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Life & Times Transcript

3/7/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

They're the other sleeping giant in California politics. Are Asian American voters finally waking up?

Paul Ong>> I think it's starting to open its eyes. It's starting to stretch a little bit. It's not fully awake and out of bed yet.

Val Zavala>> And then, taggers think twice about leaving their mark on Montebello. The city is using more than paint to wipe out graffiti.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> The political clout of Asian Americans is on the rise and probably nothing symbolizes that better than the race for Orange County Supervisor. There are only seven disputed votes between the two top candidates and both of them are Vietnamese American. Roger Cooper has our story.

Roger Cooper>> It was supposed to fill a vacant seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, but this was a special election that turned into something much more, a political stunner. You've watched politics a long time in this county. Did you see what happened in the supervisors race coming?

Wylie Aitkin>> I wish I could say I did. I did not.

Sukhee Kang>> To be honest with you, I mean, that was a big surprise to me.

Anh Do>> So it's like a major announcement saying, you know, take us seriously. We're players.

Roger Cooper>> The First District in Orange County encompasses Little Saigon, home to an estimated one hundred fifty thousand Vietnamese Americans, the largest population of Vietnamese outside Vietnam. And the winner of this hotly-contested race will make history as the first Asian American on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Anh Do>> It may have been a political awakening for the general population, but here in Little Saigon, the sentiment was that some Vietnamese American would win.

Roger Cooper>> Republican candidates Trong Nguyen and Janet Nguyen ended up within seven votes of each other, seven votes that would later be disputed in a recount.

Wylie Aitken>> But the fact is that the other candidate, you know, was within seven votes and that together they garnered well over forty percent of the entire votes cast.

Roger Cooper>> Even more impressive, both Vietnamese candidates defeated Tom Umberg and Carlos Bustamante despite their having the blessings of their parties, previous experience and name recognition. This show of Asian American political strength is part of a national trend.

In 1996, there were about three hundred Asian American elected officials. By 2005, there were five hundred fifty-five holding offices from United States Senator to local city councils. Attorney Wylie Aitken chairs the Democratic Foundation of Orange County. He says the Orange County race has energized Vietnamese voters.

Wylie Aitken>> I think it's the most dramatic thing I've seen in Orange County politics since 1996 when Loretta Sanchez defeated Bob Dornan and electrified and energized the Hispanic community.

Loretta Sanchez>> "And the mushroom cloud that erupts tonight and rises above tonight is over the ashes of Bob Dornan."

Bob Dornan>> "She's the dirtiest candidate in the country and the biggest fraud. I will never concede to her."

Paul Ong>> A number of people were arguing that Latinos were the sleeping giants in California politics.

Roger Cooper>> UCLA Professor Paul Ong describes the show of Asian American political muscle as the stirring of a second sleeping giant.

Paul Ong>> Asians are roughly at the same spot that we saw Latinos during the 1970s. We still have a long ways to go. There's no question about that, but the trajectory suggests to us that, certainly within a decade or two, Asian Americans here in this state will be very influential at the voting place.

Roger Cooper>> Anh Do is a Vice President with Little Saigon's Nguoi Viet Daily News and Asian affairs columnist for The Orange County Register.

Anh Do>> In the last November election, we saw seventeen candidates in California and in Orange County of Vietnamese American descent running, and seven of them won or were re-elected. So just the interest, the spirit, that's been alive.

Roger Cooper>> You can see the change. Our State Controller is John Chiang, a Chinese American. In November, Leland Yee from San Francisco was elected to the State Senate. Two of five members of the Irvine City Council are Asian American, including Sukhee Kang.

Sukhee Kang>> I'm a first generation immigrant who came here in 1977 after graduating from college in Seoul.

Roger Cooper>> Twenty-seven years later, he became the first Asian American City Council member in Irvine.

Sukhee Kang>> The 1992 Los Angeles riot was my wakeup call, to be honest with you. I watched television and all those Korean businesses were burning down to the ground. When I was watching that, I said, well, this is something wrong in this country and something that we didn't have as far as political power is concerned. I don't know what to do, but I probably need to get involved politically.

>> "The game is Chinese Checkers. Little Saigon is the Vietnamese community right now. We need somebody representing us."

Roger Cooper>> It was just over thirty years ago that many of the residents of Little Saigon arrived at Camp Pendleton as refugees from the Vietnam War.

Anh Do>> I came in 1975. I did the whole Camp Pendleton track and we were lucky to arrive in one of the last airplanes before the fall of Saigon.

[Film Clip]

Roger Cooper>> Since that time, Vietnamese and Little Saigon have produced their own television and radio stations, newspapers and now their own candidates for political office.

Wiley Aitken>> What really ignited it was that next step which is not just participating, but actually one of your own running as a candidate.

