you know, expect more than just people showing up. It's not a matter of showing up at an event. It's a matter of showing up in closed session when no one's watching or showing up at council meetings when there's hardly anyone there. That's really where the work matters. We see a lot in the legislature, too, because people are back in their districts going to this event, that event. But the way they vote in Sacramento may not align with what they were just talking about at some event over the weekend.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:17:41 >> 1:22:59

Yeah, you know, I mean, I give a lot of thought even running for reelection because, you know, it's when you're trying to be a principled leader, it's hard to be surrounded by people that aren't principled. It really isn't you, right? It it's not exactly the same as being a public defender and being surrounded by these wonderful people that are doing work that in many times is thankless. Now, you know, I have to play a game that I'm not interested in playing and, you know, learning the rules of engagement and what motivates folks when it's not about service. And so I thought long and hard about running for reelection to council, even though once I got reelected and the next couple of years after that, we continue to have these battles in city hall and, you know, in the assembly seat was going to become available. I thought to myself, well, but I would I'd rather have me there or someone else, especially because this district is a very blue, very Democratic district. And there are a lot of very blue Democratic districts that have very moderate legislators. What would be benefit from that, or especially my city, do I want my city to be represented by someone that's going to, you know, be more interested in their own kind of advancement or someone that's actually going to stand up for the people that the voiceless and those that don't write all the big campaign checks.

And so I thought about it from that perspective, as well as the fact that I was on the PTA board. I chaired the details on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board. I chaired that on the Caltrain Board Association, Bay Area Government's board. So I was doing all this work as regional work that really spoke to a lot of the issues that you do have some control over or at least had the opportunity to have some say on when it comes to housing and transportation. And so I felt alignment with a lot of the work that I have been doing and the work that you can do in Sacramento if you go there with the right intentions. And so I decided to run, even though I think that it was a challenge demographically for me because the community that we're in know has the largest Vietnamese population of any city outside Vietnam, has a huge Latino population for almost 40% at that time, the voting population of Latinos by 37% or so. And you know, I'm an Indian guy that's running. The registered South Asian vote is one or 2% tops. But, you know, I ran with the same mentality that I always carried in my service. And it was amazing to see all the work that I had done for all the different communities and to come back to me in a very positive way. And that, you know, you realize people do pay attention even when you're not asking for attention. People do pay attention to who you are and the work that you do. And I think it has shown during the campaign.

Well, my experience was different on the council because I was in the political minority and then I go to the assembly and I'm in a supermajority of Democrats. And so I had the ability to I've had over 50 bills have been passed into law that in some some cases are not just leading the state, but leading the nation in some cases and setting up a template for the world. It's amazing how powerful California is in that sense and how influential Sacramento is. If you again, are focusing on issues that you know, that are difficult and they're a tough and I really enjoy the opportunity to be able to write legislation and think about what it is that our community needs, whether it's criminal justice reform, whether it's workers’ rights, environmental justice, health care access and health care reform. There are so many different areas that you can work on. And that's perfect for me because I've always, as you can hear from from the things that I've done during my career, I'm always all over the place doing so many different things. And so in that sense, it was very suitable for me.

(Interviewer) And you mentioned there's not many public defenders that go the route of higher office, So how did you feel your experience being a lawyer, being a public defender helps to help inform writing laws and passing laws?

Absolutely. Being a lawyer absolutely helps, no doubt about it. And being a public defender in particular helped because I had more court experience and pretty much anyone a lot of lawyers go into politics now. A lot of them have experience in court. And so having that trial experience and that experience in court, especially the meaningful kind of experience you get as a public defender, I think really helped. It also helped, as I referred to earlier, about not being judgmental and it gives you a very thick skin. And so having to deal with the kinds of people you have to deal with in politics and, you know, not letting it kind of knock you off your path.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:23:00 >> 1:27:11

