Chinatown 2.0

On today's Chinatown 2.0, I speak with Ellen Lee Zhou, or 李爱晨, a two-time candidate for San Francisco mayor, in 2018 and 2019.

She ran as a conservative in a city where the mayor had been a Democrat for the last half a century. On top of her “non-mainstream” political ideologies, she had zero experience holding public office and raised very little money compared to her competition.

Despite all this, she won 4% of the votes in 2018, and 13% of the votes in 2019. And in 2019, she was second place in the race.

Ellen is a staunch supporter for Donald Trump, as will be quite obvious to those of you watching the video interview.

We discussed her experience running for the mayor of San Francisco. We also talked about issues in San Francisco such as homelessness, drugs, crimes, high property prices, deteriorating standards in public education, government corruption, voter fraud, and more. For most of these items, we also talked about solutions put forward by Ellen.

We also briefly touched upon Ellen’s day job as a behavioral health clinician, where she works with doctors and nurses to treat the mentally ill.

Lastly, Ellen talked about her circumstances when she first immigrated to the US as a teenager some thirty years ago.

As usual, don’t forget to like, subscribe and ring the bell on our Youtube channel. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Ellen’s 2019 campaign website: https://ellenformayor2019.com/
Ellen on Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/Ellen_Lee_Zhou

0:00 Teaser

0:21 Host monologue

3:33 Neighborhood coalition nominated her mayoral candidacy after acknowledging her outspokenness to fight opening of cannabis shops in Chinese areas

7:19 Her family dismissed her 2018 campaign given her lack of resources and experience

11:21 Supporters praised her courage to run and opponents mocked her efforts

12:23 Harassment by politicians and animosity from anti-Trump colleagues during her campaigns

14:50 Homelessness problem: drugs / out-of-city homeless people came for city's generous welfare / ineffective government spending to tackle homelessness

19:10 Walking through how a homeless person gets shelter and benefits from SF

20:39 Ellen's plan to tackle homelessness

24:20 Breakdown of different types of homeless people that ought to receive different kinds of help

29:21 Plan to run for mayor again if a special election takes place in 2021

30:14 Eight San Francisco city officials indicted in recent corruption probe

31:56 Sex trafficking and prostitution problems

34:22 How homeless people get money to buy drugs

37:22 Carjacking in SF

38:12 Lowell school's temporary replacement of meritocratic admissions with lottery & CA's Prop 16

43:06 Election fraud hurts mayoral candidates outside the right political circle

49:37 Discussion of her religion background as part of her candidacy

51:18 Problem of short housing supply has to do with City government sponsored free lawsuit service for tenants

53:44 Immigrating to SF from China as a teenager, knowing zero English and working as a seamstress

Erin Cuellar is Director of Operations at STERIS, a manufacturer of medical devices. At the time of the interview, she was senior operations manager at the same company, and her role was essentially that of a plant manager.

Her responsibilities included supervising teams, managing KPIs, and maintaining quality controls.

Erin comes from a very different world than I do. She dropped out of college, worked at a local manufacturing site, joined an apprenticeship program, got her journeyman’s card which is sort of like a full license to practice in the trades, and moved from state to state for employment in manufacturing.

In the course of 13 years, she moved between five different states. At least one of the moves was the result of a plant shutdown thanks to outsourcing.

But Erin and her family, which includes a husband and three children were fully resilient in transitioning to new homes, new jobs, and new schools.

In fact, about a year after our interview, Erin moved to Pennsylvania to become Director of Operations at her company. I became interested in the trades in recent years after noticing and following the works of Mike Rowe and Andrew Yang, who both highlight a change in the mix of American jobs available as well as people willing to undertake those jobs.

In the US, there just seem to be fewer opportunities in the trades sector, and even fewer young people looking to enter those fields.

Mike Rowe looks to encourage the youths to get into these areas, whereas Andrew Yang sees the loss of these opportunities as the force that hollowed out middle America, which disenfranchised large swaths of the population, leading to rising support for the wings of the political spectrum.