Roger Cooper>> But there is a barrier that could slow the momentum of Asian American politics, a reluctance to register to vote.

Paul Ong>> Compare them to whites and to African Americans. Asian Americans, particularly immigrants who are naturalized, are less likely to register and slightly less likely to turn out to vote.

Roger Cooper>> Professor Ong says the best way to overcome this is to make sure issues and candidates that Asian Americans care about are on the ballot, and that's what happened in the race for Orange County Supervisor. Even the Vietnamese voters are a minority in the district.

Wiley Aitken>> The Vietnamese turned out in record numbers and, frankly, it's refreshing to see that there's a community that cares so much about the right to vote and the right to participate which we unfortunately -- we, meaning others -- seem to take for granted. The immigrant population really appreciates the right to vote and they take it so seriously. Hopefully, it's a wakeup call to all of us.

Roger Cooper>> Nationally, Asian American turnout is high. In 2000, eighty-three percent of registered Asian Americans went to the polls, an extremely high participation rate.

Anh Do>> I think there's a lot of underestimation of how fast that growth actually is. I would say we're already in bloom.

Sukhee Kang>> Now is the time that the Asian American community come out and be part of the mainstream process, to become part of their family.

Roger Cooper>> The outcome of this special election is still uncertain. The seven votes separating the candidates have triggered calls for a recount and challenges in court, but one thing is certain. The next Orange County Supervisor will be Asian American. And Professor Ong says that the second sleeping giant has gotten its wakeup call.

Paul Ong>> I think it's starting to open its eyes. It's starting to stretch a little bit. It's not fully awake and out of bed yet.

Roger Cooper>> In Little Saigon, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> We've heard it time and time again. Eat more fish. Yet if Americans ate as much fish as they recommend, it would wreak havoc on the fish supply in our oceans. So what are we supposed to do? For some answers, Vicki Curry talked with members of the Sustainable Seafood Forum, a partnership between the Aquarium of the Pacific, scientists, restaurants and suppliers, all working to preserve seafood for future generations.

Vicki Curry>> What does the term "sustainable seafood" mean?

Traci Adams>> Sustainable seafood would be any seafood that is not over-fished, that is farmed according to ecologically managed systems and there's not any certification program in place yet for farming seafood aquaculture. That's why it's such a touchy subject for a lot of people to talk about or to say that this is sustainable aquaculture.

That's what the Sustainable Seafood Forum is looking into and investigating different fisheries and making sure that the fish that we serve is the best choice as far as being sustainable. We want to make sure that the fish stays in stock, that it reproduces to keep the population, any aquaculture that is used is not environmentally damaging, that whatever comes out of the fish does not damage the ecosystems that it's farmed in and make sure that the local communities are benefiting from having a fishery or aquaculture farm in their communities.

Matt Stein>> Aquaculture is a form of agribusiness and we are leaders. California is a leader in every form of agribusiness, a little less in grain, but in dairy, in fruit, in vegetables, in wine. We believe that, in the same way, we can become a leader in aquaculture. Right now, we do very, very little, but if you look off the coast here, we have several thousand miles of coastline and the waters out to two hundred miles. A lot of fantastic sites exist for growing different marine species, as well as inland, we can also have great farming.

Vicki Curry>> How is aquaculture better than wild fishing?

Traci Adams>> Well, in wild fishing, you need to be careful about not over-fishing, obviously. So when you're wild fishing, it's easier to deplete the stocks. With farming, you can manage the stocks better. You can manage the numbers. But again, it's a very thin line on how farming is better. Is it better? We want to make sure that the farms that we will use when we investigate each one of them that come up will be a farm that is better than wild fishing.

Basically being able to reproduce the stock and not eliminating. Like Chilean Sea Bass almost came to the point of elimination. Everybody, I think, has been aware of that over the last few years and I think that was the beginning of the small movement of trying to pay attention to what was happening in the oceans and what was being available and when would it not be available anymore. At what point?

So with farming, if we can get developed to the point where every farm that establishes itself meets all the criteria that we're looking for, then it will benefit. It will benefit everyone and it will keep wild stocks sustained for the future and also provide a safe and healthy seafood option for our dining pleasure and our nutritional needs.

Matt Stein>> Historically, a lot of the aquaculture has been around fresh water species like trout, catfish, things that naturally are living in fresh water. They're a little bit more docile, they need a little bit less room. But now there are technologies that are, you know, becoming abundant for the marine fish which are typically a little bit more highly valued, a little bit more pallette-pleasing, so to speak.

Vicki Curry>> What parts of the industry need to be involved to make a seafood sustainable?

Traci Adams>> The food and beverage industry needs to be involved in this as much as the scientists, as much as the fish wholesalers, because we're the voice to the public. The public goes in, they sit down, they see a menu and they see fish on the menu.

