Listen to Berkeley Talks episode #173: Poets laureate share works about creation, sacrifice and home.

[Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Intro: This is Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Friday. Also, we have another podcast, Berkeley Voices, that shares stories of people at UC Berkeley and the work that they do on and off campus.

[Music fades out]

Beth Piatote: (Greeting in Nez Perce)

Good evening everyone gathered here. I’m happy to see you. We are all friends here. My name is Beth Piatote, and I’m the director of the Arts Research Center. We are honored to sponsor tonight’s event of poet laureate readings, bringing in powerful poets from near and far. This event is co-sponsored by the Engaging the Senses Foundation, the Center for Race and Gender, and the departments of English and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

We are gathering this evening on the unceded homelands of the Ohlone people who are of this place and will always be in this place. We know too, that land acknowledgements without action are empty gestures. The Arts Research Center is committed to giving material, creative, and other forms of support to California Native and other Indigenous writers and artists, and particularly to supporting Indigenous language revitalization through the arts. We encourage each person here to make material commitments to the well being and autonomy of Indigenous communities. So, to begin, happy National Poetry Month. Yes.

What better way to celebrate but with a room full of poets laureate, I cannot believe we got away with this. Does everyone know that we’ve got them all here? It’s just an ostentatious display of wealth, so let’s really savor it. And tonight’s not the only night. Please join us tomorrow night when we’ll be screening Kealoha’s beautiful film, the Story of Everything at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Hall, just across campus. Brought to you by the Engaging the Senses Foundation, Arts Research Center, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and the Orion Press. Before I introduce our poets tonight, I do want to take a moment and acknowledge someone with us tonight who is a great advocate for the arts, Mona Abadir, the CEO of the Engaging the Senses Foundation.

Since 2019, the Engaging the Senses Foundation has provided generous support to the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley to promote poetry. The gifts from ETSF have allowed us to support poetry fellowships, workshops, publications, and many, many public facing events, such as a series of flash poetry readings for National Poetry Month, and poetry performances by luminaries such as Joy Harjo, Patricia Smith, Chin Chin, Ross Gay, and the phenomenal poets tonight. Please check out the archives section of our website if you want to catch any of those previous events, and please follow the ongoing events that we have. So to recognize Mona again, please join me in thanking the Engaging the Senses Foundation for the incredible support of poetry.

And now to our performance tonight. Our first performer tonight is Kealoha, Hawai’i’s first poet laureate. He has performed at hundreds of venues throughout the world, from the White House toʻIolani Palace, from Brazil to Switzerland. He is the first poet in Hawai’i’s history to perform at a governor’s inauguration, was selected as a master artist for the National Endowment for the Arts program, and delivered the keynote address for MIT’s special commencement ceremony in 2022.

Kealoha’s latest work, The Story of Everything, is a science-based theater production that has toured in various cities throughout the United States and is now a feature film, and you can see it all on the big screen tomorrow night at Wheeler Hall at 7 p.m. Kealoha is the founder of Hawai’i Slam, ranked second in the nation, Youth Speaks Hawai’i, the two time international champions, and First Thursdays, the largest registered slam poetry competition in the world.

In the genre of storytelling, he has gained national recognition by showcasing at high-profile events such as the National Storytelling Network Conference, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival and the Honolulu Storytelling Festival.

After Kealoha, Nadia Elbgal, the Oakland youth poet laureates will take the stage. She is a Berkeley High graduate, currently taking a few classes at Berkeley City College during her gap year, and writing poetry. She is a Yemeni American Muslim woman who advocates for and raises awareness on topics relating to the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities.

Nadia has been a literacy mentor to Yemeni students in the OUSD elementary schools, as well as a teaching assistant in mental health class at Hoover Elementary Summer program. As an artist-activist, Nadia’s themes range from the Middle East to American cities. She is an older sister and a cousin whose values and insight come from her upbringing in mixed cultures and families. As a storyteller, she identifies as an actor, playwright, lyricist, and poet. She plans to get a degree in social work and pursue a career that will help keep youth out of jails.

We’ll close our evening with Lee Herrick, the current California poet laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles From Desire. He is co-editor with Leah Silvieus of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit.

He served as the city of Fresno poet laureate from 2015 to ’17. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines, anthologies and textbooks, including the Bloomsbury Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, the Normal School, the Poetry Foundation, ZYZZYVA, A Seed from a Silent Tree: Writing by Korean Adoptees, Highway 99: A Literary Journal Through California’s Great Central Valley, That Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets, Interviews and Essays, One for the Money, The Sentence As Poetic Form, Indivisible, Poems of Social Justice, Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and Here: Poems for the Planet, with a forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

He serves on the advisory board of Terrain Org and 16 Rivers Press, and co-founded Lit Hop in Fresno. He has traveled throughout Latin America and Asia, and has given readings across the United States. He was born in Daejeon, South Korea, adopted at 10 months of age, and raised in California.

He lives with his family in Fresno, California, and teaches at Fresno City College, and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California poet laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.

We are so honored to have each of you here tonight. I’m going to get off the stage, but I’m coming back as soon as they finish reading so we can have a conversation. And I want you to think about your comments, your love, your questions that you might want to share with the poets tonight. So with that, Kealoha.

Kealoha: (Sings in Hawai’ian)

Good evening. How you doing? OK, so what I wanted to do tonight is I wanted to share a short … Well, a long short piece from the film that’s going to be shown tomorrow night so I can entice you to come. This is a project that I’ve been working on for about 12 years. It’s called The Story of Everything. It’s a creation story from the Big Bang until humans. So, it tells 13.8 billion years worth of time in an hour and a half. An hour and 38 minutes actually. So, what I want to do for you is just a 15-minute part of it to give you a taste.

Of course, this is naked without all the visual effects, and the art, and the dance, and the chanting, and the music, but just this is us in the raw, in the theater. So, this is scene four from The Story of Everything, inspired by my son. When I found out he was going to be coming into this world, I wrote this for him.

(Sings and dances on stage)

Where do we come from? No one knows. But we do know a lot about everything though. So many different crossroads, but the paths look the same. It could have gone different, but it went this way. Like a hopscotch game of infinite time, every time we move forward, there could have been nine parallel dimensions, but it’s all in the past.

(Stops dancing and singing)

What came when life first appeared on this planet? It depends who you ask, because if you ask an evolutionary biologist, she’ll tell you that Mother Earth (Hawai’ian language) during her labor.

(Sings in Hawai’ian)

(Moves on stage, performs story)

And when she was ready to push, the moon pulled with one last tug on her womb, and then as her embryonic waters rushed forth it contained a single cell, like a single thump floating over the base drum rumblings of the night. It was a bacteria, a slime, nourishing and nursing the nutrients of her fluids, an infinitesimal infant unconscious of its existence, persistent in its will to survive.

And as night turned into day and day turned into night, it grew too big for its limits. And with the quick twitch it split into two, giving birth to an identical twin. And they thrived and reproduced, and produced more children. And they thrived and reproduced exponentially like a cascade of ripples scattered throughout the sea. Over a billion days and nights they thrived and reproduced until an entire tapestry was woven. Generations of descendants dispersed through her waters and over time. After endless days and nights, after trillions of beats had come and gone, had echoed into the darkness, one of her single celled notes made a mistake when it replicated, gave birth to a strange sound with mutated genes different from anything that had ever been heard before.

It was an archaea, a cell at a different frequency, able to survive the harshest of environments, and it thrived and reproduced, and they thrive and reproduce, and they spread, scattering in out and around mother the earth. They thrive and reproduced while the base beat continued near her womb. And we stayed that way for millions of years, trillions upon trillions of beats come and gone until one day one of our single celled notes made another mistake when it replicated, gave birth to another mutation that was both profoundly different. A bacteria that came out photosynthetic, able to catch the sun’s race for sustenance. It played on the surface of the water each day, became independent, went off the grid, held the blueprint for chlorophyll. Like a mistake played beautiful, it was like jazz, man.

And it thrived and reproduced, and they thrived and reproduced, filled the world with oxygen they thrived and reproduced, spread through mother earth’s oceans they thrived and reproduced alongside bacteria and archaea. And life stayed that way for over a billion years, echoing into the cosmos, shaping the atmosphere, laying the foundation for our future.

And then something really, really interesting happened, and we’re not quite sure how but we have our hypotheses. Somehow, some way in archaea ate a bacteria without actually eating it. And this bacteria lived inside, and together they thrive symbiotic, like how lovers come together to make each other better, entwined in each other’s essence through the night. It seems an archaea ended up with that bacteria in its gut, but they became one entity of changing genes, thus a new form of life plucked itself into existence. And this new sound was organized with a nucleus for its DNA, which meant that we now had a dedicated space for our genes, our own little laboratory for genetic transfer and mutation, which is a fancy way of saying that this whole entire thing was about to get insane.

The first thing we did was get multifaceted, arranging ourselves into multicellular life forms. Multiple cells acted as one like how many brushstrokes combine colors and textures to create a singular masterpiece. They caught billions of tiny water droplets combined to make up one cumulus cloud. And some of us stayed that way, evolved into the mold and fungi we see today, while others of us went symbiotic with the photosynthetic bacteria, evolved into the seaweed, plants, and trees that help us to breathe. But the rest of us, we broke off from the chain. Went a new direction with our multicellular lineage, mutated into simple animals who gained the power of digestion, who could eat the energy of other living organisms that thrive and reproduce.

And some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the coral polyps, worms, and starfish we see today, while others of us grew exoskeletons for structure and protection, evolved into the crustaceans and insects with mind-blowing diversity. But the rest of us, we broke off from the chain, went a new direction with our animal lineage, mutated spines, and our insides then developed into creatures who could swim long distances or change directions, and began to take greater control over our own lives. Learned to swim against the current when we needed to. Grew brains and eyes, learned how to hunt and avoid being hunted, and some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the fish, sharks, and rays we see today, but the rest of us, we broke off from the chain.

Went a new direction with our vertebrae lineage, mutated lungs and limbs into our DNA so we could take our first gasps of air. Explored land for part of our lives, took our first steps toward a new frontier, and some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the frogs, toads, and salamanders we see today, but the rest of us, we broke off from the chain.

Went a new direction with our amphibious lineage, mutated the ability to lay our eggs on land. So we can be born and raised in the ina, so we can be safe from predators in the sea. And some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the reptiles who … Man, you should have seen them, they used to run this land. Mutated to epic proportions and became the dinosaurs, and some of them mutated even more, grew wings and feathers, and mastered flights to the evolution to new heights and the, ruled as that for over 100 million years, kings and queens from the mountains to the valleys, from the jungles, to the plains. But then the world changed, and because of a massive asteroid that smothered the sky after impact, shooting its dust into the atmosphere like slow motion confetti blocking the sun and ushering in a lingering winter, most of the dinosaurs died out.

But the ones who could fly remained, and they evolved into the birds, direct descendants with royal dino blood so when they fly overhead, it is their way of letting us know that they once owned the land below them too. But the rest of us, we broke off from the chain before the dinosaurs came. Went a new direction from our reptilian lineage, mutated the ability to regulate our temperatures, then mutated to hold our eggs inside our wombs from inception to birth. Nursed our infants with milk, developed bonds between mother and child. And some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the wolves, primates, and horses who roam under the trees, and some of us even went back into the oceans, evolved into the seals, whales, and dolphins that roamed the sea. But the rest of us, we broke off from the chain.

Went a new direction with our mammalian lineage, mutated the ability to move upright, mastered carrying, and running, became hunters and gatherers. We crafted tools to realize our ambitions through bigger and better brains. We started to shape our environment, and some of us stayed that way. Evolved into the Neanderthals and [inaudible] who thrived in the regions. But the rest of us, we broke off from the chain. Went a new direction with our human lineage, mutated the capacity for high intelligence. We harnessed the power of language, built greater, and more complex tools, and whether it was our ability to adapt to our changing environment or just sheer luck, we are the only ones of our humankind to have survived the passing of time, so far.

And here we are. Homo sapiens. Billions of years descended from our bacteria-like ancestors, for this path wasn’t easy or mistake-free. We estimate that for every species of animal that exist today, there are about 1,000 species that didn’t make it, 1,000 mutations that came and went through billions of years of trial and error through natural selection and catastrophe. Whether they were stronger, or smarter, or more prolific, or more resistant, or just plain luckier, here we are the thrivers and the survivors. And we come from all of this. So, tonight I want you to think about your life. I want you to think about what you stand for and realize that all the mistakes you’ve ever made mean nothing in the long term. For every year you live, the universe will be around for trillions, and for every friend you’ve made there are billions yet to be born that you will never meet. In the grand scheme of things, we are nobody.

And yet, at the same time we are everything. We are X and Y chromosomes. We are G, C, A and T genomes. We’re encompassed carbohydrates, simple proteins, soft tissue, hardwired neurons. We are strong bonds linked in nervous systems. And while this earth’s surface is covered with 65% saltwater, we are walking bags made of 65% saltwater, merely mimicking the environment that we evolved from. And when we are done, this flesh we call our own returns home to the scene when we dissipate, evaporate into water vapor. And these bones, these bones will be broken down by the roots of the tallest trees while this earth, hurdling through space will freeze and boil as it has for eons as it orbits the sun, which in five billion years will transform into a red giant and scorch all life as we know it, its last blast before it fizzles into a whimper remembered by nobody.

Or maybe charted by aliens as they appear through telescopes, logging our son as a piece of data that came and went. And these aliens, whoever they may or may not be, you don’t want them to think about their lives. I want you to think about your life as you study me through your primitive telescopes, and I want everybody, the aliens, you and me to realize that even when our hearts break or when work gets rougher, when rents due, or when someone somewhere says something stupid about you, even in the face of homicide, genocide, and suicide, in the face of racism, sexism, classism, and insert really bad word here-ism, no matter how hard life may get for you or for other people, zoom out.

Zoom out and realize that all the evil in this world is transient. Heck, all the good in this world? Transient. You, me, all of us, transient. You would not be you in the grand scheme of things, which makes all your suffering temporary, which makes your ecstasy the most exciting thing [inaudible] as part of the universe expressing itself in one giant orgasm known as the big bang. We are its aftermath sigh.

Its alibi for not having a reason. You are the universe learning about itself. You are the universe asking itself why it’s here. You assume that the universe not learning or asking anything, you are everything and nothing at the same time no matter how hard it is to admit, no matter how afraid we get and how much we want to deny the truth. Well, the truth is we’re going to die. Maybe not tonight, tomorrow, or next year, but sooner or later we’re all going to die. You should eat more vegetables though.

The truth is hard to swallow. And so, we do everything we can to avoid the big picture, because the big picture is paralyzing. And so, we focus our eyes on the day-to-day dramas of our lives, but not today. Today, I want you to think about your life right here. Not here, this wonderful studio theater on Berkeley campus, but here, this world, planet earth, here, this galaxy, this universe, we are not cavemen anymore.