In today’s conversation, Erin and I talked about what it's like to work in a manufacturing plant, her experience of working in the trades as a rare species of a woman, her moves around the country in pursuit of various manufacturing jobs, how does she think about raising her kids, and why she thinks it's a good idea for young people to consider a career in the trades.

John Stevenson is a Black American who grew up home-insecure, but later graduated valedictorian of his high school. He went to Dartmouth and later graduated from the Political Science program at the University of Chicago. He now owns a yoga studio, does contracts for various government agencies. And he has ambitions to run for governor of Maryland.

Today we talk about his experience as a homeless person growing up. So he would be adding his unique perspective from that particular angle as well. His views of China from his vantage point, having worked in Washington DC, the state of Black politics, including his views on Black Lives Matter, and his plans to run for office and the reason for choosing Maryland at his home base. This will become apparent as the conversation unfolds.

You will notice that in future conversations, including this one, we might deviate from China, Chinatown or Chinese diaspora topics. Enjoy!

0:00 Intro

5:05 Ambition for Political Career: reasons to go into politics

8:38 Questions on the relative competitiveness of the US in the world stage

18:53 America's vs China's foreign policy

21:02 Government Systems: Reflections on Democracy and Autocracy in the US, China, and other parts of the world

26:51 Decades of white nationalist rule in high black population density areas

30:15 Comments on Multiracial and cultural heritage

33:57 Inequality and Desegregation

39:16 Born in Louisiana, Family, Childhood, and grown-up stories

44:18 “No shared vision of the future” as one of the reasons of Most American Divorce

1:01:57 What does homelessness and food security mean to you?

1:08:22 Biased assumption toward people of homelessness at different levels

1:13:38 Critique on the tendency in which people take poverty as the proof that there is something wrong with them

1:26:15 Distrust toward public institutions

1:39:18 John’s plan in pursuit of his political vision

1:41:53 Politics in Graduate School: Black people did not graduate from UChicago, political science department, for 14 years because they all dropped out

1:50:47 Anti-fascist movements

1:53:51 Left wing vs Right wing activities: should we be alarmed

1:59:17 Black Lives Matter

2:03:57 There should be a pluralist vision on “Black Live Matter”

2:07:07 What do you think are the Reasons that black folks support Donald Trump?

Alec Sorensen is a career coach who helps people take action on life-changing business ideas they've been putting off.

Alec is also a follower of the Mormon church, a Japan-living American at one point, a California-to-Texas transplant, among other things.

We discussed how he got into career coaching, his faith, cultural shocks in Japan, why he moved to Austin from the Bay Area, and more.

0:00 Intro

1:20 Alec as a Coach: His thoughts about the coaching industry, and how he uses habit-building techniques to help people achieve their goals

12:18 Growing up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and thoughts on the Broadway show The Book of Mormon

20:26 Joseph Smith's controversy: His spiritual experience and his motives of starting the Mormon church

27:21 The question of polygamy: Does the current church endorse it, and the logic behind the practice

31:59 The Mormon church hierarchical order and how apostles are selected

35:39 Religion vs Crypto: They are both a commitment to fulfilling an unrealized vision

40:48 Alec's experience as a missionary in Romania

45:53 Missionary KPIs and follow-up of new converts

49:44 Alec's experience in Japan: Learning a new language, and living in a remote village

53:35 Chinese vs American parenting: Expectations of parents of their children, and why economic factors allow for more flexibility

58:44 Replaceability of the working class, China vs US

1:03:34 Japanese stereotypes that proved true during Alec's stay in Japan

1:11:38 Alec's experience as a crisis counselor for male rape survivors

1:18:46 Alec's opinion on microdosing and other mushrooming techniques used in counseling

1:19:28 Illegal drugs, coffee, tea, and sodas: Why the church frowns on their use

1:21:57 Coaching: Why coaching, Insecurities, Working with clients to get them results

1:31:47 Decision to move to Austin: All the pros

1:38:08 How he gets clients from conducting pilots

1:48:30 Conversations in Austin vs conversations in the Bay Area 

1:51:37 Cognitive dissonance: How some champions for change in the Bay Area are somehow ill-prepared to pivot when confronted by people of different opinions 

1:54:43 Argument for the legitimacy of Russia's invasion

1:58:54 Outro