Well, in some ways I've been working on that bill [AB 2542 California Racial Justice Act] for 20 years because I saw firsthand the how racism is embedded into our criminal justice system. So when I had the opportunity of working with Anti-Death Penalty coalition to push for the Racial Justice Act, it was really very much of a full circle moment. And it was one of the most challenging and interesting piece of legislation I ever worked on, both in terms of the substance but also the path it took during a year in which COVID struck and George Floyd was murdered and all this was happening the year that the Racial Justice Act was trying to make its way through the legislature. It was it was an incredible journey. The way our state public defender put it when it was passed, she referred to it as the most influential piece of criminal jurisprudence that passed the century. And the reason why she said that, and the reason why I believe that's true is because over the generations we've known that there are racial disparities in our criminal justice system. The outcomes are very clearly racist. And yet we've given tools to actually root out that racism. And this is the first chance and first opportunity where we're giving tools to attorneys to actually challenge the racism in the courts.

The way that the way the Racial Justice Act works, it allows the accused to challenge their arrest conduct during trial, conviction and sentencing based upon racial bias? And the profound impact that has is it allows us to finally have a court look at things other than explicit racism. You don't see that much explicit racism in California anymore. I think those that might even harbor those feelings are smart enough not to know, not to say things out loud, to expose their racist intentions. And that's not how racism really works for the most part, it's implicit. It happens oftentimes unconsciously. And what this allows is using data to show that individuals are being treated differently. It's it has an enormous impact on our criminal justice system by, first of all, allowing the accused to actually get fair and equal treatment. But I think even more profoundly, looking ahead to the next generation of police officers, of judges, of DAs and defense attorneys, it leads towards behavior change because now it becomes a thought, a part of the thought process of why you charge someone, you know, what you what arrest them for, why you're asking them. When a judge sentences someone to how an appellate court may approach an appeal how a defense attorney may respond to their clients. And so we're really hoping that we'll see behavioral change in the years ahead. We've also started to look at the same thing in health care and kind of racism from doctors and health care professionals. Again, maybe not consciously, but that awareness is critical. And I absolutely think there's an opportunity to bring those down to the local level. And it already is in a sense, because we're talking about law enforcement and DA offices. So in that sense, it has been brought down to the local level.

And unfortunately, when we were pushing this forward, our own DA opposed it and spoke against it during Senate public safety hearings. But now he's forced to have to contend with it. And that's a good thing. We do have some prosecutors that are very much in favor of the Racial Justice Act and implementing it in a very productive, constructive manner. But the reality is, whether they like it or not, it's the law of the land. Now, here in California, and we see other states looking at it as well. And so I do hope it leads to behavior change, not just in the confines of the criminal justice system, but in terms of how government operates. And so I think there is room for us to expand, if not the law, the mindset behind it, and idea of behavior change to, the local level and local governance.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:27:11 >> 1:31:36

It's all connected. You, I think if we're talking about social justice, environmental justice, it's hard to do that without thinking about our planet, our wildlife. I the way I put is, you know, my compassion doesn't stop at my plate. You know, I think about eating when I'm how I'm living right in every aspect of my life. But it's been a journey for me, too.

It's not like I'm vegan now, but I wasn't always vegan. And so everyone has their own journey. And again, I don't judge myself too harshly, just like I won't judge someone else for that journey and that pace and that timeline. But when it comes to protecting animals and the wildlife and the environment, it's about self-preservation, too. I think that the idea that protecting the environment is about protecting something other than humanity is such a tired and old mindset.

The reality is that the earth is going to be just fine. We're not saving the Earth, we're saving ourselves. And it takes a lot of greed and a lot of complete cognitive dissonance for us to continue to destroy our planet. Despite all the evidence that we have about what human conduct is doing to our planet, our wildlife, our water, our air.