There are no saber-tooth tigers lurking in the shadows, yet most of us cling to our fears like the animals we evolved from. What are we so afraid of? We’ve been etching the same patterns and the same predictable places for years. Why do we live the way that they tell us to? And yo, who the heck are they anyway? It’s about time we start doing what’s in our hearts because that’s all we really got. I want you to think about all the things you wish you could do. And tonight I want you to do one of them, and tomorrow another. Our lives are temporary art pieces. We are works in progress, so I say paint your butt off. Use fluorescent yellows and reds in the places that aren’t any color. Dance for the moment. Scoop your life out of soil and make the universe smile. Be the expressive process that is humanity. Tonight I want you to think about your life, and tomorrow? Y’all, go on out there and live it. Thank you.

Nadia Elbgal: Hi everyone. My name is Nadia Elbgal. I have about four poems that I want to share with you all today, and I’m going to start off with one called “Product of a Blended Culture.”

What is culture to a blend like me?
A lemon tree bearing ripe dates
purple Jacksons with 30 faces
dirty as gums yet clean as untouched marble
Is it (speaks in Arabic)
or is it the lamb arteries painted above my door?
Is it my Middle Eastern brain or my contrasting creamed skin?
19 years of wondering if I shall be left toothless beneath a dragon blood tree
unfit for my body so I twist like my values
I creep on ostrich eggshells
worry to roll a snake eyes with fear of getting my parcel tongue slit
I speak in unmatchable tones
so I’m going to take a minute like K’naan to tell the people like me that I come prepared
I come from wedding halls and immortal technique
Vinnie Paz, Mac Dre, Mista F.A.B, and Keak Da Sneak
I come from sand dunes and dirt roads
algebra, coffee and stolen domes
Yet I feel like I’m fake repping the set and accustomed to my family’s speech
The baboon raised in a cage, unable to feel the air her father first breathed
I am a seam
the split in the sea
the slit near identity’s thigh
waking up and having to choose which side I’ll be today
the Arab with the morals or the American with the weighted pain
I live a burnt reality, skin scorched and bubbly with goosebumps
as my inverse relationship demands closeness to my ancestry
stepping stone shortage
each knob locking me out from the home I wish to lay my head
The orcs within gallops to each crevice
pressing its ear to soak in when it can
before realizing it is a sponge that will soon release its contents into Tartarus
responding occasionally just to be slaughtered upon its return
I conceal my trusses in exchange for tenderness
But when met with the desert, all they see is the eagles aim
So again, I must decide this time between dilated pupils and religious shame
It’s become my responsibility to merge so my sisters won’t have to
laying pedals before her as my heels fill with rusted nails
a sacrifice I’m willing to make until my bones are caked with soil
For her, I will push through the turmoil
I will take my 13 carpets engraved with evil eyes and fly her through my experiences
I will continue to pave a path towards my own grave just to make sure her heart won’t bleed the same
Products of a blended culture
we all stress trying to figure out who to be and who to please
It’s time to embrace all of who we are
each characteristic that deems us complete
We are complete
and we demand to be seen

Thank you.

This next poem is called “Spark,” and this was one of my very first poems.

Lids blink
celestial orbs and icy lashes, both the color of Vantablack
The phantom’s back
though some may call it the spark that travels through each and everybody
home to home
soul to soul
bone to bone.
It shows up when we need it the most 
like an unspoken language that is somehow flooded with disconnected alphabets
It enters our souls and lifts us up
giving us reason
showing us purpose
Y’all might not know this, but the truth is in the power
The power that keeps our lives kept together
even if it seems like the glue is dried out
and there’s no motivation to pour yourself a glass of water
Limbs limp and no joy of feeling like you’re going farther
It’s a stuck feeling
dangerous and repetitive
I know too well the negativity that settles rent-free in the brain
the pain from knuckles that crack and bleed against sleepless nights and peeling wallpaper
In reality, my heart is more shattered than Chernobyl windows
but my personality
that’s where I really start to come in handy
for it has more depth than the amount of rings on a bristle cone pine tree
It helped me find my spark within the art of poetry
made me see that it’s a dream I can reach
one that I can extend my hand to and feel the words flow into my fingertips
painting my fingerprints with silky words and controversial lyrics
Now, ever since I was a released egg, I’ve been set up for failure
an immigrant dad and a maternal gang banger
My vibrating vocal cords were sliced with colored cards in elementary
children being muted alongside their ideas, starting at a young age to constrict our abilities
A silent child grows into a cooperative adult
a puppet of the power system
But puppet strings look a lot like chains when they’re up close and personal
Chains like the ones that keep draped on the back of our necks
adding another layer each time we attempt to succeed
We live in a nation built on more torment than we like to believe
definitely more than the amount of masks on in this community
And if only they knew how uneven we breathe when we turn on the TV
the fear that would eat us faster than Ros Mussolini ’cause
while some of us go from straight jackets to suede jackets
I’m stuck replaying the image of my homegirl’s casket
Those sparks that I was speaking on?
They give us a leg up to win
but sometimes you got to suffer with death before you live again
The youth are constantly battling from being so exposed to hatred
I know that if I dodge the bullet, it’ll fly and hit the next kid
But my one goal at this moment in time is to educate and stimulate the minds of whoever will listen
because then there will at least be hope in this generation

(Audience claps)

(Next poem)

I grew up bombarded with cousins and conflicting culture
I grew up in constant trouble
in liquor stores and back and forths between houses
My mother’s swollen tummy, the reason for her missed prom
the reason for my diploma, which I took with both of our hands
I grew up with a hatred for authority
watching the police shoot venom through their sweat glands at my father figure’s tattoos
spitting at him to cover the Malcolm X on his leg
but not the ones on his face that would link him to violence
I watched their ignorance unfold as they ignored my crying baby sister in his arms
fully focused on whether or not he’s a threat
fully unaware that their middle fingers could pierce this baby’s heart
That my pop’s only weapon was his mind
I grew up in split families
seeing how even blood will sweep you under the rug
Keep nieces hungry while you enjoy your two stories in the hills
Most of my uncles struggle to pay bills
lucky to find housing in today’s climate
I grew up giving
because I saw the product of neglect
My dad’s home country that he hasn’t seen since he first came out here
The immigrant, terrorist, the labels we worked our blood out to erase
but the lead just spread into more nasty words
Destroyers of communities
a label I provided myself
though it’s a struggle to speak out against a system that’s been benefiting most of us for years
I could say my main dream is to stop being the alcohol provider, diabetes supplier
But this desperation, this need goes beyond a wine lease
It extends to the racism backed by the white men who placed us in the hood to corrupt it from the inside
And we took the bait
but we too have to live there and supply to our neighbors
We seem to forget that we’re all placed strategically
We are the chess pieces, and everyone wants to be king due to the title
when the queen is the one who makes the real moves
and ignorance keeps us all pawns
My dreams for my city are along the lines of equality
but that’s too broad of an answer. So specifically
I want to be able to see my ethnicity when I’m checking a box that’s meant to define me
so I don’t get grouped with just white and my needs become hidden amongst those who are systematically
systemically set up to do better
Because just because you put Middle Eastern in parentheses does not mean that you’re inclusive
I want to be able to point to a map and show the people in power my country
not the one I reside in but my country
Show them how we’re ignored though we’re going through a civil war
The world’s largest humanitarian crisis
So, the least you can do is acknowledge my background
The least you can do is have my language as an option to learn in public schools
because despite what you may think the world doesn’t limit itself to Spanish, French, and German
The least you can do is try to say our names correctly
I know the sub has hit me on the roll call sheet when there’s a long pause before they say my name
And I didn’t know that Nadia was super hard to say, so imagine when my sister Hising gets into school
I don’t want to have to worry about her being made a fool
I guess my dream is that we all talk to each other respectfully
with honesty
hold no opinions with an unknowing claw
learn before we speak
But it’s hard to think of goals that are not so out of reach
So, I plan for the stars and if the edge of the earth is what I meet
I won’t be upset
I won’t let other people’s limits stop me from achieving what I wish for my community
Grocery stores in the Deep East, defunding the police
because putting money into a Beretta won’t take people off the streets
won’t put sheets over the shivering bodies of unhoused individuals
will only put the captor of my heart and the cell at 15 years old
will only ruin lives and put a rehabilitation sign on the chains linking children
leading them to spend more time behind bars than out in the open
My dreams run soul deep
meaning it’s a change that must take place in our hearts and in our brains
because hatred causes division, causes hatred, causes division, causes pain
causes violence, causes misery
Yet I’m confident the problems we face will be solved by unity
So in turn, unity is my dream

Thank you all very much.

Lee Herrick: So, I’m really happy to be here, and I want to just echo a few thanks from Beth, and thank Beth for the kind introduction. Oh, sure. And yes. Also, I want to thank Lori McPhee if she’s here. Really amazing. And thank you so much, Lori, for bringing me. Thank you to Mona and Engaging the Senses Foundation. Thank you very much for this event and all the events you help make possible.

I’m so happy to be here, to meet Lulani, to meet Theresa, to meet so many of you. Thank you for being here. And to all the departments who made this event happen, my thanks. Lisa and I drove down from Fresno, drove up from Fresno, the unceded and traditional homelands of the Yokuts and the Mono.

I grew up near here though after being born in Korea, I was raised in Danville. If you know Danville, I lived there for about eight years, and then moved to Modesto where I attended schools and had some of the best teachers that one could hope for.

But I’ve been in Fresno now for about 26 years, and I was appointed California Poet Laureate about three months ago. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And I’ll just say it’s been a pure joy, a pure joy. There are probably many poets who could do this, but just in these few months it’s been remarkable. This is the largest, most populous state, as you may know, in the United States, almost 40 million, 10 million more than the next most populous, Texas. Beautiful everywhere you go, you know this. Cities, small towns, there’s poetry everywhere. I’m telling you, you might know this, but if you doubt it you can go to the most remote town or the largest city where you question poetry’s presence, and it’ll be there. I’ve been to small towns, population of 1,500, and there’s a library and a friends of the library group that turn out and are writing poems and love the poetry.

And so, it’s with that spirit and with thanks I’ll just read some poems, and then I’m hoping there might be some questions after. So, the first poem I’ll read, I wrote while I was thinking about California as not just a place where I often felt like an outsider, but that it’s my state too. And so, I was thinking about things I’d seen, things I’d hoped for, and things I’d imagined.

“My California”

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,
the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window
table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano
poet whose songs still bank off Fresno’s beer soaked gutters

and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California
we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

you’d know we’d done this before. In Fresno, the bullets
tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.
In my California, you can watch the sun go down

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae.
Here, in my California, paperbacks are free,

farmer’s markets are twenty four hours a day and
always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.
Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown,
everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

No internment in the Valley.
Better history texts for the juniors.

In my California, free sounds and free touch.
Free questions, free answers.
Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

All right, so I’m going to read a few more. Oh, thank you, thank you. And you don’t have to do that after everyone, but thank you so much. I’m going to read, let’s see, mostly from Scar and Flower, and then I’m going to read a couple of new ones. So, I will read this poem.

I was on an airplane, and you know the seat in front of you, how it has the magazines? And in the magazines there are crossword puzzles? Do you know? And so, I was on a flight and I started to do the crossword, but two people had already begun the crossword puzzle. And I thought, “Well, I might as well jump in and add to it.” And it just became a poem about imagining people’s lives, and the places we go, and the people we meet.

So, this is titled “Flight.”

The in-flight magazine crossword partially done,
a corner begun here, scratched out answers there,
one set of answers in pencil, another in the green.
The woman with the green ball point knew
the all-time hit king is Rose and the Siem Reap
treasure is Angkor Wat. The woman, perhaps en route
to hold her dying mother’s hand in Seattle, forgot
about death for ten minutes while rememberingher
husband’s Cincinnati Reds hat while gardening after
the diagnosis. Her handwriting was so clean. Maybe
she was a surgeon. Maybe a painter. No. What painter
wouldn’t know 17 down, Diego’s love, five letters?
In a rush, her dying mother’s voice came back
to her, or maybe she was Chinese and her mother’s
imagined voice said, wo ai ni. At 30,000 feet,
you focus on 33 across, Asian American classic,
The Woman ________, when a stranger in the window
seat sees the clue, watches me write in W, and she says
Warrior, and for a moment you forget it is your favorite
memoir, and she reminds you of lilies or roses, Van Gogh
or stems with thorns, art galleries in romantic cities
where she is headed but you should not go. The flight
attendant grazes my shoulder. The crossword squares,
the letters, the chairs and aisles seem so tight in flight,
but there is nothing here but room, really.
Maybe the next passenger will know
what I do not: 64 down, five letters, Purpose.
And why do we remember what we do? We know
the buzz of Dickinson’s fly and the number of years
in Marquez’s solitude, but some things we will never
know, as it should be: why the body sometimes rumbles
like a plane hurtling over southern Oregon, how exactly
we fall in love, or if Frida and Maxine Hong
Kingston would have loved the same kind of tea.

All right, so I will read … Oh, OK, thank you. OK, let’s see. I think I will read this one. A lot of Scar and Flower was written in about a four-year span where America’s long history of violence and present violence seemed to be televised more. The police do good difficult work, but they also kill on average about 1,000 people each year. And during 2014, ’16, I was just overtaken with these stories in the news and I couldn’t shake them. Tamir Rice was killed, Michael Brown in Ferguson was killed. Eric Garner was killed in New York. And so, I’d like to read this poem. And it was also right after I realized I have a hearing condition. As an adoptee, I never knew my family’s medical history. And so, this poem, I was working with sound also.

It’s called “What I Hear When I Hear You In My Head.”

It’s the little whisper, the aggregate sorrow, the father’s heavy weeping as the son’s heavy weeping. What I hear is your artistic response after the massacre, the family of clasped hands, Black hands, Brown hands, a small child whose brother never had a chance. Who holds her father’s tearful face and says, “Your eyes are like the moon,” is what I hear when I hear you in my head this evening. Your laughter like tiny harps. I hear your fatigue as another way to say deprivation. I hear recount re-tally. A retaliation is what I hear. When I hear you in my head it’s the grace, the charm, the dead, the boy, the dead boy, the boy who died because of the fear. The forest in the other man’s heart. The gun, the heartbreak is the sound I hear.
When I hear you in my head, it’s how we each sigh with distinction, where fatigue meets fire, where we wake and wonder. If we all go out to a field tonight and sit by a fire, say the most honest thing you’ve ever said in your life, would any dead boy or girl reappear? Not like a mirage, but reappear? Not like a voice in my head, but a body in this room, with flesh and bones, with his big smile and orange blossoms in his billowing hair.

OK, so I’m going to read one and then I’ll shift. Oh, thanks. I’m going to read one and then I’ll shift, and try to bring it up a little. Can I read an adoption poem that it might be a little heavy? Is it OK if I persist along this train? By the way, I am so happy to be on this campus. Y’all know this, you’re from this area, some of you. Or if you’re here for the first time you know how beautiful this campus is. I arrived in the Bay Area having been born in South Korea. So, I want to read this adoption poem. Let’s see. I should just tell you that … So, I was born sometime in late 1970. I don’t know exactly when, but I think it was around mid-December 1970. And this is common for many transnational transracial adoptees, if you’re familiar with international adoption.

And I was born in Daejeon, Korea, and then I was adopted to the Bay Area. My parents were living in Danville, and I lived here for a while. And so, this poem is about my birth mother. I’ve never met my birth mother, or first mother as we call them, or my birth father or first father. So, it’s kind of about her, but I also think it’s really a love poem for her, but also a love poem for adoptees everywhere.