If you can write that "This is sustainably reproduced or maintained from an aquaculture farm", or "This is from a wild fishery that has been certified by the Marine Conservancy", then you're making someone think, "Oh. Why? Is that a problem?" They may not be aware of it. But if I can get one person that comes into my restaurant and it makes them think about their choices, then I've done my job.

Vicki Curry>> So when we go to a restaurant or the supermarket and we're buying seafood or ordering seafood, what should we be thinking about? What are some of the better choices?

Matt Stein>> You know, the choices that you're going to see in the supermarket typically are really going to be great choices. I'll give you an example. One would be, you might see halibut at the supermarket. It's very expensive, but it's extremely good. It comes from one of probably the best managed fisheries maybe on the planet.

Up in Alaska, they formed an International Pacific Halibut Commission, I don't know, probably thirty or so years ago. They really took that fishery from -- I think that they were catching about five million pounds a year. Right now, it's at a kind of even sixty-five to seventy million pounds a year. You know, that's quite a bit of fish. That's what this is here.

Vicki Curry>> This is halibut?

Matt Stein>> That's what we feature. This season is just restarting now in March and they've had it closed for the last three months to protect the spawning grounds.

Traci Adams>> One of my favorites is tilapia, especially for a beginning fish chef or tryer or however you want to put it. Tilapia is a white fish. It's a little bit meatier than your basic haddock and cod that really shouldn't be fished right now. It's very versatile. It has enough body to stand up to a red sauce or to toss with pasta and some vegetables in a primavera or even as a little hors d'oeuvre roasted and broken up a little bit on a cracker with some horseradish. It's really versatile. I think that it's not too strong to start with. It's a good fish and it's very sustainable.

I think salmon is a pretty sustainable stock right now and they do have quite a few wild fisheries that are sustainable as well as river fisheries that are pretty sustainable. With your shrimp, you want it to be from Mexico. Off Baja Coast is the safest right now as far as aquaculture farms. They do a really good job. Again, not perfect, but trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

That's what we're trying to do is initiate these aquaculture standards so that farming can be a safe option and can be a sustainable option and can be certifiable. It's not yet, so that's something that we need to progress on. We're working really hard towards that end.

Matt Stein>> The consumer should really be trying to seek out the truth about the benefits of aquaculture. Aquaculture has gotten a couple of black eyes over the last few years from a couple different directions. A lot of it has been kind of unbalanced information.

Aquaculture is what all these beautiful fish that are here, if we want to save those and be able to find those in the wild twenty years from now, we need to support aquaculture. It will save them and it will feed us into the future and it will feed us really well and it will feed us efficiently and it will feed us healthfully as well.

Val Zavala>> If you'd like to taste some politically correct seafood dishes, you can do it all day this Saturday at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. For details, go to their website at aquariumofpacific.org.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> You've probably heard the story now about how Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was riding along in a bus when a tagger put his moniker on the school bus window and he was caught in the act by the press photographers. The mayor then offered to mentor the young man, and that's all fine and good, but one city in the San Gabriel Valley is taking a much tougher approach to graffiti.

Montebello is a quiet town of about sixty thousand people eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The story of graffiti here is similar to many cities in southern California. Mayor Robert Bagwell says, when the city hit hard financial times about five years ago, it eliminated the anti-graffiti task force and guess what happened?

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> All of a sudden, the graffiti started to climb.

Val Zavala>> Dramatically?

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> It went up to almost five to six hundred percent.

Val Zavala>> Over a few years, graffiti went from a few thousand incidents to fifty-five thousand incidents. But even when vandals were caught, the courts couldn't do much.

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> But it's really your frustration for the police department to make an arrest and fill out the paperwork. They get back out on the street and they say, "I just arrested him forty-eight hours ago."

Val Zavala>> They had to do something. Enter Officer Ismael Navarro. He's become the Colombo of graffiti cases and he's done something unprecedented. He's gotten four felony convictions against taggers. The key? Documenting at least four hundred dollars worth of damage by a single tagger. That qualifies as a felony.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> So now we've established some guidelines here in the city of Montebello that, when they go out and they tag, for example, two walls, they come out here and that's considered a felony because it's over four hundred dollars.

Val Zavala>> Explain it again. So just tagging two walls, they could be a felon?

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> Because it's over --

Officer Ismael Navarro>> -- four hundred dollars.

Val Zavala>> Worth of --

Officer Ismael Navarro>> -- damage.

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> So they all add up, A, B, C and D. Add that total up and you get it up to the felony area.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> All these vandals, whether they're juvenile or adult, always think that, oh, it's all right. I'm not going to get caught. Well, guess what? Here in Montebello, we're doing everything we can to implement this new process and it's working.