A couple of years ago I introduced AB 3030, and that is to protect 30% of our land and water by the year 2030. Unfortunately, the bill got stalled in the legislature, but the governor signed an executive order making California the first state in the nation to actually put forth a goal of protecting 30% of our land and water by 2030. More recently, when I was in Montreal for the UN biodiversity conference, California's 30 by 30 measures is really leading the planet. It's amazing to see the rest of the world working with California, watching what we're doing. And so I'm very proud of the fact that I introduced that bill to really start the whole process as to where California is and should be and where the rest of the world should be. I also have introduced legislation regarding deforestation to try to stop us from buying products that contribute to tropical deforestation. We're still working on that. It's been a few years. We're going to keep working on that and access. So I introduced AB 30, which is the follow up to AB 3030, which really says as we're protecting our land, our water, we want to make sure it's accessible to all communities, all families in California. We know that there's park deficits and tree coverage deficits in certain parts of town. We want to be very conscious about reversing that and to the end of and to that end in terms of creating more spaces in all communities. I've introduced a pocket forest bill which would bring pocket forests into urban areas. And what a pocket forest is, is that when you do tree planting, usually you do 50 different trees of the same species spread out apart. A pocket force is the opposite. You basically get a number of different species of plants, bushes and trees, and you plant them in a very dense area and it creates a forest environment, which is really great for biodiversity, it's great for creating a water table, it's great for wildlife, and it's great for neighborhoods that are tree deficit, have tree deficits and it's great for their quality of life as well. So that's another piece of legislation that I'm working on.

Last year I got a bill passed to to phase out the sale of fluorescent bulbs, which had mercury in it. Now there are five. There's five other states that are looking at that. A few years ago, I passed a bill to phase out the little shampoo and conditioner bottles. In California alone, over half a billion were put in hotel rooms every year and they were not recycled. But now we passed a law. So now when you go to hotels, you'll see the dispensers in there. Soon after we passed that law, the Marriott Group Intercontinental, they passed a North American policy just to phase it all out. So that's the influence of California has, is that when we do it, we're such a big part of the market.

We push industry when I was part of banning the sale of cosmetics, that test on animals, once we did that, it basically became the industry standard because you have to have access to the California market. And if you're going to do it for the California market, you'll do it globally. And that's really cool to see the kind of impact that we have when it comes to the environment in animals, what have you.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:31:36 >> 1:36:39

Yes. So in California, in our legislature, we have a super majority of Democrats, but not all Democrats are progressives. And I think there's an opportunity for us to really advance progressive policies if we're organized. So the idea is to become more organized as progressive members, and it's a pretty new caucus. We're still trying to figure out how to best operate. We do set policy priorities. We just started an endorsement process of those who are running for state legislature, in particular the Assembly and so my goal is to set up an infrastructure and ecosystem that not only helps to elect progressive members, but once we're there, how do we really push our policies forward and how are we successful in getting progressive legislation passed in California?

I was on the governor's future of work Commission that he set forth and right now I just got approved to chair a select committee through the State Assembly on the future of work and workers. What we're finding is that as we're seeing more technology enter the workplace is being used by corporations to really squeeze every ounce of productivity of workers without empowering workers. So it could be a technology company having the camera on when you're working from home, counting every keystroke. Or it could be an Amazon warehouse where they're checking to see how much you're working, whether you're going to the bathroom or not, or a UPS driver, and making sure that, you know, every single turn you make is as efficient as possible on your route. We want to empower our workers and we want to recognize that with technology, we absolutely can create a more efficient work environment. But we can't leave workers out of the equation. We have to make sure that workers are empowered and that we're creating more jobs that are protective, not just corporate profits, but actually of workers and their dignity at work and their ability to make a living wage.

Being the chair of a committee. You can set the agenda for the committee. You also can really steer the conversation based upon that agenda, based on who you have speaking at your committee hearings and really you want to guide it towards legislation. This shouldn't be just busywork. And whenever I've done informational hearings as chair of our labor committee or prior to that, as chair of our aging and long term care committee, when I've done informational hearings or work outside of our foundational committee work, it's always been to figure out what kind of laws we need to pass to better protect Californians or what kind of budget priorities we should set to better protect Californians from.

Well, I think there has to be accountability and that there has to be proactive. That's a proactive mindset of making sure that you're tracking exactly where the money is and meeting with the administration. Bringing students along, I think can always be helpful, kind of joining forces with folks in the student body that are supportive. And I believe, you know, when I look at it from the racial justice perspective, I see my responsibility of getting feedback on the ground from public defenders on the case.

