YouSaid · the spoken record

Tina Tchen

lines on the record
68
first
2020-08-13
most recent
2020-08-13
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1
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podcast

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  1. “And which is actually a really fascinating place because it didn't do just budget work. It did policy work. And the person who was directing policy for Governor Thompson at the time will be a familiar name to you. And it's Paula Wolfe.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “No, it was part of, I mean, so I married someone who was a year ahead of me at Harvard, and he had already taken a job in state government. And that's how we first landed in Springfield. So I was joining him. I will confess I spent that summer after we got married looking for a job unsuccessfully in various places and thinking, all right, I've now just completely trashed my Harvard education because I'm stuck here in Springfield, Illinois with no prospects for a job when a job opened up at the Bureau of the Budget working for Governor Thompson, this is 1978. And the Bureau of the Budget sort of like the OMB, right? Yes, right.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “A psychiatrist And I went down, and my first campaign I ever volunteered in was the Eugene McCarthy campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, sort of, I don't even remember what I did, but remember my mother driving me to their offices on Cedar Road.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, well, and I work, you know, I wore black armbands to school, right? And I'm 12 years old. I'm like in eighth grade and I'm wearing a black armband. My father, interestingly enough, I think it came from my dad. My dad was a young, was a student during World War II and was sort of an activist and an organizer famously told this story that was his favorite of organizing a dance so that in order so that the underground in China, because he was an occupied Shanghai, could sneak guns, you know, could do some gun running over the cover of this college student dance. And so he during the Vietnam War, interestingly, was very anti-war and I kind of joined him in that. He was a second.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It's a good question. You know, I don't know, David. I always was. You know, when I was 12 years old, I was 12 years old in 1968, right? Which was that incredible year. Remember?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, it was a little for those who know Harvey Mansfield, he was chair of the government department at Harvard at the time. And I fancied myself a bit of a radical. So yes, I went to the sociology department, which is the time was populated by people like Thea Scotchpole, who was, you know, much more to the left. But you could take government courses as a socioology major. So I sort of figured I would get the best of both worlds.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I do, I do, because I think, and there's a sense of both having lived through being persecuted as a people, whatever that was, I felt I was a joiner too. I'm not sure. I think that was just my personality, but I never felt knowing.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Feeling like I wasn't alone and being Chinese, and yet in the rest of my life, I have to say, I suspect David had made a difference growing up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood because actually the bigger problem was that I was just Shiksa, not that I was trying to. Once it became time for us to date when I got to high school, that was more of the issue that I wasn't Jewish than it was that I was Chinese. But otherwise, I never really felt not accepted. I knew I was different. And I think that that actually being an other has Some unconscious way stood me in good stead as an adult, you know, because when I was the only woman and the only person of color at Scadenarp sitting in big kitchen And, you know, I never felt it was familiar, right? Because I'd been the only before.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Kept going. You know, the kids have kept going. These are people I've known since we were three years old. My children went and my kids feel a connection to it now. We now have actually families have joined who adopted kids from China, right? So that's how they're getting this. And some of us have, like my daughter's adopted from China, so it's a great connection. So that took care of sort of.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And that actually gave me a sense of extended relationship, you know, to being Chinese and Chinese American all through my years. We went consistently. My entire childhood camp, I will say, has continued unbroken. Still exists, huh?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So that wasn't my experience. I mean, two things about my experience. One is my parents, you know, which I will be forever grateful for, you know, recognizing they were separated from family, that we didn't have a lot of cultural connections, they and several friends of theirs who were similarly situated in Chicago and Indiana and elsewhere literally 62 years ago created a Chinese family camp where once a summer for a week, you know, these 200 people from across the Midwest Chinese families and the whole family would go, would gather in central Indiana, if you can imagine. We're in Amish country at 200 Chinese folks show up and we would have a Chinese family camp where we would do culture and everyone would call each other Auntie and uncle and the kids were cousins.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Literally in the middle of the country. So I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. We're literally at the time this is in the 50s and 60s. There were, I think, six Chinese families on the east side of Cleveland, and we knew them all, right? We knew everybody. And every time a Chinese restaurant would open anywhere in northeast Ohio, it could be two hours a whit and we would drive there, right?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So, my dad, you know, when my parents first came to the States in 1949, you know, they were students and they were part of a generation. Helen Z actually wrote a whole book about this generation, you know, of young professionals. Actually, they came here for graduate school and then got them could not go home once the Commune's Revolution happened. So separated from most of their family. My dad in talking with his some friends and family who were here who were settled in the big Chinese American conclaves in, you know, Los Angeles and in New York really was concerned about, you know, anti-Asian discrimination. And he attributed some of that that he felt it would be worse when there were large congregations of Asian Americans living together because that was more threatening to people. And so he decided to settle his family, as you said, in Ohio.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It's not my problem as your employer. It's not the government's problem. When in fact, it's The government's problem, right? And it is the employer's problem, and I think we finally see that what we need to do to have a healthy economy is the public sector needs to, we need better paid sick leave. One of the few countries in the world with that paid sick leave policies and with that paid leave policies, we need those, but it's not just the public sector folks, the private employers can step up and do the right thing for their employees, and it will be valuable to them if they do it, right? It's not a cost. It will invest in your workers and your workers are going to produce for you and you will recover quicker in this pandemic and this economic downturn if you invest in them.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “They're all connected. It's people of sick relatives and parents, somebody who's trying to care for someone who's got the virus. Well, you know, David, we've learned this, right? In our country, we have always approached these issues as personal issues that workers just need to figure out on your own, you know?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I mean, Keeping fed during this moment, and you know, yet, you know, they've got unequal pay. We just put out a survey at times up, you know, that shows that, you know, Latinx and black women are disproportionately feeling the effects of unequal pay, of race and sex discrimination. And it's taking a huge mental health toll, right? You know, over half of the Latinx women in our survey said they worry about their children. They're crying themselves to sleep at night. I mean, this is not just the economic toll and the toll on their families, the personal toll it's taking. Worrying about childcare right now”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “No, absolutely. I mean, the one thing that pandemic has done is, I think, laid open for everyone to see the essential work that women have always done and the essential unpaid work that women have done. So first of all, you know, women are over 80% of frontline workers, essential workers. You know, they are our nurses and our nursing assistants and our pharmacy assistants. And they are the grocery clerks. They are the people in the fields picking our food. You know, I've been saying, look, right now, that farm worker woman is more valuable to us and to the health of the country than our bank presidents are, right?”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “The right thing in this quarantine need a little love. Of reinforcement, so you know, I feel good when I travel, you know, like I've got a place over in Beverly Shores, Indiana, and I go to Indiana and all of a sudden people aren't wearing masks, you know, it's a little unnerving. So You know, what's happening in Chicago. I have my grown up daughter with me, so I'm not alone. And, you know, so we're some of the lucky ones.”

    2020-08-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 399 — Tina Tchen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source