Val Zavala>> So far, they've made a hundred forty arrests, gotten a hundred sixteen convictions, and four felony sentences, some as long as a year, followed by three years on probation.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> What that means is that we're able to search them whenever we have any reasonable suspicion that he's committing any crimes, whether it's vandalism or anything else. Also, the restitution part. Part of his terms of his probation is to pay back the money that the city or the private entity spent on repairing the damage that he incurred.

Ron Calderon>> "The motivation behind this bill is to clean up our cities and to punish those who attempt to destroy them."

Val Zavala>> But Montebello didn't stop there. They went to their local Assemblyman, Ron Calderon, and told him about the problem. Calderon introduced a bill that would toughen graffiti penalties and it would hit young people where it hurts, in the driver's seat. His proposal would suspend the license of adult taggers for up to three years. For minors convicted of tagging, they would have to wait as many as three more years before they could get their driver's license.

Ron Calderon>> When it comes to minors, I think it's a very strong deterrent. Minors who represent a large part of the tagging population, which is alarming in itself, are anxious to get their driver's licenses unfortunately for the wrong reasons because they're in gangs. Hopefully, this will act as a deterrent to steer them away from gang activity and learn that, you know, it's better to fly straight and, if you're going to spray, you're going to pay.

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> If you're thirteen and you're waiting for sixteen to get your driver's license, the judge says, no, you got three more years. You got to wait until nineteen if he wants to get it. It's just an extra tool.

Val Zavala>> But some lawmakers raised concerns about suspending driver's licenses.

Senator Carole Migden>> "Because the problem I have is that when we're always taking the driver's license away, it means they're not taking their mother to the doctor, they're not going to work, they're not going to school. It creates another, I think, impediment and obstacle to kind of creating, you know, a more productive life."

Ron Calderon>> "I understand. Madam Chair, the bill does, however, . . ."

Val Zavala>> They compromised, allowing judges to make exceptions in certain cases. This apartment building in Montebello is a favorite of vandals and, if you think graffiti is just an eyesore, look more closely.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Taggers now are getting involved with gangs because it's a territory thing now. Like it says here, "Our block." To tagging crews, "our block" means don't come over here and tag here because this is our block.

Val Zavala>> I see. So the difference is, before it might just be somebody who wants their name up there, but when it crosses over to gangs, it becomes territorial and that's what we can tell here.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Yes, exactly. This is what our message is from this graffiti here. People that drive by the block see just the graffiti. You know, it's just writing. But if you really look at it, it's tagging crews, what they're trying to say and who they're trying to say it to.

Val Zavala>> So we're looking basically at gangs here now, not just taggers.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Right. They're gangs now. "Don't mess with my gang, especially you. This is our block. Leave us alone."

Val Zavala>> We happened to meet one of the residents of the apartments who's frustrated by the lack of respect taggers show toward private property. Well, have you heard that in Montebello they're really cracking down on vandals and graffiti?

Jonathan Alvizo>> Really?

Val Zavala>> Yeah.

Jonathan Alvizo>> I didn't know that.

Val Zavala>> Yeah, they're really cracking down. They got some felony convictions.

Jonathan Alvizo>> Wow.

Val Zavala>> Do you think that would stop these guys if they knew that they could go to jail?

Jonathan Alvizo>> It depends. Sometimes peer pressure is so hard on you that it doesn't matter what the consequences are.

Val Zavala>> Painting over graffiti and taking away driver's licenses aren't the only things coming down the pike. Officer Navarro says another tool is on the way, a camera equipped with GPS, global positioning technology. How would it work? Well, before graffiti is painted out, a digital picture would be taken of the vandals' moniker along with the exact time and location.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Once you take the picture, you don't have to do anything else. You take a picture, download it in the camera. The picture contains the square footage of the damage, the location, the time, the coordinates, everything and the approximate repair costs we've been able to establish. Once that's done, it goes down into a database.

Val Zavala>> And that database would provide the evidence for felony charges. Montebello doesn't have a GPS camera yet, but it hopes to get one. In the meantime, Calderon's bill has gotten strong support and he expects it to pass.

Carole Migden>> "That bill's out. That's already an achievement today."

Ron Calderon>> "Thank you very much, Madame Chair."

Val Zavala>> So between tougher sentences, GPS cameras, suspended licenses and, of course, education, Navarro thinks that even less graffiti will mar Montebello's streets and image.

Officer Ismael Navarro>> Whether we win it or not, I don't think it's an issue of winning. It's stabilizing and getting the proper education to the parents and the students and/or adults that there are consequences for graffiti.

Mayor Robert Bagwell>> And maybe one day we'll be zero on our graffiti. I'm looking forward to that day (laughter).

Val Zavala>> Since that story first aired, Ron Calderon has become a State Senator and, yes, his anti-graffiti did pass. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times by The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Sponsored in part by:


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