So ethnic studies, you know, getting feedback from the campuses, hey, how's it going? Are you facing resistance or not? Because there can always be follow up action by the legislature. And so that is not ideal, but it's oftentimes what's necessary because we do face resistance to different laws. We passed, for example, I worked with San Jose State University, the Human Rights Initiative, to pass the CLEAR Act, and that requires police departments as part of their background process to root out any candidates who are part of violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters and all that. And so I know that in certain areas like San Jose, probably not going to be a problem for the police department to follow through on that. They already did a lot of that anyway. They would come through Instagram and Facebook and see kind of what the attitudes are of the potential candidates for their police department. But there's a lot of counties and 58 counties that have a very different mindset and aren't going to do it. And so we know we have to follow up and make make it very clear this is the law now and we don't want police departments continuing to hire white supremacists and white nationalists. You know, and similarly with the Racial Justice Act, you know, I know that about I'm doing legislation this year as what we call clean up legislation whenever we see gaps as it's being executed.

Now that we actually passed it, now we're seeing how it's being used in the court system. We might learn something about process. Similarly with any legislation, including the ethnic studies bill, now that is the law. Let's see how it's being executed and if there's gaps in how it's being executed, if administrations have too much power and faculty don't or student bodies don't, that can always be, if not legislation, at least check in from the legislature to make sure that they're following the intent of the legislature and not just taking the money and doing with it what they will.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:36:39 >> 1:38:58

(Interviewer) What is the best way you think it is to engage students, especially those of other voting age or just before that, to transition from high school to college or around college age? How is it that they can best interact with their local elected officials?

Well, they can show up. You know, I mentioned I started the neighbor association here and of course, as elected official when I was on city council, we doubled the number of neighborhood associations here in District two. And I've always been very engaged with them. But when you go to them, the demographics don't look like the neighborhood, both in terms of racial diversity, but particularly in terms of age. A lot of seniors, a lot of retirees, you don't see the young people there. And I think young people need to show up in these places and create space for themselves to be heard, because we're only getting one perspective for most part. You know, you get it much more of a NIMBY perspective, a much more of a perspective that doesn't want to see change. Well, with young people, you're getting a perspective that is more of the world they wanted to see. And too many elected officials don't engage with young people because they don't vote and they rather engage with the seniors or other folks that voted a much higher percentage because they see it as a much more valuable use of their time. And so young people have to vote more to kind of force the issue. And I know that's always been a refrain for a long time, but I think when we see choice being taken away, when we see LGBTQ rights under attack, when we see funding being decided by elected officials that don't always reflect what young people want when it comes to more money for transit versus more roads being paved, I think that that should be a sign that young people should be more engaged.

Easier said than done because young people are busy. Do you know whether it's college or earlier in their work career? We don't make it easy here because so hard to live here. So it's there's not actually a lot of spare time that young people have. But we are seeing more online activity. We're seeing more ways to engage. And I think that organization is key. So getting a group of young people together were okay. Even if I can't make it, everything someone represents us is going to be there. And I think we've seen some of that pretty successfully over the last few years.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 1:38:58 >> 1:43:06

I think most of my mentors are people that died a long time ago, like at least influences. I, I don't think I really have a lot of kind of political mentors during the time of my career where I can say, okay, well is who I want to pattern myself after, but you know, whatever. Now, when I was younger, reading Frederick Douglass had a tremendous impact on me in terms of the the way that he put it, you know, paraphrasing him in again, this is obviously a a metaphor, but not a parallel, because, you know, obviously what he was going through was a much different scale as a slave. He was a small child. And it was a point in time where he recognized he was a slave. And he likened it. The metaphor he used was to being in a dungeon. And the door opens up and he can now see before that there was no light. But now you can see the condition that he's in. And he envied all the other children that were slaves, slave children that were kind of running around playing and all that because they didn't know the condition they were in. But it also forever changed him. And the way I parallel that is that if you see an injustice, you can't turn it off. And that's kind of how I've been. If I see an injustice once I am aware it exist, it's it's very hard for me to go back to the way I was, at least in mindset, if not in action. And so, you know, that is a mentor. I think that had a great impact on me, there's no doubt about it. And I think there's been historical figures I think have had a much greater impact on me. I've read a lot more I've read a lot more autobiographies than fiction over my life because I just want to see how people go through things and how they can survive through things that were much more difficult than we've ever had to go through.

As hard as is as challenging as we see the world right now, people have been through things before that have been incredibly challenging and yet they've come through it and in many ways were successful or achieved a lot of the goals that they wanted to achieve. And so that's kind of where I get a lot of my motivation, or at least education from you. Or activism as action? I believe at times folks think that by showing up there, they're being active. In other words, if they show up to a rally or protest. Well, I'm an activist. Yes, that's important to do that. I mean, I showed up at plenty of protests in my time, whether is against the Iraq war. I even protested at Bush's second inauguration in D.C. and there is pepper spray all over the place. And it was wild. And those experiences are important to be with community in protest, whether it's Black Lives Matter or Women's March, you name it. But I don't think you can stop there if you're truly going to be an activist. I think to be an activist, you have to learn, first of all, whether it's something you're experiencing or you want to change the condition of what other people are experiencing, learn what those folks are experiencing. I think that the common sentiment is that those who are closest to the pain are the ones that are closest, the solution. And so I think an activist doesn't come in there just wanting to create change for change sake, but they want to help create change that they believe is meaningful based upon the work they put in to learning about social change and what's necessary. And so being an activist isn't about putting something on your resume. It's not about having a cool story to tell. It's about figuring out where you are on a journey of activists have been around for generations. We're just here for a short period of time, and in some ways we're kind of carrying the baton during the years or decades that were active and then we pass it on to the next generation. And long after we're gone, we just hope that we've moved, moved in the right direction in terms of social justice.

Systems & Power Timeframe 1:43:06 >> end

This country is rooted in racism and that racism, whether it's against the AAPI community or other communities, is done in a manner that makes us feel like we're another, that we're not included, that we're not accepted. And it's very intentionally done that way. And it's also done in a way to separate us from other groups that have been oppressed over the generations. That's why you sometimes intentionally see this tension that's put between the black community and the AAPI community that's very intentionally done. It's been done, you know, that kind of division has been done for a very long time, or even within the AAPI community, but South Asian, East Asian and. Okay, well, there's been a lot of AAPI hate recently against folks who are perceived to be East Asian and Southeast Asian, not so much South Asian. And so whereas the South Asian community in that, what's their responsibility? Just like after 9/11, there was more racism towards South Asians. Where was where and what is the responsibility of East Asians or Pacific Islanders in that? Right? And so I think that we all get kind of put in these boxes intentionally to get a sense that we're in this alone. And so when we look at the intentional injection of API hate into our community, especially during the pandemic, it was done to instill fear and otherness amongst the broader community. And that's something that's always been done. And that's the thing I told elected officials when they're knocking on doors, what have you, is that when you're AAPI, there's a an unspoken of loyalty test you at the pass so that people don't think you're you're a foreigner.

Sometimes it only takes 10 seconds, 20 seconds to do it. If I knock on someone's door, you know, it doesn't take long for them to know. I'm from the area, I grew up here and all that, But if I don't knock on the door, there might be questions in their head as, okay, where is he from? You know, what does that his name sounds unusual, whatever it might be. So I do think that there's this otherness test that has to be passed by the AAPI community in order to create some sense of credibility and belonging. And I think we benefit one another when we support one another in in ensuring and educating the broader community that of course, we belong. Of course we're part of this community. And I think the more work that we do when there isn't incidents that are occurring, the better. But it's always incidents, negative incidents that cause us to be more proactive. And the same thing happened with the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But led to this huge movement for Black lives. But even then, it's still a struggle, you know, for for the black community to be heard. I mean, with the rise of AAPI hate, we were able to get federal legislation passed. They still can't get the anti-lynching legislation passed or voting rights passed. And so a lot of other communities march a lot longer and a lot further than the AAPI community. But I think we benefit when we understand that we can march together.