Time To Say Goodbye

Hello from Neera Tanden’s shoe closet!0:00 – The gang’s back together, with geographic and pandemic updates. 10:00 – Data recently compiled by National Nurses United tell us that nearly a quarter of registered nurses in the US who’ve died from the coronavirus are Filipino. Why this outsized fraction? Can histories of colonization and migration, as well as labor economics, help us make sense of the numbers? 49:07 – In the first of what we hope will become a recurring a segment, we talk about a classic Asian American film: Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow.” Does it hold up? Why did Roger Ebert once defend it so vigorously? And how does it compare to Lin’s more famous franchise (“Fast and Furious”)? To “corny” immigrant literature? Our next movie talk, a few weeks from now, will be on “Chan is Missing.” Watch along with us! Thanks, as always, for listening and spreading the word. Please send feedback and audio questions to timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com or @ttsgpod. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello! This week we have another part of what can now be called a series on the AAPI voter with our guest Taeku Lee, a professor of law and political science at UC Berkeley and the author of several books, including Asian American Political Participation, which he co-authored with Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, and Jane Junn. There’s few people more qualified to talk about the enigma of the Asian voter — Taeku has been researching and studying trends in voting since 1988 and was one of the first people to really study and then also generate polling information within AAPI communities. He has also been involved in the Asian American Voter Survey, which you probably saw on social media through this slide. We talk about everything from the history of the Asian vote, the Reagan years in the 80s, the swing towards the Democratic party, the impact that geography has on voting patterns (for example, people who immigrate to Orange County, California or Florida will certainly trend more Republican than people who immigrate to New York City or the Bay Area because their neighbors are more GOP friendly), and how an immigrant, who generally arrives in the United States with a limited understanding of the country’s politics, develops into a voter. Please give a listen! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Happy birthday, Jay’s sister!Tammy checks in from a motel in Kennewick, Jay remembers his lost novel, and we talk turkey. 8:30 – On the global vaccine race. The “good” science (from Sarah Zhang), the “bad” vaccine apartheid (Jayati Ghosh, economist at JNU), Macbook vs. Chromebook, and the politics of glorifying private drug companies (as in the NYT).Also, check out this cool new vaccine data center from Duke Global Health Innovation Center: https://launchandscalefaster.org/COVID-1941:00 – A listener question from Kurt: Are tankies real or just an online phenomenon?49:55 – Our first audio listener question! Listener Cody Wilson asks about Jay’s recent NYT op-ed / TTSG manifesto on the value of disaggregating “POC” communities, and offers an explanation for why the Rio Grande Valley went crazy for Trump in 2020 (cf. The Texas Tribune). Thanks for hanging with us. Have a safe, socially-distanced Thanksgiving, and send us your questions and comments! @TTSGPod / timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from White House transition headquarters! This week: literal housekeeping, “students of color” and “students of poverty,” coronavirus nightmares, how not to expect too much from Biden, and a Southeast Asian trade deal. 4:30 – Dads Jay and Andy review right-wing children’s books.9:30 – Asians get lumped in as white again—this time, in the Thurston County, WA public schools. Why does this keep happening, and why do we care? Should the left abandon race-based sorting and affirmative action? 30:20 – The coronavirus is spiking all over the country. Why aren’t we talking about it more? Will Biden do better than Trump did?38:45 – Student debt, the climate catastrophe, foreign policy, immigration, labor rights… What can we expect from Biden? 55:30 – Tammy’s “What you should know” corner: the ASEAN+5 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Is it a big deal or not? How does it compare to the TPP and the CPTPP? And when will we Americans have the energy to start caring about stuff like this again? Plus: Jay promises to manage Tammy’s Fox News career. Thank you for listening! Please spread the word, and stay in touch: @ttsgpod (Twitter) / timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello,Today we have something a bit different for you. TTSG goes a bit Melvyn Bragg with a history episode about Bay Area Filipino DJ culture. Our guest today is Oliver Wang, professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach, one of the co-hosts of the Heat Rocks podcast, and the author of Legions of Boom, a fascinating book which tracks the history of Filipino immigrants into the Bay Area after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act — first into San Francisco and then out into suburbs like Daly City, Fremont, and Vallejo. If you’ve ever wondered why so many of the top DJs in the word are Filipino and want to know the creation story behind legends like DJ QBert and the Invizibl Scratch Piklz, this is well worth your time. We discuss the mobile DJ scene in the 90s, the class dynamics of post-1965 Filipino immigrants versus the manongs who came over in the early 20th century and settled in San Francisco, and how music and a party scene can create a sense of cohesion and true identity. Here’s some of the music these DJ crews created so you can play it as you listen along. Enjoy! Spintronix Imagine #8 X-Men vs the Invizibl Skratch Piklz set in 1996Generations: a 25 minute documentary about Spintronix and the mobile DJ scene. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from a USPS mailbag!This week, before getting into your letters, we reminisce about Saturday’s election news a.k.a the international dopamine-flood event. We “wow just wow” at the Democratic establishment’s (ridiculous and ridiculously premature) punch left, and swoon over AOC’s punch back in an interview with the New York Times. We also dissect a viral video of Tucker Carlson explaining why Butler, PA, and so many other places in the US (will) remain loyal to Trump.Listener Questions@irl_neil asks how “small business owners” fit into a broader progressive agenda. How should we confront the bootstraps values so popular with immigrant communities?@hasui_SEA asks what the Biden administration might mean for the US–China Cold War-style tensions we often discuss on TTSG?Listeners Henry and Cathy H. ask about the utility of the “Asian American” (or Asian Canadian) category from the perspective of South Asian and Southeast Asian immigrants.M. asks about the racial landmines, circa 2020, that await her young hapa (mixed-race Asian) child.Finally, Adriana and Ellen ask about the black–white binary in academia—within both the “diversity” bureaucracy complex and the ethnic-studies classroom. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from Philly, Berkeley, and Missoula! In this #2020 special, we share our jaundiced views of the U! S! A! and the election as of Wednesday night, 24 hours after polls closed. Discussed: * Tuesday night’s emotional roller-coaster * Post-vote explanations based on racial and ethnic checkboxes* “Jay Kang, (G.O.P.) political consultant”* Propositions 22 and 16 in California* Tammy’s feel-good corner a.k.a local measures to give us hope going forwardLinks to stuff we mention:* Exit polls (with the usual caveats) showing Trump’s gains with POC voters* Jennifer Medina, of The New York Times, on the macho appeal of Donald Trump* Aída Chávez, of The Intercept, with a pre-election look at Latino/a progressive organizing in Arizona, as well as her write-up on election night, with Ryan Grim* Congratulations to TTSG friend Nikil Saval! He’s a progressive Democrat success story, the first Asian American member of the Pennsylvania State Senate, and we couldn’t be more proud! (ICYMI: our interview with Nikil)How was Election Day/Night/Week for everyone else??? Terrible? Sleepless? Blasé? Send your comments, questions, and reactions to timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com or via DM @TTSGPOD! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from Tammy’s snowbank! This week, we welcome TTSG friend Hua Hsu, a professor at Vassar and a staff writer at The New Yorker, who just wrote an excellent pre-election story: “Are Asian Americans the Last Undecided Voters?” The piece digs into stuff we’ve been obsessing about, on and off the air, including the fuzziness of the Asian American label, the rise of East Asian Republicans, organizing on ethnicity-specific chat apps, the OC, and Asian-Latino “immigrant” identities. Our discussion also complements Andy’s bonus episode with Bernie folks, Brooke Adams and Tobita Chow, from last week. Then, a quick look at the global crisis playing out in Vietnam.A long episode, but a good one. Big props to listeners who make it all the way through!0:00 – Why does Hua eat “adult pouches”? Can he bring Jay and Andy over to his side?13:00 – California Governor Gavin Newsom “tiniest dog-whistled” Asians in the early days of the American pandemic, by blaming transmission on nail salons. Who’s Janet Nguyen, and how did she fight back?41:00 – “Education and opportunity” are Asian values, right? But are they a sufficient basis for organizing? And are they liberal or conservative, right- or left-wing? 1:05:00 – Do Asian American voters care about foreign policy? 1:26:55 – Maybe Asian American politics can just be, well, politics. How do we make a universalist political program our own? 1:37:55 – You still with us? Tammy gets the guys to talk about the historic, deadly floods in Vietnam, and what they tell us about climate change. What are the overlaps with the Vietnamese economy and the coronavirus? Could the climate catastrophe replicate Asian refugee routes once caused by war? Get woke:* Tomorrow! “Anti-China politics in the US election” (Register here.)* Tomorrow! “Uprising in Thailand” (Register here.)* Thursday! “The Gwangju Uprising and Its 40-Year Global History” (Register here.)* Jay, on musical labor and 30 years of repetition, on This American Life* Andy, on the “China Virus,” in Feral Atlas* Tammy, at a Montana gun range, in The New YorkerThank you, thank you for supporting TTSG (https://goodbye.substack.com). Please stay in touch via Twitter (@ttsgpod) and email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), and tell all your comrades and frenemies to subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Bonus pre-election episode!Two weeks ahead of the last judgment, Andy talks with two organizers about the “existential battle” over the soul of the Democratic Party. Brooke Adams, a second-generation Taiwanese Seattleite, worked for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign in Iowa, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania before joining People’s Action this summer. Tobita Chow, a Chinese-Japanese-Canadian-American (not making this up, we swear) Chicagoan, is director of “Justice is Global,” part of the People’s Action network.0:00 -- Brooke and Toby discuss their respective experiences organizing while Covid hit the US in March, then we speculate why Sanders was so successful among Asian and Latino groups. Andy has dark fantasies of seeing Trump win again and discrediting the Democratic leadership, while Brooke and Toby think more productively about how progressives might shape a (potential!) Biden-Harris presidency. A WWII analogy.37:20 -- Toby expounds on moving politics in a more internationalist direction, i.e., don’t do a trade war with China. Also, how Toby and others pushed back on Biden’s bad China ad this spring.59:20 -- We look ahead to the election. If (!) Biden-Harris win, how will progressives and centrists square off over the future of the party? Over climate? Covid relief? Electoral strategy?More links and plugs* Brooke and Toby talked “deep canvassing” strategies. Learn more here and here* More from Brooke: People’s Action will hold a deep canvassing event on October 27, featuring appearances from AOC, Bernie, IL state senator Robert Peters, and artist/activist Vic Mensa. If interested, click here!* Justice is Global’s deep canvassing experiment talking to voters about China* Toby and friend-of-show Jake Werner’s nerdy memo on the US-China trade war* Hear Toby and Jake and other great speakers at this Critical China Studies event on October 28, 7-8:30 ET: “Anti-China politics in the US election” (direct link to registration here)* Tammy has a new feature out on the crucial Montana senate race (and she tells us that anti-China politics are alive and well there). Will labor unions and Native Americans make the difference for the state and, by extension, the body politic? Check it out in The New Yorker.* Andy has a new academic/public piece riffing off the “China virus” stuff in the springtime and tracing Covid’s spread from China to the rest of the world. Some talk about “just-in-time” / “lean production” models, from 1960s Japan to China to the US, from the auto industry (think that “American Factory” documentary) to grocery stores and hospitals. Here on Feral Atlas, a new digital humanities project on human-nature-infrastructure relationships. Anthropocene. Synergy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Terrordome!This week, we have a brilliant guest, TTSG pal and Korean literature scholar Jenny Wang Medina, who grew up in her family’s beauty-supply store, to guide us through a mini-PhD on Korean hair, the Black hair market, and Cold War commodity history. Then, a brief look at the ongoing democratic uprising in Thailand. 0:00 – HAIR! * The New York Times’s coverage of the Na family and their Black hair shops in Chicago, one of which was destroyed in the recent Black Lives Matter uprising, launches us into an exploration of harvested hair, nation building, migration, and race relations, from Hong Kong and South Korea to India and Sacramento, CA, where Jenny’s brother now runs her parents’ 40-year-old wig-turned-beauty-supply stores. To enrich our discussion, we draw on a very sharp “commodity history” of Korean hair, by Jenny and Andy’s friend, Jason Petrulis.How did Jenny’s family, and so many other Korean immigrants, come to dominate hair and beauty-supply markets for Black American women? And how does the intimate nature of hair and beauty products shape race relations? What role have hair exports played in the developmental economics of Hong Kong, South Korea, and, more recently, India and Indonesia? How did US Cold War policy shape these markets? 1:14:30 – THAILAND! * In a new segment called “Something you should know,” a.k.a. “What Tammy forced Jay and Andy to talk about,” we bring you an update from Thailand, where a democracy movement that began in 2014, after a military coup, has recently exploded on the streets. We discuss the aims and culture of these Thai protests, the nature of Thailand’s (ostensibly) constitutional monarchy, the economic effect of the pandemic on the nation’s tourist economy, how the current prime minister and monarch are different from those who ruled a decade ago, and the Milk Tea Alliance—the pro-democracy bonds among Thai, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese youth online. (Thanks to TTSG friends Reena and Nick for their insights.)Big thanks for supporting TTSG (https://goodbye.substack.com). Please stay in touch via Twitter (@ttsgpod) and email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), and tell all your comrades and frenemies to subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe