fbpx
Share

Andrew Yang brings the presidential campaign to ethnic media

Andrew Yang brings the presidential campaign to ethnic media

July 23rd, Julia Wu and Carlson Mao from Ding Ding TV were among more than 40 people from different ethnic media to take part in the telebriefing with Andrew Yang, one of the Democratic candidates of the 2020 American presidential election. Andrew Yang is the first Chinese American to take part in the election, and his heritage was obvious when he was drinking bubble tea throughout the conference. Yang’s policies are distinct yet unique in many ways, most noticeably the proposal of a universal basic income for every American over 18. During the telebriefing, Yang had expressed his concerns over certain current issues in the United States, especially the conditions of many American blue-collar workers, and was determined to improve those situations.
Medias that participated: Ethnic Media Services, Ding Ding TV, India Currents, La Opinion, African American Media, Viet Daily News, Sing Tao LA, Asian Journal, KIDE (Hoopa) FM, Columbia Chronicle, Arab American News, Sing Tao Daily, Korea Daily, The Nubian News, World Journal Atlanta, Sound of Hope Media, Arab American News, Urdu News, Bangla Patrika, The Word, The World Journal Atlanta, The World Journal Houston, NBC Asian American, Dinq Magazine, The Nubian News, India Tribune, Gujarati Darpan, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Spanish Journal, ABS-CBN News, Hmong Today, Black Voice News, Richmond Pulse

On Tuesday, July 23, Andrew Yang became the first presidential candidate to participate in a teleconference with ethnic media reporters, organized by Ethnic Media Services.

Pleased to be offered a bubble tea as he sat down at a dais, Yang greeted about four dozen ethnic media representatives by noting how his own parents, after immigrating to the United States, had relied on Chinese newspapers for news and loved watching Chinese television as they raised their two sons.

I’m an entrepreneur, not a politician, he said as he introduced himself. Before deciding to run for president, he spent the past seven years, “creating thousands of jobs in Ohio, Michigan, and Alabama … but it was like pouring water into a hole in the bathtub,” he said

“Technology is transforming our way of life,” he remarked, and “our political system in America is way behind the times in understanding technology.”

Yang was queried repeatedly about his position on immigration issues. Emphasizing the contributions immigrants, including his own family, make to the U.S. economy, he cited his own father’s 65 patents for General Motors and IBM and the proliferation of immigrant and second-generation leaders in upper corporate echelons in Silicon Valley as examples of how immigrants make the country “stronger and more dynamic.”

“My immigration policy,” he said, “has a number of facets.” Among them would be to “greatly expand” the H1-B visa program, which he said, “has zero crowding-out effect on American workers.”

If companies couldn’t hire the people who obtain those visas in the United States, he said, they would hire them in another country.”

For those who come to the United States to get an education, “we should staple a green card to their diplomas. We should get them to stay,” he added.

Immigrants don’t cost U.S. citizens jobs. It’s automation and technology that are driving the transformation, he explained, and Washington politicians who aren’t up to the challenges of changing with the times, he maintained.

Looking ahead to the next Democratic candidate debate, July 30 and 31 in Detroit, he described that city, where he worked for nine years, as an archetypal example of the transformations buffeting U.S. society, and the government’s inability to navigate a changing world.

Detroit, he said, has gone from a city of 1.7 million people to 680,000 as it’s lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs due to automation. Current retraining programs, are ineffective with a success rate of 15-20%, leaving us instead with record levels of disability, suicide and overdose rates that for the first time have overtaken vehicular accidents as the country’s leading cause of death.

He also advocated for “securing the southern border,” to “put resources in place so there’s a humane policy” and to “create a new path forward” for 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the country – too many to be deported without crashing the economy. In response to another question, he added that the U.S. should “of course” do what it can to ease the pressures in nearby countries that force people to take their chances on emigrating to the U.S.

Yang’s campaign is perhaps best known for his “Freedom Dividend” proposal to guarantee U.S. adults a monthly $1,000 stipend per month. In response to a reporter who questioned the possibility that the concept might seem too “communist” for American voters, Yang responded that the money would be funded through a tax on corporations such as Amazon that currently do not pay taxes despite being ”a trillion-dollar company.”

“If Americans get our fair share, there are lots to go around,” he said. Furthermore, he argued that $1,000 per month would hardly be a disincentive to work, but would allow new mothers to tend to their children, teenagers to stay in school and boost the economy and create jobs by putting more disposable income into circulation.

The GOP-dominated state of Alaska, he said, already has such a program, passed by a Republican governor in a very pro-market, pro-business political climate. He also cited JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimond’s recent advocacy for “something similar,” a negative income tax, Yang said, commenting with a chuckle that Dimond is “not very communist, or socialist.”

Asked about climate change, he described it as “an existential threat” and said the government “needs to do much more.” Too often, he said, the government acts merely “after the fact” of a disaster and instead “needs to be engaged in making communities more resilient.” As an example, he said that the National Parks System invests about 5% of what experts believe should be dedicated to tending its lands, leading to wildfires quickly burning out of control.

“The federal government is the natural leader,” he said, and disasters such as the Pasadena Fire could be prevented “if we provided better resources.”

Yang cited an interview he’d done that has been viewed or listened to a combined 10 million times in various social media platforms as a transformative moment in his campaign so far, although he said at the outset of the conference call that he acknowledges only ranking “seventh or eighth” among the candidates so far. That interview can be seen here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8).

Yang said politics is an unusual career path for his culture, but he’s proud to be the first Asian American to run for president as a Democrat and suggested that his campaign will counter fears generated by the rise of racism and hate in the United States.

 

Andrew Yang was at DingDingTV on December 2018

Watch Party Night 2 South Bay Yang Gang

July 31st, 16:30-19:00
3350 Scott Blvd Building 54
Santa Clara, CA 95051
Join the South Bay Yang Gang in supporting Andrew on stage for the second night of the Democratic Primary Debates, hosted by Ding Ding TV!

Meet Andrew Yang:

I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for President as a Democrat in 2020 because I fear for the future of our country. New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million US jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more. A third of all American workers are at risk of permanent unemployment. And this time, the jobs will not come back.

I’m not a career politician—I’m an entrepreneur who understands the economy. It’s clear to me, and to many of the nation’s best job creators, that we need to make an unprecedented change, and we need to make it now. But the establishment isn’t willing to take the necessary bold steps. As president, my first priority will be to implement the Freedom Dividend, a universal basic income (UBI) for every American adult over the age of 18: $1,000 a month, no strings attached, paid for by a new tax on the companies benefiting most from automation. The Freedom Dividend is just the beginning. A crisis is underway—we have to work together to stop it, or risk losing the heart of our country. The stakes have never been higher.

Once I understood the magnitude of this problem, and that even our most forward-thinking politicians were not going to take the steps necessary to stem the tide, I had no choice but to act. I’m the father of two young boys. I know the country my sons will grow up in is going to be very different than the one I grew up in, and I want to look back at my life knowing I did everything in my power to create the kind of future our children deserve—an America of opportunity, freedom, equality, and abundance.

I urge you to join me. No one else is going to build a better world for us. We’re going to have to do it ourselves. Together.

LEAVE YOUR COMMENT

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *