In 2003, Jean became only the 12th woman to serve on the Oakland Council in over 150 years and the first Asian American woman.
Jean is the first Asian American woman elected to the Oakland City Council and School Board. She is running to be the first woman Mayor of Oakland, and the first Asian American woman mayor of a major U.S. city. We just had to speak with her!
In 2003, Jean became only the 12th woman to serve on the Oakland Council in over 150 years and the first Asian American woman.
Jean is the first Asian American woman elected to the Oakland City Council and School Board. She is running to be the first woman Mayor of Oakland, and the first Asian American woman mayor of a major U.S. city. We just had to speak with her!
Jean's family roots in Oakland date back to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake when her great-grandfather, grandfather and his two brothers took the ferry across the Bay and became part of a new Oakland Chinatown.
Jean helped found Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and studied Chinese at Yale University in China. She is the mother of two Skyline High School graduates: William Huen, (Princeton University '99), currently a faculty member at UC San Francisco, and Lailan Huen (Columbia University '03), a graduate student working with Oakland youth programs. She has been married to Dr. Floyd Huen for over 38 years and they have raised their family in Oakland for the last 30 years.
Get to know a little more about Ms. Jean Quan.
If you were pushy as an Asian you were seen as very pushy. I’m more often discriminated against because I’m a woman.
Jean Quan
ASIANCE: What would you say are your first 3 major priorities?
Jean: I usually have four but I’ll try to tie it into 3. First of all, one is more particular to Oakland. Unlike New York, Oakland is just transitioning to have a strong mayor. What I think is important here, is I am a mayor that really wants to do this job and knows the city and knows the community. We’ve had Ron Dellums, who was in Washington most of his career and Jerry Brown, who is a former Governor. Before that we had a state legislator.
The contrast is that I’ve been someone who’s worked in the community pretty constantly on a lot of the grassroots and neighborhood issues. As a school board member, I really worked to save and remodel our schools, neighborhood by neighborhood. I worked to save our libraries neighborhood by neighborhood. I’m really more of a grassroots organizer.
The whole idea of wanting to be mayor is, I’m not just using it as a jumping off place for something else. Being the mayor of New York City is a pretty big deal, but sometimes people think being mayor of a small to medium size city, people see it as jumping off points for other offices. I really am committed and you’ve probably read my bio. My whole family has lived in this city for over 100 years.
They literally came here after the earthquake in San Francisco and stayed here and have been a part of the city. We’re very committed to the city. That is one issue.
Also, being hands on and visible. I do an electronic email to 10,000 people every week. I do office hours at the Farmer’s market. If I get to be mayor, I’m going to do community meetings in every district and be very visible and communicate. It will be more of a partnership than of a more sort of higher aloof office. I see myself a little more like Barack Obama, as an organizer, how neighborhoods organize themselves. It makes the city bureaucracy responsive to the people.
The second thing, I’m a former school board member and lead a lot of urban groups. I was the Chair of the State Urban School District Association. I was the Chair of the National Council of Urban Boards of Education. Often, kids who would grow up in urban schools get a lot less resources and they’re a higher percentage of immigrants than other kinds of school districts.
Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, my mom was only allowed to emigrate after World War II because she was the wife of a G.I. So the Exclusion Act really didn’t get turned over til the 50s and the 60s. Then, final repeals were with the Kennedy Immigration Act. My mother came over here as a new immigrant and my father died soon after she came over.
She grew up in the old China where they didn’t educate girls. They educated the boys in our family. We were well off overseas because they educated all the boys. My mother was illiterate in both Chinese and English. She really had to scrape to survive after my father died. But because of the great California education system at that time, I got a chance to go to Berkeley on a scholarship and now I’m running for Mayor. I’m very dedicated to public schools because they are the one opportunity for the America dream for a lot of kids. In a city as complex as Oakland, a lot like New York, we’re never going to end crime. If the kids have no hope, they can’t get jobs. You’re going to have crime. So me, being an education mayor, is my next priority.
The third is to make sure we have a balanced economic development in the city. Oakland is going to be the engine of economic development of the future in the Bay Area, mostly because of our central location. The new mayor may not know in California, because of our concern about global warming, we’ve tied land use into public transportation. Cities like Oakland, that have good transportation systems, continue to grow in housing. The question will be, “Will there be housing for people who work in the city?” I watch New York because I’ve lived in New York for quite a few years because my husband was going to medical school. We are looking at the balance. Parts of New York now are pretty much just for the wealthy.
So, are you going to have inclusionary zoning and housing regular working people can’t afford? Are they going to have to commute 3 hours out into The Valley? The poor people from the inner cities have to drive all the way to The Valley. That’s four or five hours a day commuting.
Jean Quan in her college days at UC Berkeley, a photo that was published in the "Asian Women" Journal, the first of its kind I believe on Asian American women.
My father came over when he was 13. When he married my mom he had to go back to China and they didn’t allow, in those days, for Chinese immigrants to bring their wives.
It’s the Chinese Exclusion Act because they didn’t want the Chinese population to grow. California would probably look more like Hawaii. They didn’t allow Chinese to become naturalized citizens. The only loophole was after the San Francisco earthquake. My great grandfather, very quickly, claimed that my grandfather and his two brothers were born in the US. So the children of US citizens are always citizens where they were born. There were not enough women in the United States so my father went back to China, after coming here as a 13 year old, married my mother, had my sister. During the war, she adopted my brother. Finally she came over here and had me. I was a big surprise. My mother was 40. I don’t think they expected to have another child. I have sisters, nephews and nieces who are so much older than me.
A lot of the time I fight for immigrant student rights in the public schools. We have to make sure we have affordable housing. We had a fight over Pacific Renaissance, where the developer tried to eliminate all the affordable housing. I was part of that fight of maintaining that. I think you need newcomer communities where immigrants can acclimate, make sure the jobs that come to the area are in fair proportion. That there’s equity in jobs. That people in the city can get jobs. Oakland is one of the greenest cities in the country. I wrote a lot of legislation about keeping the city green, such as banning Styrofoam to doing household composting. In the East Bay, we don’t put our food into the garbage. We put it into a different can and it gets recycled and made into compost.
We’re in the best shape out of all the cities in California. Schwarzenegger put everything on a credit card. He didn’t budget. We have a hard time but we’re not as bad as The Valley. I’m on the League of Cities Board and we’re trying to keep the state from stealing our funds. The State of California tries to take our redevelopment funds and our gasoline taxes to fix roads and streets. We’re about to put an initiative on the state ballot which would stop them from doing that in the future.
ASIANCE: What is the hardest part of running a campaign?
Jean: I used to think it was pretty close to being an Asian American and a woman. I think now, particularly in California, where there are more Asian elected officials, we speak English and we’re likeable and we’re hard working, smart, the Asian stereotype doesn’t hurt us as much.
When I first ran for the Board, I represented the most conservative part of Oakland, more republicans and older whites than any other part of the city. When I first ran, my campaign consultant said I should walk to every door so people could see that I was an American and that I spoke English and they could communicate with me. In the early 60s, I ran in the 90s, there were a lot of stereotypes. If you were pushy as an Asian you were seen as very pushy. I’m more often discriminated against because I’m a woman.
I’m running against the former pro - temp of the state and people say he has more experience. Well I don’t think he has more experience working in Oakland. I actually have a lot more experience. At least I balance my city’s budget. They did not balance the state budget. Let’s make a fair comparison. I think just because he is male, people assume he has more experience. In terms of this city, I’m ready to put my record up against anybody. I’ve been in public service for almost 20 years and worked in every neighborhood. I’ve past over 14, 15 citywide initiatives. No one knows more about the city than I do.
ASIANCE: What is your opinion of the Asian American community? Anything you would change? What would like to see happen?
Jean: The nice thing is that we’re so diverse amongst ourselves. I was the president of the Asian American School Board Association. Right now, I’m the chair of the Asian Pacific American Municipal Officers, which is the Asian caucus of the League of Cities. I’m used to representing the broad diversity of Asian Americans and it has gotten much broader.
When I was growing up in the 60s, many of us were a little bit more homogeneous among the ethnic groups. The Japanese Americans literally all came over at once and their generations were pretty consistent. Chinese Americans because of the Exclusion Act, you had the pre-Kennedy immigration people and the post-Kennedy immigration people. After the wars, we’ve gotten more and more South East Asians. My latest group I just met with are Bhutanese immigrants. 600 of them in the city and they want help in building a cultural center so they have a place to congregate. I think we’re a constantly growing and diversified community. Those of us which have been here longer have a responsibility to help the new immigrant groups. We’re constantly evolving and changing. I think we need to help each other out. It’s what keeps America refreshed and growing. We’re one of the most interesting cities in the country. We’re more interspersed.
ASIANCE: I know your roots are deeply embedded in Oakland but what is it about Oakland that makes you stay?
Jean: Oakland is one of the most beautiful cities in the country. We have the best weather. It’s my home and it’s a city where Asian Americans play a critical role. I would guess the collective Asian vote is nearly 18-20%. We’re often the swing vote. We’re not the majority. Even a lot of the Asians who move out of the suburbs come back here. We have an Asian library that is the most used library in the city and probably the region because Asian Americans from other cities come here. We have a cultural center. We have a Chinese New Year Festival. People come from all over the area. San Francisco is a little more tourist oriented. Ours is a little more community oriented. We have several Asian neighbors. We’re deeply embedded in the city’s history. We’re the only school district that has a Chinese public school orchestra. We’ve very culturally rich. I didn’t want my children to grow up where they are the only Chinese kids or where there are only Chinese kids. So Oakland is like that.
ASIANCE: Your children are Ivy League graduates. Were you a strict mom? What are they doing now?
Jean: I was a hands-on mom. I was always deeply involved in their life. I see them in the activities we do. It’s important to spend time with our children, talking with them a lot, spending time with them. Even now, we still have dinner every Sunday. It’s like a think tank. My kids are very scarily like us. You always expect your kids to rebel. My son went to Princeton and received the top honors at graduation, the DOD Award. My husband was the former medical director of our County Hospital in Oakland. William is a Hospitalist, which is a new field. It’s a doctor who takes care of people in the hospital. He also has a Public Health Masters. Both my husband and my son are big proponents in trying to reform the health care system. William is very much like his dad.
My daughter is a community activist her Masters in Communications at New School in New York. She went to Columbia. They are both very, very active.
If I win, I’ll be the first Asian American Woman mayor in America, probably the first Chinese American Mayor of a major city in America. Norm Mineta was Mayor of San Jose and is Japanese American. I’ll be one of the few Asian Americans leading a major city in America today.
To help support Jean Quan for Oakland Mayor, see her sites below. She needs campaign support.
http://www.jeanquanforoakland.org
target="_blank"> www.jeanquanforoakland.org
http://www.jeanquan.org
target="_blank"> www.jeanquan.org
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