So, this is titled “How Music Stays in the Body.”

Your body is a song called birth
or first mother, a miracle that gave birth
to another exquisite song. One song raises
three boys with a white husband. One song
fought an American war overseas. One song leapt
from fourteen stories high, and like a dead bird,
shattered into the clouds. Most forgot the lyrics
to their own bodies or decided to paint abstracts
of mountains or moons in the shape of your face.
I’ve been told Mothers don’t forget the body.
I can’t remember your face, the shape or story,
or how you held me the day I was born, so
I wrote one thousand poems to survive.
I want to sing with you in an open field,
a simple room, or a quiet bar. I want to hear
your opinions about angels. Truth is, angels drink,
too— soju spilled on the halo, white wings sticky
with gin, as if any mother could forget the music
that left her. You should hear how loudly I sing
now. I’ve become a ballad of wild dreams and coping
mechanisms. I can breathe now through any fire.
I imagine I got this from him or you, my earthly
inheritance: your arms, your sigh, your heavy song.
I know all the lyrics. I know all the blood.
I know why angels howl in the moonlight.

And I think I’ll just read one more. Thank you. I’ll just read one more. This is a new one. So Berkeley, East Bay, California, great food cities. This is a great food state. You like good food, right? And just for a second, I want to take you back in your mind, if you want to, and then I’ll get you out of that really quickly. But do you remember April 2020? OK, thank goodness we’re now in 2023.

But in April 2020, I was asked by an editor to write something about food and open space. Yeah, food and open space. And my mind went straight to food trucks. And honestly, in April 2020 I was eating an ungodly amount of ruffles. So, I started, but it was very difficult to write this poem just because the time. But this is sort of my food poem. Maybe it’s about freedom too. So, thank you everybody. This is an abecedarian for you poets. It’s just a fairly simple form, 26 lines where each line is the next letter of the alphabet.

It’s called “Abecedarian Love Song for Street Food.” Yes. And it has an epigraph by the late Anthony Bourdain, who said, “Street food, I believe, is the salvation of the human race.”

All praise for the pozole glistening in midday light
by the grace of the woman near the comal. In southern
California, Raul Martinez unveiled a mobile
downtown goldmine of al pastor by a bar in
East LA for the drunk, the artists, the necessary
future waiting in line. Praise be to the ice cream truck,
glory of the van’s slow roll, so praise the van,
hut, cart, booth, tent, stall, stand, bike, or truck.
I once devoured a tlayuda in Oaxaca City, broke down
just as the sunlight burst through the heart of a woman
kissing her baby’s forehead by the plaza. When I say
love, what I mean to say is I dream of you through disaster,
malady, drought, or this nightmare anxiety pandemic.
Now, even in this late dying, let us praise the 20,000
open-hearted vendors in Bangkok and the glorious
pupusas in San Salvador I ate on a bench near a dove.
Quesadilla. Arepa. Tteokbokki. Hallelujah. The banh mi
right on the outskirts of Hue, the chili pepper, the cilantro
songs, praise the Zocalo saints who brought me
to tears with a taco so full of music I almost wept.
Under the Beijing moonlight, bao zi is made by angels,
vendors with wings if you know where to look. On
West 53rd and 6th Ave, NYC, halal, or in Fresno, no
xenophobe is welcome. Tell me what to eat—
your chuan, your eloté, your mouthful of pure
zen, like savory, surprising flashes of heaven.

Thank you. Thank you.

Beth Piatote: Wow. Who else in the room feels like writing some poems? Yeah, that’s I think one of the great measures of how powerful writing is, it brings out your own desire to write and create. So, thank you so much for bringing that live wire. Yes, you should tell us. I was trying to think, what is it called? The cutting from a plant that becomes a new piece? Propagate. Yes, OK. So, I would like to invite our poets to come back up here. We have about 15 minutes that we can have a little bit of a conversation. As I said before, you can ask questions, you can hurl praise at the stage. So, please come back.

And while our audience is thinking a little bit, I have to start with a question for our poets laureate. The job of a poet laureate is a very specific kind of work, it’s to promote poetry, and this is a very special designation. And so, I want to ask our poets laureate, while our friends here are thinking of their questions or comments, I would like you to first tell us a little bit. As a poet laureate, what kinds of activities do you like to bring in, or how do you promote poetry? How do you do your job as the laureate?

Nadia Elbgal: You can start.

Lee Herrick: OK. So, the formal task is to advocate for poetry, educate wherever possible. As the California Arts Council says, from the boardrooms to the classrooms. My project that I’ll be doing, and we hope to launch it by June 1st, if any of you are interested, if you know any Californians of any age, any experience level, documented or not, free or not, I’ve been doing some work with prisons and they’re Californians too. But any Californian who wants to write a poem, I’m calling it Our California, and it’s an invitation to write a poem about what you love about your town, or your city, or your California. And all of those poems will be posted on the California Arts Council website. Also, I’ve been doing events at festivals. I’ll be going on a small book tour with the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, this summer to public libraries working with kids and teens. Wherever I’m invited to talk about poetry, I’m happy to go.

Nadia Elbgal: Yeah, I definitely just want to second what you just said. Going to different events, especially in different schools, that definitely works to reach out to youth. The program that I’m currently in is just for youth ages 13 to 18. And so, I go around to different schools usually, or I go to the Oakland Public Library and I hold events there. And that really just gets the word out and gets people interested in joining our program.

Kealoha: Check, check. Is this on? OK, cool. Yeah. To echo, my favorite thing to do is to get students fired up about poetry. Because if you can reach one, two, 10, 20 students in a single visit, then you’ve changed their lives for good. My last project as poet laureate was to film myself giving 10 workshops, basically taking a group of students, actually three groups of students through an entire 10-day program to get them from having no exposure to poetry, to being able to just perform their stuff, their best stuff out loud to crowds. So, that was the idea there. And we filmed it. We’re going to put it online for teachers to use wherever they want for free, because there’s not enough resources for teachers that they have access to just grab and use in their classrooms. We want to put it up there with writing samples, lesson plans, all that.

Beth Piatote: Now you, who has a question or a comment you would like to share? We have microphones for you. Here’s the mic.

Kealoha: They’re recording though, so they want to get you…

Audience 1: Oh, OK. OK. How did you begin to incorporate movement, and music, and chanting in with your poetry?

Kealoha: I think there’s a natural progression. I mean, it starts on the page obviously first. You’re just writing for yourself, but then you start to think, “OK, what format is this going to live in? Does it live in a book or does it live in front of people?” If it lives in front of people, I want to do everything possible to get the words to make them resonate. And I come from a dance background, dance was my first love. So, I try and weave in all that kind of stuff to give you a full kinesthetic experience, to make the words stick even longer than just that moment.

And then the chanting, culturally that’s just part of our DNA, I guess. But then, yeah, the focus for the past 10 years has been to bring other genres’ art too, so visual art. So, Solomon Enos is a great friend that I’ve been working with to do the visual art part. And then Jamie Nakama, actual professional dancers who know what they’re doing. Yeah, and just bringing all that stuff, because everybody learns differently. Some people are visual, some people are auditory, some people are kinesthetic. So, how do you reach everybody?

Stephanie: Amazing work. I’m so happy to be here. I know Lee from high school in Modesto, so I’m really happy to … He’s so funny, just like he’s always been with his poetry. As poets, how do you get started in poetry versus maybe other forms? Like just creative writing, for instance. Is it how you think the lyricism? How do you become a poet?

Nadia Elbgal: Can I answer this? OK. It’s super interesting, I actually started with creative writing and writing short stories. And then I love to sing. And so, I tried to write my own songs. And then what really got me into poetry was taking a drama class, and the first assignment being to write a monologue and perform it within the first week of school. I’ve always loved to write, English has always been my strongest subject. And so, it sort of came afterwards but I feel like writing short stories really helped me to become a good poet. And also writing songs. Songs are poetry, and I feel like I really struggle with writing full songs. And so, I realized that if I can write poetry, not have repetition in it, and I can just be more free on the page. And so, that definitely helped.

Lee Herrick: Hi, Stephanie. Yes. So, it’s interesting. I like what Nadia’s saying. I started off in high school loving music. I’ve always loved music. I was listening to a lot of Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, and Janice Joplin. And then my life really changed again when in the mid ’80s I discovered groups like Run DMC and Public Enemy. And that rap in the mid ’80s was very important for me. Public Enemy had an anger, an energy that really spoke to me. And when I couldn’t articulate it as a 16-year-old, the music let me feel it, and the writing just as an open field where we can put it. And so, some great teachers I had in high school and in college. And then I just really started writing more regularly. And that’s I think when you know is when you just can’t stop the writing, or it’s always if you’re stressed or if you’re busy, or if it’s not for credit, you just doing it, then I thought, “Well, this could be something I could do for many years.” And I get a lot of joy out of it.

Kealoha: OK, so yeah, we grew up with poetry, we learned the cannon and stuff like that, and all different kinds of other art forms. But the moment I got on fire for poetry, I was probably about 22. It was in the Bay Area in San Francisco. I was living in San Francisco doing nothing with my life. I was just wearing suits and ties in a cubicle, working on Excel spreadsheets. And I opened up the paper one day and I saw a hot pick that listed a poetry event going on three blocks from where I lived. I was like, “Oh, let me go check it out. Let me go see what’s going on in the city.” And I went, and that’s when I had a visceral reaction to what was going on with the reading. My spine started to tingle, my body got warm, I started radiating, and I went home, couldn’t stop writing.

Next day, instead of Excel spreadsheets, I’m pretending I’m working on Excel spreadsheets, I’m actually writing poems. And then I just couldn’t stop going to events at Berkeley campus in San Francisco, in Oakland, and then also going home and writing. I mean, find the poetry that resonates with you is my advice. And then just write, write, write for yourself, and then start to share with smaller pockets of people, friends, family, ask them how it makes them feel. They don’t have to be writers, they don’t have to be professional anything. Just people who are willing to give you their honest opinion. And then you can start to craft for them, because ultimately your target audience are people. So, if you can get an emotional response out of other folks, you’re onto something.

Beth Piatote: Minot. Wait, wait for the mic. Sorry. Love you, too.

Minot: I’m curious, just in your wisdom, what is the role of silence, and how do we listen to those silences as readers, writers, etc.?

Kealoha: Oh, in today’s world.

Lee Herrick: That’s a great question. That’s a great question. I was just looking at quotes for a book I’m working on, because I’m working on sound and poems, and I think, I can’t remember if it was … I want to say it was Mozart, but he’s … Music’s not in the notes, it’s in the silences between. When Kealoha, it was so mesmerizing, the sound coming from that, and whether it was the leg or the instrument. I was also noticing how much beauty there was in the silences. I think as a writer, it’s essential to mute some of the noise. And I’m not sure if you’re asking about that as a writer, what role does it play, but to me it’s essential.

Whatever noise that might be, whether it’s digital, or familial, or societal, whether it’s some kind of quiet space a person can carve out for his, or her, or their writing, it’s essential. It’s essential. So, there’s that. And then also in the writing, I think a word, and rhythm, and sound can achieve a lot, but pacing, and quiet, and some modulation, and even into silences. The Chinese poets call it a moment in a poem, caesure is what other poets call it, Chinese poets call it the moment in the poem where the reader raises their head. So, it’s important to have those silences in our lives and in our poems.

Kealoha: How you feel about silence?

Nadia Elbgal: Well, I mean, this is something that I feel like I struggle with a lot. I get super nervous and I tend to rush through my poems. And so, I’ve really been trying to add more spaces in between my lines, because I do notice when I go back and I’m rereading a poem in my room by myself, I’ll try to add spaces in different places just to see. It can change the entire tone of a poem if you add spaces in certain places, switching it up can change it. Basically what you were saying, spaces are super, super important. Just to have a beat, and give the audience time to consider what you were saying and to sit with it. I think it’s very important.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, and your reading was great.

Kealoha: Definitely. I think, yeah, as a human, having those moments of silence, whether you find it in meditation or during any kind of practice you do, yoga. For me, it’s surfing. I usually surf, so no distractions, no phones, nothing, out in the water. It’s like the swishing of it all, it just puts me in the rhythm. And I don’t leave the surf until there’s a moment where the mind goes blank, and for an extended amount of time, and I’ll just be out there. And then I’ll be like, “OK, that was it. Got it.” And I go back in. So, if you find any kind of practice in your life where you can just shut the stuff off and shut off your brain too, then it allows for growth in all different facets of life.

Beth Piatote: We have time for just one more question or comment. Yes.

Lulani Arquette: Sorry. Aloha.

Kealoha: Aloha.

Lulani Arquette: Oh, I’d like to ask who are your mentors, or what is your mentor? And how has that inspired what you do?

Kealoha: You guys want to … OK. There’s so many, but I mean, it starts with the parents, the family, and my brothers. So, I was a latchkey kid, so after school, go home, parents were nowhere. So, it was just like my brothers, and so there was a lot to be learned there, but also through the parents as well. And then throughout life, poetry mentors like Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who’s from this area, that’s where he was doing his thing. I mean, honestly you have been a mentor to me, Lulani, Mona, like the wisdom of our elders, the people who have done this before, who can give you shepherding advice. I mean, don’t take that lightly. That’s jewels, that’s nuggets throughout life. They’re sharing with you experience that you can really scroll from. So yeah, there’s so many. You’re one of them.

Lee Herrick: Yeah, I really like that. My dad is a finance guy, but probably my biggest or one of my biggest mentors and influences. My mom was an artist and a painter and there wasn’t ever any formal tutelage. Like do this, do this. But I think for me it’s just absorbing what they do and how they do it, why they do it. But I think the how for me is most important, just how people are moving through the world. I had some great teachers in high school. One was a woman named Nancy Barr from Davis High School, the late Nancy Barr. She was about, by my recollection, about six feet tall and she wore about three inch heels, and she was very regal and a little intimidating. But I loved her.

She was so inspiring. And she was also hard on us, so I used to think that they were just hard and mean. But I liked what you said, don’t take that stuff for granted. That tutelage, that mentorship is so priceless. Poetry mentors, I mean, I think of Juan Felipe Herrera as a big mentor for me, former U.S. poet laureate, and many others. I try to absorb whatever I can from folks who’ve been there and who are looking out for us.

Nadia Elbgal: I definitely agree with both of you. And so, there are a lot of other poets that are currently in my program with me, our poetry cohort, as well as my boss. My boss has definitely been there to guide me since I joined the program. But I feel like, especially recently spending more time with the other poets, I’m learning a lot from other poets that are my age or even younger than me. Just being able to have a safe place to share our poetry and to get feedback from other people who are doing the same thing that you’re doing, and in the same area that you are at, it’s really helpful. And it feels really good to just have other youth to share my work with and to learn from.

Beth Piatote: I want to thank you for that beautiful question. It’s such a perfect place to end, to be thinking about our mentors, those who come before us, those who support us. Also thinking about how our work goes forward to those who come after. So, thank you again to our poets laureate, and to everyone who’s gathered here. Thank you so much.

Kealoha: Thank you.

[Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Outro: You’ve been listening to Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes with transcripts and photos on Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

The post Berkeley Talks transcript: Poets laureate share works about creation, sacrifice and residential appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President

Mary Daly
discussed her outlook for the economy, inflation, wages and interest rates in an interview at a live Wall Street Journal event Monday. Here is a transcript lightly edited for clarity.

NICK TIMIRAOS: Hello and welcome back to WSJ Live Q&A. I’m Nick Timiraos, reporter for The Wall Street Journal. I’m very happy to be joined today by Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Mary, thank you so much for joining us.

MARY C. DALY: Oh, it’s my complete pleasure. Happy New Year, and I look forward to our conversation.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Me too. If you’re a part of our audience viewing on wsj.com, please send us your questions in the chat. I’ll be reviewing those in just a minute. And we’ll answer as many of them as we can. And we’ll get started now with one of them.

Khaled asks, Mary: How do you anticipate the first quarter of the year turning out for the U.S. economy? Do you see a recession on the horizon with the Fed hiking into what looks like a slowing economy?

MS. DALY: So thanks for the question. So I absolutely expect the economy to continue slowing. That is what we’ve been trying to fashion, really. We knew that as we raised interest rates, that would bridle demand, helping bring demand and supply back in balance, and bringing inflation down. And we’re seeing that slowing continue. We have been tightening, as you know, into a slowing economy, because that’s what’s necessary to fully bring inflation back down to 2%. So in terms of the first quarter, my modal outlook is really that growth will continue to slow, the labor market will continue to slow, and that inflation will continue to come down. If that should transpire, then raising interest rates through those things and getting up to a level that we would stop and hold for some period of time, to my mind, would be appropriate policy.

But I will say, right at the top of our time together, that the Fed is very data dependent. We’re completely data dependent. So while that’s my modal outlook, and very consistent with the Summary of Economic Projections that we released in December, our views, or my views, could change as the economy does different things, evolves differently than we expect. So I’ll be looking at all the risks to that evolution, as well as continuing on the path of fully restoring price stability.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So on that point, Mary—and for people who don’t follow every twist and turn of the Fed—four times a year you and your colleagues put out projections, called the Summary of Economic Projections, or the SEP, that looks at where policy would go under a modal or most likely economic outlook. And in the last set of projections in December, the inflation forecasts for almost everybody, it looks like, went up a little bit. And so I wonder, a number of people have asked me, why did that inflation projection rise in the last set of forecasts? What is it that you’re seeing? Because the consumer-price index in October and November was quite better behaved than it had been. So what influenced that decision to raise the inflation projection in December?

MS. DALY: Well, that’s a terrific question. And I will speak for myself, because I was one of those who raised my inflation forecast, and very consistent with how you saw the median of the SEP evolve. So, why? Well, when you decompose the inflation data, you know, it’s very encouraging that overall CPI [consumer-price index] is coming down, overall PCE [personal-consumption expenditures] is coming down. Those are very good pieces of information. But we saw most of that action in energy costs and in goods prices, which we were expecting to come down because they would come down as supply chains improved and bottlenecks, you know, were released. So those were pieces of good news that we absolutely need. About half of the excess inflation we observe in our country is related to supply disruptions. And so those supply disruptions improving is causing inflation to come down.

What we haven’t seen yet is core services come down in the way that we would like it to. And importantly, and really importantly, is that if you do core services, excluding housing—because we have a pretty good handle on how shelter costs behave; we know that home prices come down first. That eventually trickles into rental prices, which eventually brings shelter price inflation down. And that takes 16 to 18 months, 12 to 18, really, depending on whose estimate you’re using. But it takes a while. But pretty much we can forecast how that will evolve.

It is the core services inflation, excluding housing services, shelter services, that just has shown no sense that it’s coming down. And that is particularly, historically, been persistent and very highly related to the progression of the labor market and wage growth. So that’s why my own forecast for inflation rose in the December SEP; it’s because we see more persistence in some of the aspects of inflation that are just harder to bring down quickly. And I think what you’re seeing is an agreement across FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] participants that the inflation data have just come in more persistent than we had expected, and we have to build that in.

Ultimately, policy makers are risk managers. We have to have a modal outlook, the most expected outlook, but then we also have to manage the risks, and right now the biggest risk out there that would be very hard to entangle is that inflation expectations, which have held steady—so far—would start to drift in response to more persistent inflation. And so we’re determined, dedicated, united, resolute—you can use any of the words you’ve probably heard one of us say—to just remind people that we are committed to bringing inflation down to our price stability target of 2%. But it isn’t going to happen quickly and it won’t be complete, in all likelihood, in the coming year.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So if I could stick with that, so it sounds like if you have an inflation dashboard—I don’t want to oversimplify your remarks, but just to make sure I understand—if you have three buckets that you’re looking at: goods and energy, which went up a lot, coming down now; that’s sort of helping you out; housing, which hasn’t turned around yet, but because of what you discussed on rents, you think it could help you out down the road. And so is it fair to say you’re really focused on that third bucket, which is core services, excluding housing, i.e., the labor market?

MS. DALY: Yes. I think that’s a good—you know, people put them into different numbers of buckets, but I think those three buckets are really clear, and they do tell you how I’m looking at the dashboard. And so we want to see continued improvement in all of the buckets, but it’s that core services, excluding housing, that, so far, hasn’t brought a lot of relief, and that is very important to overall inflation coming down to 2% over time.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So, Mary, we saw a pretty substantial revision to wage growth in the hourly earnings data that the Labor Department reported on Friday. The last month or two had been revised higher in November, and then in December the numbers all came in lower. Now, I realize you don’t want to overreact to just one month of data, but if this more benign trajectory of wage growth is sustained, what implications would that have for your outlook on wage and inflation pressures and for interest rates?

MS. DALY: So, if I may, I would like to take this moment to just talk about how I think of it from first principles, because there’s a piece of the economy that we study way before we ever think of wage growth. You know, wages are just another form of prices. They tell you about the price of labor and they tell you what the outcome of demand and supply imbalances looks like. And so right now we have more demand for labor than we have supply of labor, supply of workers interested in doing jobs. That’s going to push wage growth up and push it away from what the steady state or the sustainable level of wage growth is, which is 2% inflation plus medium- to longer-run productivity growth. So when I saw the wage growth data coming down, that seems completely consistent with the fact that the labor market is slowing.

You know, we had the—we still have numbers that are above, well above, what it takes to just hold the economy steady. We’re making more jobs than we have new entrants or re-entrants coming in willing to take them. So we’re still out of balance, but it is slowing. We are bringing demand and supply into a great balance, and I would expect to see that in wage growth. So, so far, the economy is operating much like I would expect, given the interest rate increases we’ve taken. So now the job is about thinking about working on that until the job is well and truly done, until the labor market is in sufficient balance, that wage growth realigns itself with 2% inflation and productivity growth, and then we see that pushing through to price inflation, and all of that brings us back down to that 2% target on price inflation that we’ve talked about. So that’s how I see the economy working and it’s why we pay attention to wage growth, but I pay attention to the inputs to wage growth, which are labor demand, labor supply.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Now, money markets have reacted strongly to these revisions to average hourly earnings, and also on Friday there was a sizable drop in a widely watched survey of business purchasing managers for the service sector, especially in the leading new orders component. The market has an assessment right now that you’ve basically done your job and that you don’t need to tighten as much as you projected just a few weeks ago. Now, when you and I did this conversation a year ago, you told me that those interest rate projections, the dots, are only good on the day that they’re submitted. So why shouldn’t the wage data and some of these other reports we’ve seen lead now to a downward revision in your rate forecast, closer to where the market is?

MS. DALY: Well, there’s really two, maybe three reasons. Let me start with one and see how many numbers I get to.

So the first one—and you’re absolutely right; the dots are only as good as the day that we print them. So the question is, to what extent do the—do my dots, as we call them, do my projections change as the incoming information came in? And so for me what I see is it’s one month of data. You said that right out of the gate. It’s one month of data. I don’t want us—I don’t think we should declare victory on inflation, on the labor market, on any of the things that we’re seeing based on one month of data.

Second is if I asked us all to do this thought experiment, so I’m going to ask us all to do it. Imagine you don’t know anything about where we’ve come from. You just know—you look at the data we have today and you see unemployment’s historically low, jobs are being created a—we’re adding about a hundred thousand more jobs per month than we actually can sustain with new entrants and re-entrants to the labor force, and we have inflation at high rates and, you know, painfully injuring millions of Americans—low, moderate, middle-class Americans—who really are strapped to find ways to substitute across to continue to live their lives and, you know, increase their well-being, you would—most people—would say: Wow, the Fed’s really got to do something. The economy’s out of balance and we need to fix that.

And so I think that, importantly, we need to separate the fact that, yes, we do have good news coming in. Yes, we are seeing monetary policy transmission working. But it’s really too soon to declare victory on this. And if you declare victory early and stop, you can find yourself with a much worse situation down the road. And that’s what happened in the 1970s and we found ourselves with the need to do the [Paul] Volcker disinflation, which was necessary, of course, but painful. And I don’t want to put the economy in that situation again.

And I would return us all to the level of the economy is still out of balance. Demand for labor still outstrips supply by quite a lot. Demand for goods and services is still outstripping supply. So we still need to bring those two things back in balance so that we can have 2% inflation. And ultimately—this is really how I think about it—we want to return the economy to a place where Americans—businesses, consumers, you know, communities—they don’t have to think about inflation every day. When I’m out there in the community, that’s the No. 1 topic on people’s mind: inflation. It beats out recession by quite a lot.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Everyone in your position says that they’re mindful of the lags of monetary policy.

MS. DALY: Sure.

MR. TIMIRAOS: What does being mindful of the lags mean for you in concrete terms? Does it mean, for example, that the Fed can slow down or stop raising interest rates absent clear signs of economic weakness in the data? I mean, people ask me all the time: If you wait to see signs that the economy is rolling over, doesn’t that mean you’ll have gone too far, that you’ll have overshot?

MS. DALY: So that’s a terrific question. So I look at this many, many ways, try to get empirical information about lags but also just you have to use the data that are incoming.

So let’s start with there are lags in monetary policy. We don’t actually know how long they are. What we do know is that the speed of transmission from when we talk about our policy to where markets price in the policy rates has sped up tremendously. It’s almost immediate. We say something, markets put it in. You know, you saw that in early ’21. Before we ever raised the interest rate at all, we had mortgage rates starting to climb just on the idea that we were going to raise the interest rate. So that piece of the transmission mechanism is very fast.

But there’s still this piece between when rates go up and when it starts to impact the real economy, and we’ve seen it evolve but it comes with lag. So we raised the interest rate starting March of ’21 and we saw the housing sector respond almost immediately. It’s interest-sensitive. Other interest-sensitive sectors respond. But only now are we seeing that trickle through to a slower growth in the economy that would mean slower employment growth and slower wage growth and, you know, slower demand growth more generally. So that’s what the lags are. You could hear just by my description of them we don’t know a precise number of quarters, so it requires intense study on a regular basis. I would say that’s basically the definition of data dependence.

But the other thing that I use—and I found this very helpful—is San Francisco Fed researcher Andrew Foerster, along with some other colleagues of his, have done something they call the proxy funds rate. And it just recognizes that not only is our funds rate that adjusts that’s important for policy, it’s also our forward guidance and our balance-sheet policy. And his own estimates would put the proxy rate well above the funds rate we have in place right now. And so I’m mindful that right now the funds rate is actually higher, and it’s why we’re seeing the economy slow, in my judgment.

So what I’m looking at is we don’t need to see inflation get to 2%. We don’t need to see inflation even get necessarily down to something within a stone’s throw of 2% before we would stop raising and simply hold.

But this piece right here, this phase two of tightening, is extremely challenging, right? Phase one is raise the interest rate until you get it into somewhat restrictive territory. That part is complete. Now we have to raise the interest rate just enough to be able to sit with that and keep the economy bridled sufficiently to bring inflation down. That is going to be challenging to find that rate, and so that’s why I said at the top of the hour that starting point is the SEP, putting it between 5.25 and 5.5, if memory serves. That’s a reasonable place to start, but we’re going to need to go in and imagine, as the data roll in: Do we need to go higher, or can we stop a little earlier?

I think something above 5 is absolutely, in my judgment, going to be likely. But when I say absolutely going to be likely, I still have uncertainty bands around that. But that’s where I’m putting it right now. My own projection is we’ll need to go above 5. How far above 5 we need to go, not completely clear. But importantly, we have a lot of data coming in and we have meetings in which we can debate this.

I think this is why you’ll hear a lot of us saying meeting by meeting. It doesn’t mean we wait to decide until the meeting’s upon us; it means that we don’t want to forecast a set of decisions that have so much uncertainty attached to them. That would, in fact, be imprudent. So what we’re really trying to communicate is our reaction function and how we will respond. And there, I think, it’s really about looking at all the data and seeing when do we have some confidence that inflation is on the path down.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So you and your colleagues will have another meeting in about three weeks and I want to ask about that meeting. Do you see the need for another 50-basis-point rate increase, which is what you all did in December? Or do you think that the data now, and being mindful of what you’ve done, could allow you to support shifting to a 25-basis-point increase instead of 50 at the next meeting?

MS. DALY: So heading into the next meeting I see those as both on the table, 25 or 50. And it really is about incoming information. And we have another CPI report coming out next week. I’ll have many—I get out to the district after the new year, and I’ll be talking to, you know, my boards, and my councils, and my contacts, having roundtables, really gathering up the information, not just about the backward-looking data we’ve been observing but also the forward-looking views that they have about how the economy’s shaping up, and how they’re going to put money to that by investing in their firms or cutting back. And I need to know all of those things before I can really decide between 25 or 50. Because ultimately those are just the tactical ways we’re going to get to the place we need to be.

I think this is why I have been a proponent of let’s shift the conversation from pace to level. Where are we going to land? And when I think about where we’re going to land, then it’s somewhere above five. But when you’re being seriously data dependent, doing it in more gradual steps does give you the ability to respond to incoming information and account for those lags. So that’s how I’m thinking about it but, again, I want to be data dependent, not wall off a 50 basis-point increase as not likely, because we just don’t have—we haven’t even seen the CPI.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So we get the CPI on Thursday. And a lot of the people who put, you know, point forecasts forward are projecting that the headline figure could actually decline, which would bring the year-over-year number down somewhere to the low 6%. Of course, it had been up as high as 9% back in June. If we were to see a pretty soft CPI Thursday, similar to what we saw in the last two monthly prints, I mean, would that be enough for you to say, OK, maybe we can slow to the more measured quarter-point rate increment that was more traditional for the Fed, before last year?

MS. DALY: Well, I’d like to look at—take a little more nuanced look at the CPI that’s coming in. And I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll be looking for. So, of course, I’d like to see the overall come down. I mean, that’s just direct relief to Americans who have been struggling, painfully for many, through high inflation. So there’s nothing but positive information there. But when I’m thinking about policymaking, I’m thinking of what is the underlying inflation, and not just how do I get it from, you know, 9 to 6, but how do I get it to 2?

So I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to core services, ex-housing, because I’d like to see some improvement there or at least no acceleration. I’d like to see some sense that we’ve got some momentum on that front as well. And the wage growth numbers coming in give me some hope that we will start to see that behave better, behave more consistent with its historical trend and help us gain confidence that we’re going to be able to get back down to 2%. So, yes, it would be so welcomed if we continued to get the headline to come down. That is absolutely the case. And it won’t be the only thing I’m looking at as I decide about what optimal policy is going forward.

And I think it’s also important at this juncture to say that the meetings are really live meetings. They’re important times for us to go and debate and deliberate with each other so that we can come up with the best policy that serves all Americans. I mean, all of us on—who are participants, and we have a full committee, have different walks of life we’ve come from, different trainings we’ve come from, we have different people we speak to on a regular basis. We’re all trying to assemble the information.

And so prejudging what we’ll vote for or be supportive of before we get there and have discussed it with our colleagues, is really not, to me, best policy practice. So that’s why I—I’m not trying to hedge here, as much as I’m trying to say this: a critical part of our deliberations comes at the meeting. So we’re going to wait for the data, and then go to the meeting, and think hard about is 50, 25—you know, those are the range of what I think is the most likely—which one of those would we choose?

But we’re all committed to the same thing, being resolute to bring inflation back down to 2% and, importantly, do it as gently as we can so that we cause as few Americans additional pain. I mean, so many Americans are already in pain from the high inflation, but when you lose your job as the economy slows that’s also painful. We have to balance those things as we go forward to ensure that we’re doing it as gently as we possibly can.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So then, what is the argument? Is there a strong argument for doing 50 at this next meeting? It sounds like everything you just said could be an argument for doing 25.

MS. DALY: I do—I can argue on—I’m an economist, so I can give you arguments for either side. But so why would you—you know, just to talk about what’s the argument for doing 50 versus 25. If you thought your level might be higher down the road, you thought the inflation data just weren’t cooperating, you thought that getting there sooner would be better. You know, for me, when I look at that, I say there’s—a case could be made for either one right now. And what I want to really do is get with my colleagues and debate, and deliberate, and be mindful. And I have said—I wrote a whole speech about being resolute and mindful. Resolute to get inflation down and mindful about how we do it.

And mindful works both ways. We have to be mindful that there are lags in monetary policy, and that we have to be conscious of those lags so that we don’t create an unforced error and overtighten, only to cause people pain that was unnecessary. So absolutely mindful there. And that might call for a more gradual pace. But we also have to be mindful about the fact that if inflation gets embedded into people’s expectations, if they start expecting that inflation’s going to be high so they’re forever asking for wage growth that incorporates higher inflation, well, that’s something you absolutely want to avoid.

I have not seen signs of a wage-price spiral. I haven’t seen signs of inflation expectations drifting. And I think a lot of that owes to the fact that we’ve been resolute. We’re going to bring inflation down. So I want to be mindful on both sides. That means data dependence. That means talking—you know, looking at the published data, talking to our contacts, and talking with each other—participants of the FOMC—to really try to do our best to create optimal policy that works for the economy overall, and all the members of it.

MR. TIMIRAOS: In the economic projections last month, you and your colleagues put down where you think the unemployment rate would be at the end of this year. And that projection was at around 4.6%. Now, turning to audience questions, Michael asks: Is the Fed predicting what will happen, or is it telling us what it wants to have happen? And I wonder about that in the context of this higher unemployment rate. Is that the Fed saying actually the unemployment rate needs to rise here?

MS. DALY: So what the projections are—and I’ll speak about how I write my projections down. When I write my projections down, I go through this exercise. It’s a rigorous exercise, looking at models, talking to contacts, talking to my teams, et cetera. And we say the following: In order to get inflation down, what do we think we need to do with the policy rate? And we look at the labor market, of course. And we find, oh, that’s very, very strong right now. We have more job openings than we have workers able to fill them. That means that we have to raise the interest rate, like we have been, in order to get that part of the economy back in balance.

I’m reassured by the supply chains improving, so that takes that worry off the plate a little bit, diminishes it, anyway. So then I write down the policy path that I think is the most likely policy path to get the economy back in traction, or back in a sustainable pace. Then we look at what impact is that going to have on the labor market. How likely do I think it is that the unemployment rate will rise? And there, we’re really balancing off what you’ve seen as two ends of a spectrum. And the ends are so extreme you wouldn’t think that they would—it’s not either/or. But the middle is there, it is. It’s, will it all come out of vacancies? Will we have some miraculous tightening of the economy that only decreases the amount of posted vacancies that the economy has and doesn’t take a—improve, or increase, rather, the unemployment rate at all?

So I think the vacancies are going to play a large role, but I don’t think it’s going to be everything. And I also think it’s not going to raise the unemployment rate, you know, to some really challenging level that is too much pain to tolerate. So that’s why I put in an estimate of around 4.5-4.6. And that’s what I expect to happen, given the rate of increases we’ve taken, the additional ones that I’ve planned, and then holding them there to bring the economy back into balance. So that’s what I think of as balancing our two objectives, getting inflation down to 2%, and doing it as gently as we possibly can.

And remember, an unemployment rate of 4.5%, 4.6%, is not out of historical norms for where the unemployment rate would settle. And it is a temporary phenomenon. It’s not one that it goes up there and stays forever. It’s just a balancing of the tradeoffs that we face between getting inflation down and doing so by bridling in the economy. I mean, ultimately here’s the big problem we have in the labor market. We don’t have enough workers. Labor supply is not growing very rapidly and workers who previously were in the labor market have yet to come back, and may not come back.

And so those things mean that we can just—our potential to grow is slower, unless we have increases in productivity that allows us to increase output without adding workers. So we’re in that quandary right now in the U.S. And it’s something that the Fed doesn’t have the levers to fix it. But the barriers to labor supply, labor force participation, are there. And we’re seeing the effects of those things.

MR. TIMIRAOS: To follow on that, how much evidence of sustained disinflation or lower wage growth will the Fed—would you want to see before you decide that maybe such a large increase in the unemployment rate won’t be necessary, that appropriate policy won’t actually cause that magnitude of increase?

MS. DALY: So one of the things that I really need to see is the labor market to come back in balance. So we would be narrowing it to say, well, the labor market can come back into balance by just firms not looking for as many workers. And I think that’s going to be a big part of the conversations, big part of the outcome, right? It’s why the unemployment rate isn’t forecast to rise very rapidly like it has historically. It’s because a lot of this is just going to come—firms are going to say: Look, we just are going to slow our pace of hiring. So that is less painful than when firms actually lay workers off, and that’s how I think this will work.

If the unemployment rate comes up less, then that would be terrific. I mean, obviously, if I’m thinking about doing this in an ideal world—which we do not face, by the way—you would want to bring down inflation and you’d have no challenges in doing that. But we don’t face that world. We have demand and supply out of balance, which is why inflation is high. So we have to bring demand in balance with supply, existing supply, being mindful that supply’s also recovering. But that’s in the goods markets, not in the labor market. We don’t really see a lot of labor supply growth here. And that means that we’re going to have to bring labor demand back in balance, which is going to, in my estimate, produce some increase in the unemployment rate.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So, Mary, we’re almost out of time. I want to try to get in one or two more questions here. These are related.

Lee asks, I think the question on everyone’s mind is: When will inflation decline to 2 to 3%? So my question I would put to you is: How long do you think—under your modal outlook, how long does it take to get inflation back to 2% using the Fed’s, you know, preferred inflation gauge, which is the PCE index?

MS. DALY: My own projection is that my modal outlook—the thing that I think is most likely—is that we’ll get into the low 3s by the end of this year, which would be welcome relief for Americans facing high inflation that’s not been anywhere close to the low 3s. And then get closer to 2% by the end of ’24, and then get into 2% in early ’25. So that’s the future I see.

I mean, the main messages there is we could find ourselves, you know, working to bring—it might end up that there’s more persistence than I’ve factored in, and that would require more policy actions on our part. But the idea that we get inflation down to something close to the low 3s by the end of this year and something close to the low 2s by the end of next year, to me those seem like our commitment to restore price stability. That’s the promise we’ve more or less made to Americans, that we’re going to do our very best to, within a reasonable amount of time, restore price stability, get inflation down, and get the economy back on a sustainable path. So relief is coming, but it will be gradual. And to be faster than that would require enormous pain on the labor market that I’m just unwilling to put forth, given that we already see some relief going through in supply chains and we also have lags in monetary policy. So that’s why I think settling for the low 3s next year—or this year, rather—and the low 2s in ’24 is a reasonable path to balance our two objectives.

MR. TIMIRAOS: And then the last question comes from Takuma, and that’s about the 2% inflation target. And I hear this all the time. The question here is: The 2% inflation goal was calibrated in the era of globalization. Do you think that the 2% goal needs to be recalibrated as we enter an era of de-globalization? And I’ll just add my own end of the question here: Should the 2% target be changed if it turns out we’re in an environment where we’re going to see higher inflationary pressures?

MS. DALY: I don’t see that as being on the table at all right now. It’s not on the table for me.

First let me say we don’t know what the deglobalization factors are. We’re right—still in the process of sorting all of that out. So the thing that I’ve learned in policymaking and as a researcher, as an economist, is it’s—every single time we have a cyclical change, it is—people, or everyone, we’re all very quick to say: Well, this is probably going to change the world. It’s always going to be like this going forward. And caution is our best approach right now. So I see no evidence, right, today that we should be changing the inflation target, apart from it’s always a very bad idea for credibility to change numbers—to change your goalposts when you’re in the middle of trying to achieve it. We are in playoff season for football or any sport, really, you can think of. You don’t—you don’t change the goalposts in the middle of the campaign to get inflation back down.

But on a more serious note about should we change it overall, you know, it’s been a very good benchmark through a lot of pressures—through a low-inflation environment, through a high-inflation environment—so I would see little impetus for that discussion. So for me, it’s not even on the table right now. But we will be, of course, doing another framework review, I know, as the chair said, about every five years. So as we do that, we would investigate things like that. But for today and for the foreseeable future, getting inflation down to our stated goal of 2% is the job at hand.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Well, Mary, it looks like that’s all the time we have for this afternoon, for this morning. So thank you very much for joining us.

MS. DALY: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Great way for me to kick off the new year. Appreciate it, Nick.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Same for us.

And to our audience, if you missed part of this event, the full program will be available to re-watch on our Live Q&A page. And with that, I want to thank all of you in the audience for joining us today. We will be back next week with St. Louis Fed President

James Bullard
on January 18, and you can check back on this page for updates. And we’ll see you next time.

The post Transcript: San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly at WSJ Dwell Q&A Occasion appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This transcript is from an interview on our radio program and podcast “Civic,” published as part of our February 2022 nonpartisan election guide. Though “Civic” will broadcast only seven minutes of each candidate’s interview to give each equal airtime on our program, we are making a transcript of the full conversations available. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.   

Laura Wenus  

I have heard you say before that this is sort of the natural next step in the areas that you work in — education, for example, you’re on the City College board — the next step for those really would be to take them at the state level. Can you give a brief overview, for people who don’t know you, what you’ve been up to in the last few years and why you see this as a natural extension of what you’ve been doing?  

Thea Selby  

Yes, I’d be happy to do so. So first of all, yeah, I’ve been for seven years on the City College board, and it has not been an easy time, but we have managed to do what I set out to do, which is become fiscally stable. When I came on board, we were on the verge of losing our accreditation and now-Supervisor Mandelman, at the time he was on the City College board, recruited me to — I have an MBA. I understand budgets, I understand numbers. I understand, you know, trying to make things work within the numbers. And he recruited me to try and help City College at a very difficult time and I have really enjoyed it. It’s a tremendous community that surrounds City College. Everybody is very passionate about the school and wants its best. But the next step really is going to the state.  

Some of my other sort of passions and vocations: I work with transportation quite a bit. I’ve been the co-chair of the San Francisco Transit Riders, the chair and the co-chair, for about eight years. And I am also — in my day job, I work with transportation agencies. I have a deep, deep passion for public transportation. And that’s another place that the Assembly, where the budgets and some of the oversight for transportation and education occur. And so, I am very excited about going, to, one, try and create that continuing ladder of opportunity for students through education. It really is one of the only ways to get ahead that is affordable in this world that we live in. And also, I have two children. I have a 20 and 24-year-old, and they’re both very concerned as many young people are about climate change. And we don’t have a lot of time, and I want to spend my time making sure that we do our best to meet or exceed climate goals. As California goes, so goes the nation, and 47% of our carbon emissions come from transportation. So, I’m hoping that my expertise with transportation and with education can really move us forward to a better place as we recover from COVID.  

Laura Wenus  

There are so many things there that I want to touch on, but I imagine that one of the reasons why you see the state legislature as a natural next step is because a lot of the decisions about, you know, how things are going to go with education and, you know, climate change and things like that are made at the state level. But I would like to hear that from you rather than for me. Why is the state legislature a natural extension of what you’re doing now?  

Thea Selby  

So first of all, it’s about budgets, it’s about money. And as one of my supporters, Delaine Eastin, who is a former superintendent of instruction, always says, budgets are a reflection of your values. So, there is a need. Since Prop 13, which was a long time ago, there has been a need to bring back some funding into education. So, this is where we can do that. This is where we can act both as the bully pulpit for getting people to focus on education. But it’s also the place where hopefully we can start working on a Prop 15-like kind of a measure that allows us to once again attempt to perhaps create a split roll and increase the commercial property tax, allow it to rise with the value of the property while keeping the residential as it is with Prop 13. This would allow a tremendous influx of money, of which, at least with Prop 15, 40% of [that] would have gone to education. So that was a real blow when that didn’t pass a couple of years ago, and I am committed to working on something like that that allows for more revenue.  

There’s also oversight, and that I’ve seen with my own work with community college. AB 705 was a bill in the Assembly that essentially said: You can no longer have your students languish in courses called ‘basic skills.’ And what those were is pre-college classes that we used to test people, and if they didn’t test into college classes, they could take these pre-college classes. The problem was, is that it actually meant, first of all, that we had a lot of people that never got to college classes. They kept taking the pre-college classes. And so, we had a growing achievement gap. So, it wasn’t the community college system itself that made the change, it was the legislature. And I’m sure the community college system was, you know, certainly some not all were very interested in having it happen, but it’s the legislature where that oversight happens, where they got rid of basic skills and basically said: You need to, when you get into community college, you’re going to go into a college-level course and we’re going to provide the support so that you can do well in that college class. And since we’ve done that, opportunity gaps have decreased and achievement gaps have decreased as well. And we have especially our most disadvantaged students, low-income Black and brown students are doing much, much better. So that’s the kind of oversight and the kind of big-picture thing that you can do at the at the state level that you probably can’t do within the system itself. So that’s on education.  

On transportation, very simply, I’ve been working for three years with a coalition of labor — it’s made up of transit, it’s made up of youth, it’s made up of just a variety of equity groups — and we’re 95,000 strong in terms of our membership at this point, and we have been working on a regional transformative transportation measure that is progressive, the tax itself would be progressive. The money source would be progressive. And we’re hoping to get that on the ballot in 2024, and there needs to be authorizing legislation, and I would be honored to be the assembly member who is able to sponsor that authorizing legislation.  

Laura Wenus  

I’m really glad that you brought up the coronavirus pandemic and recovery from it, but before we get to recovery, we’re still in a record-breaking spike of COVID cases. I’m sure as a small business owner and someone who’s paying attention to, you know, City College and the other things that you — transit — you’ve seen firsthand the ways that the pandemic has affected different aspects of our lives. How do you think that the state legislature should be responding to this huge spike or future spikes? And how will you be pushing state policy to do that if you’re elected?  

Thea Selby  

So, you know, I am very interested in seeing what we can do to move forward, and I do see that we have a case spike. And I am not a doctor, I will say that right now, I’m not a health expert, but from what I hear, finally, we’re having a little bit of a distance between the cases and the hospitalizations and the deaths. And there are experts who are saying we need to start focusing on the hospitalizations and the deaths as we move forward. The way we got out of the Spanish Flu is the variants that came forward got weaker and weaker until it was no longer a pandemic, it was more of an endemic. This is a very weird time, because we have both delta floating around, we have the new the new coronavirus that is significantly weaker, omicron — we hope anyhow. You know, so far, it seems to be, if we use South Africa as a model, since that’s where it came from originally. And my hope is, is that we have a lot of things in place now. For example, at City College, we actually have a vaccine mandate. And it’s more about figuring out how to make these things work and also modify as we go along, as the information comes out from the health experts, as to how to move forward.  

I think we all want to move forward. We all want to see — you know, in in the community college system overall, we’ve lost anywhere from 11-30% of our students. This is a dire situation. This means that there are whole groups of disadvantaged students who are no longer getting educated. So, I think all of us really want to make sure that we move forward safely, that we have what we need in place, that we are implementing and that we are complying and that we are monitoring very closely everything that’s happening. But I’m super, super hopeful. And I have to say I’ve been probably way too much of an optimist this entire time that we will be, you know, being able to move forward with the variants getting hopefully less powerful as we move along, as we go.  

Laura Wenus  

So, from a legislative standpoint, let’s hope that we do eventually have something to recover from and that we are moving past huge case loads and hospitalizations — although they have decoupled, they’re still on the rise. Let’s say that we do get to a point where it really is like, we’re coming out of it now. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. I think particularly the economic recovery is a topic on everyone’s mind. It’s clear that the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities in the city, in the state, everywhere, really. How do you think the state legislature could chart a path toward an equitable economic recovery legislatively?  

Thea Selby  

Yeah, I think that’s a really great question. So, I’m going to start with an education standpoint. You know, the schools have also lost a lot of students, and I’m talking about the K-12 system. As you know, we’ve lost 3,500 students in SFUSD and then City College has also lost a lot of students. So, one of the things we can do at the state level is make sure that at least for a couple of years, the schools are “held harmless.” And what that means is it gives them some time, perhaps using enrollment prior to the pandemic as the basis, to recover. So that’s something we can do and have done at the community college level. But I don’t believe we’ve done it at K-12, and I think it’s actually really important as we get our feet back on the ground and as we really work to get our kids back in school, you know? Some of the other things we can do in terms of recovery, I want to talk about small business. I’m a small business owner and— 

Laura Wenus  

I hate to interrupt, but can you just say what your small business is?  

Thea Selby  

Sure. So, I have a small business called Next Steps Marketing. We’ve been around for 20 years. We are a marketing and communications and outreach company and we work with media and we work with nonprofits and we work with some government agencies. And so, what I was going to say, with small businesses, you know, unfortunately small businesses — a lot of lip service is paid to small business, but very little is done for it. And that’s partially because we’re not organized. We don’t have the kind of associations that that really can push things forward or lobbyists for that matter. And what I’d like to see, again, I think small businesses have been hit really, really hard and I’d like to see us, you know, support our small businesses, from everything, potentially, to a short-term commercial rent control — that’s something that has hurt a lot of small businesses as when, for example, ownership changes and all of a sudden the rents skyrocket and small businesses are out of out of their place, they can’t afford it anymore — things like that, to help small businesses figure out, again, similar to the schools, just stability. We need some stability in this time. And so, potentially, reducing some fees. I had a conversation with a small business owner who had the idea of possibly waiving the fees until you actually get started on your business instead of front loading all of these fees that small businesses have. I’m really excited about all the possibilities that we might be able to do for small business as we hopefully recover. Like I say, I am an optimist. I’m hoping we can do this.  

Laura Wenus  

Well, it’s good to hear some hopefulness. I think that’s a nice thing to have. You did also mention climate, and I think that is a really important thing to talk about. So, could you talk about some of the climate goals that you would have, were you elected? Like, what areas do you think the state legislature can really move us toward impactful action on climate change?  

Thea Selby  

Absolutely. Well, let’s start with something near and dear to my heart, which is the high-speed rail. This is — I used to be on the California High-Speed Rail Authority Board, and we have the opportunity — we did not take it last year, but we have the opportunity — to appropriate $4.2 billion that the voters approved in 2008. And so, this is the last of the 2008 Prop 1A bond funds to complete our mid-section, the Central Valley section, of high-speed rail. We also have, as you know, a $1 trillion investment package through the feds, and what they’re looking for is — they’re looking for matching funds. So, one of the first things I’m going to do — and of course, high-speed rail is zero emissions — one of the first things I want to do is make sure we get those federal funds, get that Central Valley portion completed and then start to reach out to San Francisco and Los Angeles, which is the next step.  

In addition to that, I will say we haven’t talked about housing, but you know, I spent a lot of time with merchants all across this beautiful district that we have, and a lot of the folks who work in these small businesses are commuting long distances. And the reason they’re doing that — which is, by the way, very bad for the environment, right, because a lot of times they are, you know, there’s a lot of carbon that’s being emitted if they have to take their cars, plus, it’s bad quality of life if you have to be, you know, spending hours and hours commuting. And what helps with that is housing and the reason they do it, just to finish the thought, is that the salaries are better here. We have better wages in San Francisco, which I am very proud of and I love that, but we need to have housing for the very low, the low and the middle-income here in San Francisco. And that, will, believe it or not, help climate change because we will not have all of these people who are commuting long distances. We’ll be able to work on the kinds of things that Connect SF, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but that was a that was an organization, it was a city-led sort of movement to try and figure out what kind of city do we want? And it turns out, guess what? We want a more equitable city. We want a city where we can walk and take public transit. We want a city that has neighborhoods where a lot of your amenities are in those neighborhoods. All the things that, you know, sort of sound like what you would think we would want, but it’s not the direction we’re going. So hopefully if we start building more housing in San Francisco, in the places where we can build housing, then we can we can also reduce our carbon emissions.  

And then finally, locally, as I mentioned, 47% of our carbon emissions currently come from transportation. And whereas — almost none of that comes from public transportation. So whatever we can do to make abundant, affordable and accessible public transportation, as well as make walking better and biking better, is really going to help our environment, our quality of life. And it’ll help us to meet or exceed our climate goals. So, I mentioned that $100 billion measure that we’re working on in 2024, that will help to start that. But also, we’ll be needing to do things with trucks. My dear friend Denny Zane down in Los Angeles has been working on taking trucks and changing them from diesel into something else, maybe fuel-cell. We’ll be needing to do things like that, and we’ll just be needing to work with people to shift from using their cars to other means. And we can only do that if we provide abundant, affordable and accessible public transportation.  

The post Interview Transcript: Thea Selby – San Francisco Public Press appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This transcript is from an interview on our radio program and podcast “Civic,” published as part of our February 2022 nonpartisan election guide. Though “Civic” will broadcast only seven minutes of each candidate’s interview to give each equal airtime on our program, we are making a transcript of the full conversations available. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.     

Laura Wenus   

Okay, so I think I’d like to start by asking if you could give San Francisco voters a quick review of the work that you’ve been doing between when you were District 9 supervisor — I know you were a deputy county executive in Santa Clara County, and after that became chief of staff to the San Francisco District Attorney, Chesa Boudin — but maybe if you could just give an overview of some of what you’ve been working on in that time? 

David Campos   

Sure. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I think that I’ll sort of divide the work that I’ve been doing since I left the Board of Supervisors into two different types of work. On one hand is the work that I’ve been doing on behalf of the Democratic Party. As you know, after I left the Board of Supervisors, I was elected chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party. And I’m very proud that in that role I work together to bring the diverse group of people that are San Francisco Democrats together to focus on common ground, and specifically work with Nancy Pelosi to help her take back the house in 2018, when we ran Red to Blue SF, and then in 2020, when we ran Vote Blue SF. And I’m very proud of that work, which really made the San Francisco Democratic Party very influential in what happens in the rest of the state, in the rest of the country. And out of that work is that I ended up getting elected to lead as vice chair of the California Democratic Party. So that’s one area that I’m very proud of where we have worked to make sure that we promote San Francisco values at the state and national level.  

The second area is, in terms of my work as a professional, after I left the Board of Supervisors, I was hired by the County of Santa Clara to be deputy county executive and, in that role, oversaw the operations of several agencies. And one of those areas included the Office of Supportive Housing, where we worked to implement the housing bond, Measure A, that was passed in Santa Clara in 2016 with the objective of building, over a 10-year period, 4,500 units of supportive housing that essentially provided housing and services — mental health, substance abuse — to people who are homeless. And I’m very proud of that work that essentially allowed for Santa Clara to really get a better handle on the issue of homelessness in a way, quite frankly, that San Francisco hasn’t. That work also included overseeing the creation of the Division of Equity and Social Justice that injected a social justice, racial justice and gender justice lens to the work of the county. And the last 10 months of my term in Santa Clara County, I worked to help oversee the communications and public education around COVID and the COVID response. And I’m very proud of that because Santa Clara, as you know, had the first COVID case in the country and essentially led the way in the Bay Area response to COVID through the work and the leadership of our health officer in Santa Clara, Sara Cody.  

Then I left the County of Santa Clara to help Chesa Boudin, and I’m very proud that during my term as chief of staff in that office, we worked to get the office more connected to what’s happening in the neighborhoods of San Francisco. We created the community liaison program that assigns prosecutors and other staff to supervisory districts so that we have a better grasp of what’s happening on the ground and to better respond to issues around crime and public safety. I bring to the table the experience of a supervisor who did a lot in eight years and was probably among the most prolific supervisors to tackle some of the most important issues facing San Francisco. And I also bring the experience of someone who has run county departments and agencies. And I think that combination of legislative and executive experience is something that is very unique and will be very beneficial to San Francisco. And that’s why I think in this campaign for State Assembly, I have support of people from across the political spectrum who don’t necessarily agree with me, who might be folks who have been on the other side of political fights but who respect my ability to get things done and to bring people together as I did as a county executive, as chair of the party and as the supervisor. 

Laura Wenus   

Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk a little bit about what the Democratic Party at the state and county level actually does, because as you mentioned, you talked about it making the Democratic Party more influential at the state level. For voters who only every once in a while get a ballot that has like 50 different people on it for DCCC, that doesn’t really necessarily mean a lot. So how does that affect the people who you are now asking for their vote for you to go to the legislature? 

David Campos   

Thank you for that question. That’s very important. You know, I was chair of the Democratic County Central Committee in San Francisco, known as the DCCC, for four years. And what I found when I took over as chair of the DCCC, is that you had San Francisco Democrats — and it’s a body of about 34 people, 24 of whom are elected directly to those seats, and others are elected officials that serve in those seats in San Francisco. But what I found was that the DCCC spent a lot of time with folks arguing and fighting with each other, and you went to those DCCC meetings, before I took over, and you would see a lot of animosity — a lot of infighting among San Francisco Democrats. And that happened sometimes in San Francisco because we’re passionate about local politics. And so, when I took over, I made it clear that I was not really interested in having this body spend the bulk of our time arguing and fighting with each other, that we have to reach an understanding that we would put aside whatever local differences we had, but that we needed to figure out how we as San Francisco Democrats helped what was happening at that time. And this is, by the way, in the middle of Donald Trump becoming president, right?  

And so, what I set out to do was to figure out how the San Francisco Democratic Party could help push back against the Trump administration, and the one area where we felt we could make a difference was in taking back the House of Representatives. And so, we reached out to the state party at the time — the party at the state was not interested in working with us on that. So, we communicated with Nancy Pelosi, our representative, and clearly she was interested in doing something to take back the house. That’s what she was focusing on, and we decided to be partners. And Nancy Pelosi and the San Francisco Democratic Party ran this operation that we call Red to Blue SF. We rented a space at the corner of Market and Castro where we, basically, for the last two months of the election in 2018, we had thousands of volunteers, San Francisco Democrats who came in to focus on calling swing districts throughout the state of California. We started with about seven swing districts, districts that we wanted to turn from red, Republican, to blue, Democrat — that’s the name: Red to Blue SF. And we started out with seven congressional districts. That number, quite frankly, grew because we started getting more volunteers coming into that space. And by the time that we had finished that effort in 2018, the number of districts that we had focused on was about 19, actually, and we ended up being players and helping to flip about 16 of them. We ended up including districts outside of California, just because we had so many people that were interested. And so that’s an example of how the local San Francisco Democratic Party can influence what happens at the national level.  

What happened as a result of that is that we as Democrats took back the House of Representatives. And not only that, but we helped Nancy Pelosi get elected speaker. Because our efforts had a lot to do with some of the new members that were elected, and I’m very proud of that. And I think that I’ve always understood, and one of the reasons that I did it was that as much as we have differences, when it comes to local issues, as San Francisco Democrats we have a lot more in common with each other than we want to admit, and that when people work together on something, that it creates a special bond. And so, I think there’s something to be said for sitting next to your local political opponent, perhaps, calling the same congressional district in Orange County that you’re both trying to flip. 

Laura Wenus   

I want to bring us back to this particular race — although that is interesting — because I only have a limited amount of time. You mentioned opponents. This might be a good segue into a question about your opponent Matt Haney’s accusation that describing yourself as a civil rights attorney on the ballot isn’t accurate. Would you like to respond to that? 

David Campos   

Well, I think that the ballot argument speaks for itself. The reality is that I have been practicing in the area of civil rights all of my life. And in fact, one of the reasons that I was hired to play the role that I played in the District Attorney’s Office was to inject the lens of civil rights into the work of that office. Criminal justice necessarily implicates civil rights. When you are looking at whether or not to charge someone, the civil rights of that individual, that civil rights of the victim are necessarily implicated. And there are a number of special teams that we have in that office that focus on protecting the rights of workers, the rights of consumers. And I think it’s actually disappointing that a candidate would spend their time worrying so much about what another candidate does, and I understand that the supervisor hasn’t practiced law. (Editor’s note: Matt Haney has an active legal license with the California State Bar association. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has also served as a pro bono tenant attorney in San Francisco.) So, maybe that’s not entirely clear to him. But we’re very proud of the work that I have done, and it’s work that precedes the DA’s office, that goes back to my work in the City Attorney’s Office, to my work in private practice. I have been a civil rights attorney for most of my legal practice. I’m very proud of that and I think that voters have every right to know about that record.  

Laura Wenus   

One of the things that you want to work on at the state level is equitably addressing the economic recovery from COVID-19. At the time of this recording, we are seeing a massive spike in cases nationwide and in San Francisco. First of all, how do you think the state legislature should be addressing the ongoing pandemic and those spikes in cases? And then we could talk about recovery. 

David Campos   

Well, I think that there has to be an equitable response. And as someone who played a leading role in the response in Santa Clara County, I can tell you that as much as all of us are hurting from COVID, there are some communities that are being disproportionately hurt. And I think that the response should take into account the disproportionate hit that COVID is having in communities of color, as an example. You know, there was a study that was done by the L.A. Times looking at Latinos in California, in the generation that’s 22 to the mid-50s. In that generation, they’re eight times more likely to die from COVID, and I think that something has to be done about that. So, I do think that there has to be more done to address the infections — the disproportionate number of infections — that are happening in these communities. And I can tell you, in the Latino community as an example, so many members of that community are essential workers here on the frontlines. And I don’t think we’re doing enough to not only help prevent them from being infected, but once they’re infected, to help them and their families not only to keep the infection from spreading, but also helping them recover and helping them have access to health care. And not just access to health care, but once they recover, that they have access to economic opportunity. And that’s really at the core of this campaign for me is that COVID has not created the inequities in our society, but it certainly has highlighted them and exploited them. And it is not surprising that certain groups have been hurt the most because that hurt is directly linked to the inequities in our society. And if there’s ever a time to address those inequities, this is the time.  

I am running to be a champion for the people that have been on the frontlines of the COVID response and who have been forgotten, quite frankly. I think that they need a voice in California, and it’s something that I think that we all should care about. I am lucky to have a law degree and, in that sense, I have the ability to avoid infection in the way that someone who works at a liquor store or who delivers food cannot. But it’s in my interest as someone who doesn’t have to do that, that the person who delivers my food, the person who might clean my house, that they are taken care of — the health of those individuals is connected to our own health, but beyond that it’s the right thing to do. 

Laura Wenus   

And where do you think that the state legislature has fallen short, specifically, on planning for an equitable recovery and addressing this equitably? Because it is a state legislature seat that you’re running for. So how can legislators at the state level address this? 

David Campos   

Well, look, I know that many of the legislators have tried, but I think that more has to be done and let’s begin with the health care system. And that’s why, for me, the first thing that I’m going to do is to address the issue of lack of equitable access to health care, and that’s where single-payer and Medicare for All comes in. The reality is that one of the reasons why these communities were hit so hard is, not only because they were on the frontlines, but because they did not have the same level of access to quality and affordable health care. And so, we need to make that health care accessible. And one way in which the legislature has not done that is that it has failed to pass Medicare for All. And that’s why I think that’s the first thing that has to be done. If we don’t pass Medicare for All — that makes health care accessible and affordable for all Californians — if we don’t pass it after a pandemic that has killed so many Californians, then when do we pass it? And so that’s the first thing that I’m going to do to make sure that we address the inequitable access to health care.  

The second thing that has to be done once you address the issue of health care, is the recovery. We need a more equitable recovery. And I appreciate what is being done at the federal level with Build Back Better, but we need to do more. California needs its own recovery plan. I would call it Build Back Fairer, and “fairer” because I think that there has to be an added focus on those communities that have been hit disproportionately by COVID. I think that we need a Green New Deal as part of this recovery — that California needs its own infrastructure plan. We need to add our own money as the fifth-largest economy in the world to create more job opportunities in these green jobs — move away from fossil fuels. Not only are those renewable energy jobs better for the environment, not only do they save the planet down the road, but they’re cheaper. And so we need to invest in those new industries and I think that the recovery should create more opportunities, prioritizing those communities that were hit the hardest by COVID.  

As I explained to people, I want to be a champion for the people who work with their hands, for the people who can’t shelter in place and work from home. They need to have a focus in this recovery, for this recovery to really include all of us. And then connected to this — and this is more of a long-term strategy, but it’s something that I think has to be a part of addressing the inequities in society — is education. The reason why I, as a formerly undocumented kid from Guatemala who spoke no English, that I got to be where I am today — a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Law School — is because of the public school system. And right now, the public school system in California is severely underfunded. We’re in the bottom 10 among all the states in per-pupil spending. We should be in the top 10. A college education is so expensive. For so many young people, and adults in California, we need to make it more affordable. I personally think that as the wealthiest state in the country, that we could make college free if we wanted to, or at least make a secondary education or vocational training, whatever the person wants to pursue, that we can make it free. It’s an investment that I think is worth making. And if countries like Ireland can do that, we as the fifth-largest economy in the world certainly can afford to do so as well. 

The post Interview Transcript: David Campos – San Francisco Public Press appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This interview is part of our February 2022 election guide. The Public Press and “Civic” are only publishing highlights from interviews with candidates on our audio platforms, but we are making extended transcripts available to add context. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.  

Sylvie Sturm   

Can you recap for me? How has your experience been in your very first election campaign that you’ve been going through? 

Joaquín Torres   

It’s been it’s been pretty amazing to be a first-time citywide candidate and being able to reconnect with so many communities, so many neighborhoods, so many old friends who I’ve been serving in one role or another throughout my time since I started public service back in December of 2009. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Why are you running for this office in particular? 

Joaquín Torres   

Well, I I’ve been looking for another way to serve. I started my career in public service and neighborhood services and really tried to learn the foundation of local government city service work from that perspective of: What is the front desk like of constituent services? How does that extend out into communities and neighborhoods to understand their needs around policies of different departments or issues? And then being able to focus on neighborhoods and small businesses through an economic development lens, which I did, in addition to leading major reform efforts, such as the San Francisco Housing Authority during a very troubling time, and continuing those efforts. And then finally leading an office in really probably one of the most difficult and profound times for so many of our staff members throughout the pandemic. And now being able to serve in a different way about an office that services the fundamentals of our city, where we’re responsible for nearly 30% of the city’s general fund, and ensuring that someone who’s in that role who can be responsible, understands the city, understands how important access is how important equity is, and also just how important the financial infrastructure is for the ongoing success of San Francisco.  

Sylvie Sturm   

You’ve been in the office for about a year now, what have you learned during that year? 

Joaquín Torres   

Everything, everything. And also, that there’s still so much to learn. I think the biggest component is just how vital our work is to ensuring that we have a safe, secure, stable funding source for San Francisco. And that so much of the work that I’ve done up to this point has been extremely beneficial, and understanding how to work with a team of this size. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development, where I was at before, was a little bit smaller, by about 40 people or so. And understanding how to move within a bureaucracy like this is something that I have some experience with. So that’s been good. But just the nuances of dealing with state law, what we abide by in terms of the constitution and revenue and taxation code, and just understanding the processes and ways in which people can seek service and/or relief and what we are or are not able to do as a assessor recorder’s office. 

Sylvie Sturm   

And what do you foresee being your biggest challenges and during your term? 

Joaquín Torres   

I think one of the biggest challenges right now is an area that we’re excited about as well, which is our modernization project. You know, for many, many years, our office was unable, for example, to close the roll for almost three decades. Which just meant a timely submission to the controller’s office of all the assessed property values in the City and County of San Francisco. My predecessor, Carmen Chu, was able to begin that process of, for the first time in that many decades, being able to make that happen for the city, and providing some clarity for staff about an achievable milestone for an office that really needed to feel that they had some structure and participation in city government in a more, I think, advanced way. And we’ve achieved that. So, I think continuing that process, and continuing to advance it is going to be a big issue for me.  

In addition to just modernizing our tools that we have available to us, we are in the process of finalizing, hopefully at the end of this year, what’s called a huge SMART project, which is a system for managing assessments, records and transactions. And really just moving from an old outdated system into a new one that’ll give us and the public greater transparency into our work. And that’s a big lift. Any technology project, no matter how small or big, always comes with complications. And realizing this is going to be a big deal for us.  

And then I think racial equity is another area that’s extremely important to me and has been throughout my service. And I am very much looking forward to seeing how I can advance racial equity goals within the office, and then also in the public discourse as well. 

Sylvie Sturm   

How do you foresee being able to bring those topics up in the public? 

Joaquín Torres   

So, one of the areas that was a real gift that was signed by the governor, and I reached out to him through a letter asking him to sign this bill, AB 1466, which essentially requires recording divisions up and down the state to create a plan for how to eradicate racist and discriminatory language from covenants in deeds. Why is that important? These are non-legally-standing racially restrictive language that’s in these documents. But I think especially during this time, having an understanding of what our city’s history is and has been like in the past, it’s important to help have that truth and reconciliation conversation that so many of us as communities of color want to have in San Francisco. And being able to work on this project, and highlight the reality of our history, I think is an important part of us being able to heal as a community and move forward. And so I’ll be very excited to partner with community partners, leading educators in this area, about our history of exclusion in certain neighborhoods that impacted communities of color, and talking about that as part of that process. 

Sylvie Sturm   

And how did those old covenants affect property tax assessments over the generations? 

Joaquín Torres   

It really is about, where am I able to or not able to live? And when there were industries and individuals and homeowner associations, and homeowners who made explicit decisions to include language on how Blacks could be excluded from a neighborhood, you are making a clear decision about where people are allowed to achieve financial success and wealth building. And we know, especially during this time, that our communities have been excluded from wealth-generating opportunities. And this is one of the ways in which that was carried out all in the name of protecting a person’s personal property value, but at the expense of other communities being able to achieve that for themselves. 

Sylvie Sturm   

How can your office play a role in carving out a housing market that’s affordable to working-class San Franciscans? 

Joaquín Torres   

Well, one of the things that I’ve done since I started was I made use of some of the limitations we had during the pandemic. And that really was about bringing our educational tools out to the public online, through our family wealth series, where we talked about changes to state law that was going to impact people’s homes, and impact the ability for them to transfer properties to their family members, in ways that were not going to be possible before a measure called Proposition 19 was passed in November of 2020, which would limit the ability of people to transfer their properties from grandparents to grandchildren or parents to children. And so, people need to understand how that law is affecting them.  

One component of the law was also about providing flexibility for those who were 55 years or older, who had been impacted by natural disasters and who were disabled, to help them achieve some flexibility that they didn’t have before, which I think is why many of us voted for the measure in the first place. But what was in that measure as well was a way that would restrict people’s ability to transfer affordability to their heirs. So, for example, a home that was a property that was ahead of base year value in the past at a very low level would now be reassessed at market value if it wasn’t a principal residence moving on to that grandparent or grandchild. Making sure people were aware during the time before the law took effect in February of last year was an important part of my predecessor, and making sure people were still aware of what those limitations were moving forward so they could plan for their futures was an essential part, I believe, of ensuring that people could continue to afford to live in San Francisco. Those changes in assessed value for properties, without those protections, and those restrictions and limitations, can have a huge impact on what a person is paying on an annual basis in terms of their property taxes. 

Sylvie Sturm   

How will you ensure that the city maximizes property tax revenue? 

Joaquín Torres   

Well, I mean, first, we have to make sure— it’s coming in and making sure that we’re on time, as I was mentioning before, right, that we do our work, our team is working [on] it. Even in this remote environment, we’ve been able to continue that success of making sure that those revenues continue to come into the office. But then also at the same time when there are mistakes that are made, ensuring that that accessibility is in place for the public, so they know who to come to, and how to get a resolution to their issue, and make sure that they’re aware of all of the methods that are available to them, whether it’s through direct conversation with our office, or through independent bodies, like the assessment appeals board, which sits outside of the assessor recorder’s office, so that those valuations, should they be formally appealed, can be heard by that body and our values will be defended. So, making sure that we’re just very keen about ensuring that people are paying their fair share. And that means that it’s a fair and accurate process through both lenses. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Have you found there to be a problem of under-reported property? 

Joaquín Torres   

No, one of the one of the items that we found is that there’s always a constant back and forth at times, especially with large property owners, in terms of challenges to valuation that people want to present to the office. We provide fair and accurate assessment as provided by state law. It’s all informed by the information that we have at our fingertips. So, there may be times when we make a determination about a property that could be overvalued. But the reason we do that is because based on what the market is telling us, based on the information that we have, that’s the number that we come up with. And then because an entity or an individual might not be satisfied by that number, they challenge that. They either challenge that formally or through litigation — and through a discovery process, we learn more — and sometimes in those cases, we see legal reasons why we need to reduce the value that we came to around those properties.  

In a different matter, there are other entities that at times we don’t always catch in our office, which is why partnerships, like the one we have with the Board of Equalization, are so important, that provide us with a list around properties that may have transferred that we might not catch. And ensuring that once we get those lists from the Board of Equalization, that we “work those lists” as we say, we just work the lists to make sure that we’re capturing all of that value and sending out those notices that those transfer taxes for the reasons of the transaction need to be paid. And that’s part of the diligent work that we’ve been doing as well, we’ve been able to recover, I want to say nearly $70 million since the program started back in 2015. And we’re definitely continuing that work. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Can you take me through your roles and duties as the president of the S.F. Housing Authority Board? 

Joaquín Torres   

Sure. So, it’s a high-level policy position. The beginning of the process, for me, it was back in 2013, when there were allegations being made about ethical conduct by a previous executive director. Also, the associated shortfalls that we were facing at the housing authority due to both a lack of funding and also lack of management that was taking place at the housing authority. The role that we played was not only in negotiations. As we pursued conversations with HUD, as part of that process, to ensure that we could benefit to the most maximum extent what was called the RAD program, the Rental Assistance Demonstration program, that was a key initiative of the Obama administration that would help us fund rehabilitation of these projects. And we did it in a different way in San Francisco. We ensure that there were culturally competent community-based providers that would essentially be managing the properties and providing services for the communities that they were already working in, and that they understood and knew. Whether you talk about organizations in Chinatown, or in the Tenderloin, or in various neighborhoods across the city, in the Bayview, in Hunters Point, following through on those policy items, it was a big, big deal for us, ensuring that there was transparency about those conversations that there was deep interagency coordination on this work so that residents knew that we were going to be there for them through this process. And frankly, being present with them throughout that process, making our meetings more accessible for people in their neighborhoods at their sites in ways that hadn’t happened in the past, and setting those policy decisions.  

Now, after RAD closed — you know, $2 billion deal, $750 million in improvements for those properties across the city — it’s been a matter of management and also ensuring that the fiscal stability of the housing authority was continuing, and that there was a structure in place for the housing authority to continue for the benefit of residents in its successful management. Tonia Lediju is the executive director that we were lucky enough to bring on to lead the organization, and ensuring that she knows that we’re making policy decisions that we want her to consider as a body, resident commissioners, former police, police leadership that’s been part of the of the commission, in addition to community members that have an understanding about what residents need and making sure that they have the space and a forum in which to speak their minds on behalf of themselves, but also their peers in public housing as well. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Is there any overlap between your role as assessor and the president of the board, and any potential items that you might have to recuse yourself from? 

Joaquín Torres   

Not right now. That’s something that I work on closely both with my counsel at the housing authority, as well as the city attorney, so that whenever there would be an issue like that, that would come up, I would absolutely be recusing myself from a decision. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Can you give me an example of what an issue like that might be? 

Joaquín Torres   

Well, there, there might be a development agreement, perhaps, that would come across the seat, that there might be some connection to the office, in terms of an assessment that would be taking place or evaluation of the office would be providing. I would need to look at it specifically to be sure that when that was going to be the case, I would be recusing myself from a decision like that around an agreement and a development agreement per se. And that’d be noted on the record so people were aware of that. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Why would you want to do both jobs? 

Joaquín Torres   

Oh, I am, I’ve been very happy with the service that I’ve had. But I’m also excited to see who eventually will take over my position because I would like to focus very much on the assessor-recorder position at first. But I wanted to follow our process through that we started. It’s not very often that you get to do that in terms of reform effort, and leading through transitions at an organization. But I’m going to be very excited and very proud of the work that I’ve done and eventually handing it over to someone else. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Your second term now is listed through to 2024. Is it possible that your term doesn’t last until 2024 on the board? 

Joaquín Torres   

Well, we’ll have to wait and see. I haven’t made any final decisions just yet. But I’m very excited about the work I do in both places. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Okay. And so, speaking of your terms, on Granicus, your first term with the board was listed from 2013 to 2017. And then after that it was 2020 to 24. But you did sit on the board from 2017 to 2019, correct? 

Joaquín Torres   

Yes. I’m not quite certain why there would be that gap. But thanks for bringing that up. 

Sylvie Sturm   

Okay. Finally, is there anything else you’d like to conclude with? 

Joaquín Torres   

I just want to be sure that the public is aware of how accessible our office is, and creating that access for you as a homeowner, or you, as a member of the public that wants to understand or needs the services of our office, they are available at our website. You can always come in to City Hall and check us out. It is a great place for so many of us to work and we want to be of service to you. So, I hope that you as a public take advantage of that opportunity. I look forward to serving you after this election and in the future. 

The post Interview Transcript: Joaquín Torres – San Francisco Public Press appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans spoke with reporters today, during the second week of organized team activities. Here is everything he had to say.

Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.

This is the first time I think we’ve had the opportunity to talk to you since you were named defensive coordinator. Can you just kind of take us through what your defensive philosophy is and what are going to be your main coaching points and what you want to instill in your guys as far as when they get out there on the field and execute your game plan?

“Oh yes. Our defense will be a fast, attacking, aggressive defense. I want guys to play fast. I want guys who are smart. I want guys who are going to play physical. That’s one thing for me is just growing up, watching the 49ers play defense. The defense has always stood out here. This has been a defensive organization. They played great defense in the past, and we just want to continue that tradition of playing aggressive defense. And we want guys to be precise with what they’re doing. We want guys that know the details of their job, be able to be on their fundamentals because at this league where we are right now, everyone is good, but you separate yourself when you focus in on the small, minor details and you hone in on the fundamentals of your job. And when you’re doing that, you’re executing your fundamentals at a high level, we’re going to be a really great defense.”

I believe it was about four years ago when you kind of came here as what a quality control coach. Did you figure that you would be able to rise up to the defensive coordinator level this quickly? And how prepared do you feel like you are for it?

“Yes, it’s been a progression since I first came here, you know, in 2017, just being under coach [head coach Kyle] Shanahan, just learning the system under coach [New York Jets head coach Robert] Saleh, all the guys here and just the coaching staff we’ve had, I was just able to sit back and absorb and learn a lot from a lot of talented, great coaches. So my progression as a coach, it’s really, it’s been a smooth transition, it’s been a smooth progression. Yes, it is something that I’ve always been preparing for and I’ve always wanted to get into coaching. I always love and seeing the effect that coaches have had on my life growing up and coaches have been really important and integral in me and instilling a lot of things in me, not only football, but as far as things pertaining to life outside of football. So I’ve just always seen that as a way for me to reach back and be able to help players and being in their shoes before I feel like it’s been a natural transition to me, and it’s been easy to relate to our players and help them not only on the field, but off the field as well.”

We heard your predecessor there, Robert Saleh, say there was a couple of things just adjustments for him taking over as the head coach and going to the defensive side and not be with the whole team. What has the adjustment been like? What have been some of the things that maybe jumped out to you with working with a whole defensive instead of just a position group?

“Yeah, it’s a lot of big picture things. Now just having my eyes on, you know, D-Line linebackers and the secondary, just being able to interact with all of the guys a lot more than I have been able to in the past where I’m not just focused on the linebackers, when I’m able to, you know, get to know the guys on the D-Line better, get to know the secondary guys better and just making sure we all gel together as a tight-knit group, as a brotherhood. And I think that’s really the big picture thing is just dealing with all of the guys, all the different personalities, just being able to manage that. And it’s been going really well.”

You mentioned that some other coaches have helped you develop outside the field as well. Who are those coaches and what were the most important things that they said to you and how does that affect how you are as a coach?

“Yeah, I think thank you for that as well. But you know, I think one of the main coaches, a guy who is here with me now is coach [linebackers coach] Johnny Holland, a coach I’ve had as a rookie coming into the National Football League and just seeing the way he carries himself as a coach and off the field, it’s just not a better mentor to have than coach Johnny Holland. He’s meant a lot to me professionally in my football career, but also just off the field when it comes to just players coming in young, just how to handle money. How do you handle relationships and family? Those are things that kind of get overlooked and everyone is focused on football, but Johnny has taught me how to manage both and you can teach both in a football setting. So that is the one coach I’ve had who’s been very instrumental in my life.”

As a player, you always have to prove yourself. And I’m sure you feel like you have to prove yourself now, you know, as mentioned you were just a quality control coach a second ago. Do you feel, I don’t know if it’s good pressure or whatever, but do you feel some sort of pressure and if so, is it kind of different from what the way that emotion was as a player?

“No, thank you. It’s I think when it comes to pressure, it’s all about just your preparation and what have you done to prepare? Is there pressures like playing, like you get those butterflies before you run out of the tunnel, but is there pressure? There’s no pressure, but it’s just, have you prepared yourself for the moment? I think for me, it’s just putting in the work now in the offseason, putting into work during the season, you just put the work in to put yourself in a position to where you feel as prepared as possible for each week.”

How do you balance retaining the things that made the 49ers defense successful over the last several years under Robert Saleh, but also incorporating your own style and your own way of doing things?

“Oh yeah. Thank you. For me, I am my own person and Saleh has taught me a lot. He’s taught me, probably one of the coaches who has taught me the most football that I’ve been around. He’s been very integral to my development as a coach and I can’t thank him enough for all of the things that he’s instilled in me. And so there will be some of the similar, you know, scheme things that we’ve done in the past where you will see some similarities there, but you will see some wrinkles. You will see some wrinkles, you will see my brand of football on it. Like I talked about earlier, I want to be known as an attacking defensive line. Our D-Line is going to attack. Our linebackers and secondary, they’re going to play with base fundamentals. We’re going to play off our defensive line. We’re going to let our D-Line just get off the ball and attack, and we’re going to clean up things behind them, but we will be a more, I feel like aggressive, attacking defense.”

Along those lines, you have some experience in the secondary. I think CB Jason Verrett, CB K’Waun Williams, S Jaquiski Tartt, all those guys will be 30 by the time the season starts. Does that give you a little bit more leeway, a little bit more ability to be variable and to kind of mix things up, specifically that secondary group?

“It was very comforting and I was very excited when we were able to sign back Verrett, sign back [CB Emmanuel Moseley] E-Man, sign back K’Waun Williams, getting Tartt back, you know, [DB] Jimmie ward, all those guys who have been here, played under our scheme in the previous years. So it was very comforting to have those guys who you know are veteran guys who can handle a lot of things that we throw at them. And those guys have been awesome. And I just love them, not only as players, but the way they’ve been taking the younger guys under their wings. I think that’s the advantage you have when you get good veteran players who are not selfish and all about themselves, but they’ve done a good job of coaching the younger guys, helping the younger guys as much as they can. So I’m thrilled to have all those guys in the secondary and excited to work with them.”

What do you anticipate will be the biggest challenge you’ll face as a first-year defensive coordinator?

“Well, I think there’s different challenges every week. Depending on the opponent you’re facing, we’ll handle those challenges when they come. But when it comes to game planning and calling plays, last year I kind of took on that role of more of a big-picture type role, kind of putting myself in those positions of what would I have called here? What would I have done different here? So, as I talked about earlier, it’s just that preparation and putting yourself in those positions now to be different because this would be my first time doing it live. But I think, again, it’s all about, you know, it’s all about your preparation.”

How is DT Javon Kinlaw looking now heading into year two?

“Kinlaw is looking, he’s looking awesome. I think it’s really vital for him to really have these OTAs. And it’s been great that all our guys have showed up and we’ve been able to practice and Kinlaw was able to really hone in and focus on his techniques, which he missed. You know, coming in as a rookie, OTAs are very, very important. And for him to miss that time last year, I think this has been, he’s going to take a huge jump this year. Just we’re able to slow things down and really emphasize foot work, hand placement and technique, eyes. And he’s been doing an awesome job. I mean, I can already see how much better he’s gotten in the couple of weeks that we’ve been together.”

Before I ask my question, on our little chat here, everybody wants to know if you’re going to be upstairs or on the field?

“I’ll be on the field.”

And so for a guy who played 10 years, and you’re just, you know, you’re a player in 2015, I’m sure you had your idea of what a defensive coordinator should be and the kind of defensive coordinator you wanted to play under. How much now as the defensive coordinator do you balance what the players like to do as opposed to just what’s smart football?

“I think there is a healthy balance, but at the end of the day, it’s all about the players. For me, it’s all about the players and what can they do? Not only what can they do, but what can they excel at a very high level to where they’re not overthinking things. They’re able to have their cleats in the ground, so to speak, and ready to play as fast as possible. And that’s one thing that I’ve learned is just going through playing and coaching for the past couple of years, if no matter what I know what I want to do, it’s all about what the players can absorb and what can they go out and execute on the field.”

Since you’ve been hired, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? And also, maybe you don’t know the answer to this, but Saleh was known for kind of freaking out, you know, after good plays and be super intense on the field. Is that what you imagine is going to be your sideline demeanor or who knows? Do you have to wait and see?

“Yeah, we’ll have to wait and see on that. Just naturally as a competitor, like my guys making a play, I’m going to be excited. I’m going to be enthusiastic about that play. That’s just who I am as a person. And that’s why I encourage my guys to be as well, be enthusiastic when your teammate makes a play, you should be fired up and excited for him. And for me as a coach, it won’t change. Like when I see a player make a play, no matter who it is, I’m going to be fired up for that player because I’m so happy that he was able to execute and make a big play.”

Obviously within the division, there are three pretty good quarterbacks at least, I guess you could say that, but in terms of just how you evaluate everybody that you’re going to go against in the NFC West, what stands out to you about the quarterbacks you’re going to face and how big of a challenge is that going to be, especially for a first-year guy?

“Yeah. I think when you look at the quarterbacks in our division, first starting at Seattle with [Seattle Seahawks QB] Russell Wilson, just seeing him over the years, he is a true competitor. He’s going to keep his team in the game. He’s able to make plays not only with his arm, but also with his legs. He is a competitor. So it’s someone we’ve went against in the past and have a history with. He’s gotten us a couple of times, we’ve gotten him, but we kind of know him, but you know it’s always going to be close there with Russell because of the competitor that he is. Then you go down to L.A. with the addition of [Los Angeles Rams QB] Matt Stafford. I think it was a really great addition for them and their office and the things that Stafford has been able to do throughout his career, he’s really been a top quarterback in his league when it comes to the fourth quarter comebacks, which he’s very known for. But, he provides leadership to that offense and he’s going to be a playmaker for them. So he’ll present a lot of challenges, whether it’s calling it at the line of scrimmage, whether he gets more leeway with that, we’ll see. But we’ll see how their offense comes along with him, a few unknowns there, but kind of waiting to see. And then you go down to Arizona and [Arizona Cardinals QB] Kyler Murray is a fantastic young player, dynamic player who is electric when he’s running with the ball, has a big arm to sling it across the field as well. So we know he’s definitely a hard out, so to speak. He’s a hard out. But again, it’s a guy that we’ve grown to kind of know. You know the type of competitor that he is, you know the playmakers that they surrounded him with. So, I feel like they’ll be better this year and they’ll have a ton of challenges as well.”

You mentioned just how this organization has a history of playing great defense. And obviously it helps to have the Jimmie’s and the Joe’s or in your case, the Freds and the Nicks. I know we’re in June, but is there a player on defense that’s scratching the surface of breaking out? And if not, is there a position battle that you’re kind of looking forward to seeing them at minicamp and as training camp gets closer?

“Yeah, I think when you talk about young players who are on the verge of breaking out, I look at a young guy like [DL] Kevin Givens and the way he’s been working, it’s been outstanding to see him work. He’s getting better and better each day. I mentioned Kinlaw earlier. He’s another player. He’s a second-year player who’s going to take a huge jump for us. When you look at another young player, I still see a young player talk about [LB] Dre Greenlaw and just how he’s developed. And he’s gotten better throughout these OTAs and I’m fired up to see his growth this year. So those are three of the young guys that I see taking a huge jump this next year. And we have a lot of guys who are very vital to our defense when it comes to [DL Nick] Bosa. When it comes to Fred, Jason Verrett Jimmie Ward, you know, three guys who are very vital, important to our defense. [DL] Arik Armstead, you know, guys who have been here, leaders who will help guide this defense. This defense is theirs and I’m just here to help them go out and perform as good as they possibly can.”

The 49ers already have a slew of established veteran standouts on defense, with players such as Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Jason Verrett, Jimmie Ward, and Arik Armstead leading what should be a talented mix. But there may be three more players ready to join that group this season, according to defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans.

Ryans was asked during a media session on Wednesday which players he feels are in a position to make a big leap once the season gets underway. The first player he singled out was defensive tackle Kevin Givens, who has shown some flashes in a reserve role since joining the 49ers as an undrafted rookie out of Penn State in 2019. Givens had 19 tackles and a sack in 13 games last season after playing in just one game as a rookie.

“I look at a

DeMeco Ryans seems to be fitting in perfectly so far as the 49ers’ new defensive coordinator, although that should come as no surprise given his previous NFL experience.

Ryans, 36, played ten seasons in the league as a linebacker for the Houston Texans (2006-2011) and Philadelphia Eagles (2012-2015) after being selected by the Texans at pick 33 in Round 2 of the 2006 NFL Draft. After a career that saw him total 814 tackles, 13.5 sacks, and two Pro Bowl selections, Ryans began his coaching career as a quality control coach with the 49ers in 2017 and has since gone through a quick rise to defensive coordinator after serving as the inside linebackers coach the past three seasons. The fact that Ryans has a wealth of NFL experience and isn’t far removed from his playing days means

What will the 49ers defense look like now that DeMeco Ryans is in charge?

There will undoubtedly be some similarities on that front to what was seen under former defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, but Ryans wants to bring his own touches to the defense, starting with a more aggressive approach.

“Our defense will be a fast, attacking, aggressive defense,” Ryans told reporters Wednesday in his first media session since being named defensive coordinator in January after Saleh took over as head coach of the New York Jets. “I want guys to play fast. I want guys who are smart. I want guys who are going to play physical.”

In particular, Ryans wants to unleash the talent the 49ers have on defense up front. Ryans expects the defensive line to set the tone

Today, DeMeco Ryans spoke with the media for the first time since being named the San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator in January. One of the discussion topics was second-year defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw, who was the No. 14 overall pick last year.

Ryans is expecting big things from his 6-foot-5 and nearly 320-pound defensive lineman.

“Kinlaw, he’s looking awesome,” the coach told reporters. “I think it’s really vital for him to really have these OTAs, and it’s been great that all our guys have showed up, and we’ve been able to practice.

“Kinlaw is able to really hone in and focus on his techniques, which he missed coming in as a rookie. OTAs are very, very important. For him to miss that time last year, I think he’s going to take a huge jump

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