Russell Person and Ria Williams

[00:02] RHEA WILLIAMS: So I guess I'll start. My name is rhea. I am 38 years old. Today is July 22, 2021. I'm in Fresno, California, and my conversation partner for One Small step is Russ.

[00:19] RUSSELL PERSON: Thank you, Rhea. My name is Russ Person I'm 62. Today is July 22nd, and I'm here at my house in Bakersfield, California. Rhea Williams is my small One Small step partner, and we've just met.

[00:40] RHEA WILLIAMS: So what made you want to do the interview, Russ?

[00:44] RUSSELL PERSON: It intrigued me from the second I heard about it on the radio. I like to talk to people. I'm known for that. I'm also known for talking too much. So I'll be checking to make sure that I don't do that today because I definitely want to hear from you equally, as well as whatever you might want to hear from me. It's not what I want to say. It's really what I want to hear. So that's how I feel about it.

[01:13] RHEA WILLIAMS: I'm pretty much in a similar situation. I been wanting to talk to some more conservative friends that I have, but it's been hard because it's the people that I know. And so I have some friends that are like, don't talk to her because she's going to want to fight about politics with you. And I'm just kind of. I just want to hear some of her viewpoints, But I couldn't really find a good venue to do that. So when I heard the ad for the One small step project, I was really excited to talk to somebody different than me without a little bit of that pressure that I guess I feel with people I know.

[01:47] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah. Plus there's. You don't have to worry about them feeling about you in a certain way because there's a certain amount of anonymity in this, I suppose.

[02:00] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right. And I think there's so many different people in the valley, so it was a really good opportunity.

[02:05] RUSSELL PERSON: Mm.

[02:08] RHEA WILLIAMS: Okay. So you want to start with your bio, I guess.

[02:15] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh, there it is. Sure.

[02:18] SPEAKER C: Rhea, you'll be reading Russ's bio, and Russ will be reading Rhea's bio.

[02:22] RHEA WILLIAMS: Okay, so I'm reading Russ's bio. Hello. My name is Russ. I have always considered myself conservative, and as I have become older, I've added libertarian as well. I believe that government has its place, but it should be a much smaller place in America. The waste, the corruption, the identity politics has many of us concerned for the future of our country. I've married and I have helped educate my son.

[02:50] RUSSELL PERSON: Rhea is the daughter of black parents from Texas. She grew up moving around before her dad retired from the Navy in the Central Valley. She came to the Valley when she was about 7 or 8 years old. So she mostly grew up here. She likes sports arts. She was in the band and was a member of a nationally ranked ag sales team for her FFA chapter. She has been educated in the Valley and she works at a local community college, which is her dream. Her students regularly remind her that what's really important in life, which is ideas, effortless preparation and opportunity.

[03:34] RHEA WILLIAMS: You read my bio way better than I read yours.

[03:40] RUSSELL PERSON: We'll both get better as we.

[03:43] RHEA WILLIAMS: I'm hoping so.

[03:44] RUSSELL PERSON: Let's go.

[03:46] RHEA WILLIAMS: So I had a question. In your bio, you said you've helped educate your son. How so?

[03:53] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, you know, it was interesting. He didn't come with instructions and I really didn't know what to do with him. When he was quite young, my wife played silly games, but he, when I rolled a ball, he never went to go get it. So he as all children, when they're like maybe six months old. Right. So I thought and thought a lot on how can I love this child? So my answer was, I need to help educate this child because there's nothing greater that I can give to him. So he's mostly been home educated. He's gone to some classes in private school. He went to a charter school that he attended twice a week when he was younger for a few years. Currently he's a regular admit student at Bakersfield College. He's 15 years old. He was admitted when he was 14. He started there when he was 13. Under concurrent enrollment. We mostly did the regular admit because he needs priority registration for his science classes that will be coming up. So what we're doing is a mix of home education and college, where he prepares for classes as much, even more than a year in advance. So when he starts the class, he actually knows quite a bit about what the subject is and perhaps has read the book and done the work before he begins, which is kind of like nobody else ever thought about doing. But it works. He's got seven. He's got seven A's. He's finished 26 and a half units. And he's not trying to take four or five classes at a time. But in the fall he's registered to take three. So he's kind of moving up as he gets more capable of spending more time studying.

[05:51] RHEA WILLIAMS: So that's awesome. I teach obviously in my bio, so it's really interesting to. Because I, as a college educator, I don't really get to talk to parents a lot because of privacy issues. So it's neat to hear about the whole middle college and how much you all are preparing him for these other classes, because that's a huge issue, I think I see with a lot of my students is that they're just not prepared for the freedom. They're not prepared for the environment. And then that gets into how well they're able to learn content so well.

[06:24] RUSSELL PERSON: It actually said you worked at a local community college. It didn't say that you taught. So that puts you higher in my esteem because, you know, the professors there, they do vary, but I've been surprisingly happy with the amount of interaction they're willing to have with a student and the amount that they're willing to help and in general, their overall caring for what happens during their class. I've been very happy. I've seen it in Alex's communication classes, which is one of three degrees that he's earning. Communication, history and science. He's a human biology major who wants to be a medical provider like his mother.

[07:11] RHEA WILLIAMS: Oh, wow.

[07:12] RUSSELL PERSON: That's what he's doing.

[07:13] RHEA WILLIAMS: You only have the one son.

[07:15] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah, okay. Which I was actually faulted for recently, again, I've explained that all our pets around the house are to make up for the children that I wasn't willing to give her. My wife had a couple of miscarriages, and I thought that. I always thought that people were so ridiculous. You know, you never met the child. You know, there was no bonding. And then it happened to me, and I was devastated. You know, you might as well have ripped my heart out of my body, because I remember the third time, which was Alex's time, I wasn't. I couldn't cry anymore when I was told that my wife was pregnant. So, in fact, I didn't want to have any more children because I didn't want to have to go through the possibility of losing more children.

[08:05] RHEA WILLIAMS: So do you think that Alex has had, like, any stigmas? I'm an only child as well.

[08:10] RUSSELL PERSON: And most people, you know, it's interesting because my wife could. She can't imagine life without her brother who happens to live in Moscow. They're Russians.

[08:21] RHEA WILLIAMS: Okay.

[08:21] RUSSELL PERSON: So that's kind of unique about my family, too. But in my case, my sister has never really been my advocate, I'll put it that way. And so I can imagine life without a sibling. So I've told Alex the truth, and that is that there are benefits, there are disadvantages. And being in the moving business Also, for almost 20 years, I heard Hundreds of family stories.

[08:49] RHEA WILLIAMS: Yeah.

[08:50] RUSSELL PERSON: And maybe people don't talk about the siblings that they love. Maybe they only talk about the ones they have difficulty with. And then again, when the house is being sold and everything's being divvied up, people are probably not at their best. So I probably heard more bad stories for that reason.

[09:07] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, my mom has. I think she was three sisters and a brother, and my grandmother recently passed, and they're going through having to divvy everything up, and people are less than pleasant about it. So I can. I've grown up as an only child, so I can't obviously see the merits of that.

[09:27] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh, you. You too?

[09:29] RHEA WILLIAMS: Yeah. So I guess what I was interested in your idea of, like, how smaller government would work, because I'm not necessarily opposed to smaller government at all, considering how kind of ineffectual I think things are currently.

[09:50] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, as far as it being ineffectual, I think that what we're shown indicates that there's probably more effectiveness than we know about. I'm just a really strong believer in the fact that we just don't know. You know, nobody really knows whether the election was correct, you know, incorrect. We only know what we're told. And unfortunately, I've been trained to find evidence, and I try to base my opinions about things based on evidence. But recently I called myself a minarchist and somebody that was claimed to be a libertarian asked about that. It's also called the night watch, the night watchman, which means that government fulfills the services of police, the courts, the military, and not a whole lot more. I can usually probably answer most of the questions about the other things because most of the other functions could be done privately. I just paid a toll fee for being away for four days on a road I didn't know I'd be on, but I knew I better try to find out how to pay that. And then I did. My wife, my son was surprised that it was over $8, but I explained to him how expensive that freeway was to build. So I didn't have a problem with it.

[11:23] RHEA WILLIAMS: So I'm just wondering, so if it's. If the smaller government is kind of in charge of those three overarching police, military, courts. So things like as a community college teacher, you know, I have a number of students that are on food assistance, that have rental assistance, a number of people I live in. Not. It's. I don't know how to describe it, but we have our fair share of the homeless population and the neighborhood. And so there's some Things that I think our neighborhood people kind of come together to look out for the folks in our neighborhood. But I'm just. That's one of the big things that I have. And I think maybe that's more of a state government priority than a federal thing. But all those kind of support systems that I see that people need and where money or time comes from to kind of catch those people that are struggling in their own rights.

[12:21] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, it, you know, some people do need that. And I do believe in a safety net. I won't try to say that churches or, you know, community based resources should necessarily be doing it. It would be good if it was there. Sometimes I feel like it may be actually a little bit too much on the generous side. I sat in a Jacuzzi with a man that said that here in Bakersfield you can get like 2200 or something a month. And I thought all that kind of ended with President Clinton. I'm like a lot of people. I've met people that were far different from me that also believed that people should work for the support that they receive and they should do what they can. Not going to push a Person out there that's disabled to try to do something to support themselves when they don't have a family to do that.

[13:19] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right.

[13:20] RUSSELL PERSON: But I would say that in a more timely fashion. I don't think that providing childcare pre K or care to the elderly parents is anybody else's business, but the families themselves.

[13:39] RHEA WILLIAMS: So what about folks that might not be able to afford that? And I say this because I have college, I am not married, I don't have kids. But a lot of people that I went to college with, they do have younger kids. And it's kind of a free for all for them to find the right pre K and the right teachers. They're trying to do the best for their young children. But then I see some returning students that are older in my classrooms and they're struggling to find childcare for their kids and go to work and go to school. And it's hard for me. I think as a teacher I've gotten into a lot more research of local resources and things like that so that I can be a resource for my students and people that I know that may be in need. But I mean, what happens to those folks that just can't afford it or don't know, they don't have the time to research a great school or something?

[14:32] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, most of the programs as I understand them, are readily available. I mean, like for instance, I didn't need a Covid check, but the government sent me one anyways. A family might need, not need elderly care, but dang it, the government's going to provide it whether or not they need it. So there's, I mean, there's different ways to look at that. In my heart, I can't leave someone, you know, without help for, you know, that they need to survive. And, and we have plenty of resources to help those people. I just don't think that it's very well managed most of the time. As far as the students needing child care and stuff and working full time and all that, you know, I care about that. But people make choices, you know, and I'm not saying that their lives should be just as easy as anyone else that, you know, didn't, didn't wait to have their child like I did. I was 44 years old, but I could have gone either way. But, you know, I really do believe.

[15:39] RHEA WILLIAMS: I'm 38 and I don't, I don't have kids either. I've gone in education and finding my career job and so.

[15:45] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah, well, you've, you've got your kids now.

[15:49] RHEA WILLIAMS: Plenty of them. Yes, but.

[15:51] RUSSELL PERSON: And I believe in that kind of thing too. I had people that, I felt very much like I was a child of theirs because they, they cared about me the same way that a parent cared about me. So I'm not the, I'm not a cold hearted libertarian saying that. Tough luck. But at the same time, and I'm not sure how far it should go, and it always involves coercion. You know, I'm a volunteer, Terry kind of Person I spoke to someone in my Toastmasters club about all that. She was saying, oh, I think that people should have elderly care. Well, it depends on what it looks like. And it depends on, oh, by the way, how are you supporting the elderly right now?

[16:34] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, and I like the point that you made because I talk to my students a lot about the autonomy and, you know, letting them make their own mistakes because they do need to be in charge of their education and prioritizing and making choices for them. And I find that that actually happens a lot at my campus where a lot of administrators, a lot of people want to come in and say, this is what students need and we're going to spend money and create this program or do this thing. And I'm always kind of going back to, have we talked to students, have we asked the people what they need or how they want to see this go through? Otherwise, I kind of feel like we end up wasting a lot of time. So I think I can understand you on that point of not having a solid idea of what people are asking for and where they want to go. It is giving them kind of oversight that they don't have control over.

[17:20] RUSSELL PERSON: Along those same lines, Bakersfield College has a Finishing four program. You know, two here, two there. You're done. Well, it really matters what happens after you're done. And besides, my son saw a very high dropout rate in the first class that he was attended there. If, if, if finishing 4 is decreasing the number of people that graduate, get rid of it. If it, if a kid's working, don't try to give them more than one or two classes. It's too much. He just came out of high school. He doesn't really understand the rigor of college yet. It would be much better if he was at the school for six years, got his degree, matured during the time that he was there. I wasn't mature. I went to college for nine years. I did graduate, but it took me at least four years to grow up enough to appreciate the fact of what I had available to myself. It was my own conscience, feeling guilty for what my parents provided for me that really actually got me to start working and doing something with myself.

[18:31] RHEA WILLIAMS: My parents were very education forward, so they helped me pay for tuition my dad had. I was able to use his GI Bill, but that was always because it was the GI Bill that was paying for stuff. They were paying for stuff. So it was very much, you know, you can choose any major that you want to, but you always have a direction. And, you know, I think I graduated in five years, so I was one extra.

[18:55] RUSSELL PERSON: That's typical, I think.

[18:57] RHEA WILLIAMS: Yeah. And I changed my majors a lot of times, and it was just kind of finding something that was the right fit for me. But my parents had that, you know, that if you're going to stop college and go to work and get a job, then that's fine. But if we're paying for education, you know, it was an expectation to have the right grades and to not waste time and money. And I see students do that a lot. And I see returning students that the light bulb comes on and they have much different priorities. Way better performance in the class. So it's hard, I guess. You know, I do consider a lot of my younger students, I guess, you know, like younger cousins or something of that to me, and it's hard to see them struggle and. And you do want to offer them tons of resources and this and that and that but you really have to wait for them to kind of understand what it is they need and what it is they want. And I've talked to plenty of students that I said, you know, hey, you, you're building this record label or a business from the ground up and if school's getting in the way of that, if that's your priority, then prioritize whatever you're going to prioritize. But I don't want them to waste time here if, you know, their passions and their directions lie someplace else up.

[20:06] RUSSELL PERSON: To a certain extent, I mean, somebody could have a passion that is very, very unrealistic. I mean, if somebody wants to be a rock star, I'm not going to tell them, oh, forget medical school, you know, forget going into wanting to be a nurse or whatever it is that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to tell them, I'm going to do some research and find out what the odds really are and ask that, you know, are, are you sure that you're so different from everyone else?

[20:35] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right. And at a community college level, I mean, at the very least you've got a two year degree that you can fall back on if something doesn't happen. And I think one of the things that I've always been interested in, and I was interested because you said your wife was her family's Russian, is how they do education a little differently in Europe, where you can go to a high school, a secondary school, that's a trade school, or you can go on a college or a university track. We don't do that here. And it's so strange to me, right.

[21:06] RUSSELL PERSON: It's not so much about being able to, it's being what you are allowed to do. Things have changed in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed. But my wife was born in 71, so she knows a lot about what it was like during the Soviet days. And it was a complete meritocracy. She had to score so high on a, on a single exam to get into medical school.

[21:32] RHEA WILLIAMS: Oh, wow.

[21:34] RUSSELL PERSON: She only made $100 a month as a surgeon, which was 20% of the average pay. So I'm not all right with that. But strangely enough, she was prestige, $100 a month, eight or nine, 24 hour shifts.

[21:52] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, I know I've heard some people say that about sort of some aspects of how our government works or doesn't work is that we're just sometimes used to things a certain way and it shouldn't be that way or it could be much better or much more transparent, but people just Kind of get complacent, I guess, with how things are.

[22:12] RUSSELL PERSON: My wife says that we're. We're lazy, you know, and, you know, she can. She actually has the right to say that. She came with two suitcases and a cat.

[22:24] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right?

[22:24] RUSSELL PERSON: She didn't really speak the language. She learned it just because I kept talking to her and never, you know, asked her if she understood me. Six months later. I think women are gifted in languages myself, but six months later, she could sit through a movie and she understood everything. We got slowed down because her parents wanted her to be a doctor again. My wife's a nurse practitioner now, which makes her happy because she's a provider and she sees patients, but everyone that she ever talks to, you know, like an MA or something. Why'd you stop? Take a class. One class at a time. Keep going. Time goes by. You'll, you know, you'll get there. Stop, you know, stop just staying in the same place. You got to keep moving, gotta push, gotta study, you know, and that's how she is. And it's. It's. She's a good partner because she's a good. She's a perfect example to our son, and he has a little challenges with, you know, getting his work done early enough and stuff like that. And I'm example of a Person that's provided too many resources.

[23:33] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right. Okay, my. I grown up and I'm getting much better now. But one of the things that I went through in college was not really being able to manage money well. And my mom would always kind of come down on me. She's like, you know, better than this and overdrafts, and you have to be careful about your loans and what your payments are and all this stuff. But I told her at one point, you know, you grew up and you tried to raise a child to have a better experience, to have more opportunities than you did. And so it's. There's certain things that I know practically, but because they've taken such good care of me, I haven't experienced those things, you know, firsthand. And so I had to go through some of it. And that's when she was kind of like, well, we can just tighten up the purse strings, if that's the issue, and let you go through some stuff. And she did, but that was, I think, something that she didn't think of. Of trying to do better for me. And some of the things that come with that, some oversights that she just.

[24:36] RUSSELL PERSON: You know, did you do without money because of making money mistakes?

[24:42] RHEA WILLIAMS: That's a Real question. Yes, I had to do that. And that was when I got into grad school. My parents went through a divorce, so money was tight and they, you know, it was just kind of a real quick turnaround. So I did have about six months where I had to hustle. I worked three jobs. I'm still trying to go to grad school. I had loans at the time, but it was trying to really conserve how much I had in loans because I know I'm going to have to pay those back. And my parents are supporting me as they can, but they also realize that it's tight for everybody and that it's just time for me to learn how to be more independent. And the only way to do that is going through the experience, having the lights turned off every once in a while until you figure it out.

[25:26] RUSSELL PERSON: What happened to your dad? Did he just upscone with his responsibilities?

[25:31] RHEA WILLIAMS: Kind of. They had had some issues and they started divorce and he was actually in Bakersfield at the time. He was working for the state and he moved back home. Both of them are from Texas and he moved back to Texas and has never come back to the state. And they had a contentious divorce. I was already out of the house and everything by then. But it was, it was rough on them money wise. So that's something. And I've talked to him about that too.

[25:58] RUSSELL PERSON: Right. But yeah, they both suffered. So there wasn't. It wasn't because he didn't want to help you. It was. That money was harder on him too.

[26:10] RHEA WILLIAMS: Because, yeah, it was a reality check for everybody. And I think. And just recently he actually helped me pay off a car loan. And I was kind of like, I'm not sure what's going on with your finances because things have been tight. And now all of a sudden you want to send me like $2,000. And I was, you know, just me having been more money aware and aware of his situation, I'm like, you don't have to send me anything that you don't have. You know, I'm. I'm fine now. I make it my own way. I've got things covered. But it was nice. I appreciated that much more. Having gone through the experiences, having had to kind of adult, I guess is the word for it.

[26:47] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah, I've always thought that my, my role as a parent was to let my son, you know, how experience, skin knees, but not broken legs. I like that, you know, So I, that's how I try to try to get involved. But he was having some chat. He. For, for the last 10 years the kid has been studying 300 days a year. I mean, not in a nutshell is he. He knows that other kids don't do that. So he tries to, he rebels a little bit about. But it's not a lot of work. It may usually just a few hours a day. So even during his college time it's usually not more than four or five.

[27:35] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right. And I think that's, that's normal for students his age.

[27:39] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah, yeah. Even for 15 year old, a lot of them, they're at school all day, they've got a lot of homework. We have friends they tell me about their kid would wake up at 4:30 in the morning to study before I'm going to school. That's my dental hygienist. And I just tried to tell her. Your son's very remarkable.

[27:59] SPEAKER C: I'm just gonna jump in. I've put a question in the chat for you and then. Oh, okay, Rhea, I'd like you to ask it back to Russ.

[28:09] RUSSELL PERSON: Okay, Rhea, who's been the most influential Person in your life and what did they teach you?

[28:17] RHEA WILLIAMS: So my mom's hands down the most influential Person in my life and she's taught me consistency and she's taught me perseverance. She went to school when she was raising me and she was also working even though, you know, with my dad being in the military it wasn't necessary for her to work. But she's worked all her life. So she had her job, she was going to school. She went to the same college that I started going to when I was in high school. I started a year before I graduated and she went to the same state university that I went to and she ended up graduating. She was trying to beat me and she ended up graduating a year after I graduated with my ba so she's just always, always, you know, like you were saying about your wife just doing something and learning something and trying something new. And she's had three bouts of cancer that she's gone through. So she just keeps on one foot in front of the other every day. And I couldn't. She's just the bravest Person So same question for you, who's been.

[29:19] RUSSELL PERSON: I would definitely say my mom too. I had hundreds of people tell me how wonderful my mom was, you know, as if I didn't know myself. I just thought she was a saint. And the way that she put it was that she was still working on it.

[29:37] RHEA WILLIAMS: Yes.

[29:40] RUSSELL PERSON: She was always thinking about others, always kind, always helpful, always a perfect. Both my parents had integrity that I'VE never seen anywhere else. And remarkable people, you know, they would never be late. They were whatever they said they were do, we're going to do, they always did. And so I have most of that. I'm, I'm probably hard on myself because they were just so remarkable that way.

[30:15] RHEA WILLIAMS: So do you think you got any of your political views or kind of just like values from them or is that something you kind of developed as you grew up in?

[30:25] RUSSELL PERSON: Definitely, definitely. I know they, they voted for Barry Goldwater and I think that we're all kind of a product. I'm not sure. I think some households really are fairly non political and they don't really talk that much, but other ones are and I think to a certain extent, whatever narratives that we hear earliest are the ones that we kind of keep. It's one of the reasons why I listen to NPR Radio. It's not conservative. Okay. In case you're not sure. It's not, no. And that's Obama mentioned. He said the biggest problem in America is that people are just, you know, they're seeking news sources that are just always the same way as that they, that they think so. So I don't want to get stuck thinking one way. I use it as a critical thinking tool. I debunk some stories or I suggest to myself that they're not, that they're a distortion of what actually is taking place or that it has a bias in the narrative. And that's true at all kinds of news sources. It's really hard to find anything that's just, you know, talking about.

[31:42] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right.

[31:42] RUSSELL PERSON: What's happened without some kind of in.

[31:47] RHEA WILLIAMS: Game part of being that critical thinking citizen, that critical consumer is not taking everything kind of at face value and doing.

[31:55] RUSSELL PERSON: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. Like I, I know, I know how little I actually can find out about things. So I'm not, I'm, I'm not at all convinced from the position that I'm in, even if I am seeking to, to get information about what's going on.

[32:14] RHEA WILLIAMS: And are you guys like a political talking family? Because I'll talk politics with my mom. I don't talk politics with my dad at all. He's one of those like, you know, talk politics, religion or the.

[32:25] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh really?

[32:26] RHEA WILLIAMS: We rarely, he'll every once in a while ask me, you know, oh, are you voting for that Bernie Sanders or something? But he, we don't really get into it. I have an understanding of his kind of political leanings, but my mom's much more, you know, wants to protest and be part of Things and talk about how much everything sucks. And she can. It's interesting to talk to her because I try and be more moderate to her kind of more liberal side. And I think it's just experience that she has and being older. But I definitely find myself sometimes I'm like, yeah, did you. Did you research that? Or where did you hear this? Or, you know, is there an example in her life that's kind of contrary to what she's saying? So it's. It's fun to talk to her about it. And it's always kind of just weird. I'd like to talk to my dad about that stuff. He just is.

[33:15] RUSSELL PERSON: Not that I figured he'd probably be more conservative because I think a lot of the people in the military are conservative. You know, with them, it's just, you know, everything's black or white, right or wrong, one or zero. You know, there's not much gray area and in the way that most of them think.

[33:33] RHEA WILLIAMS: And I think I get a little myself, I'm a little more moderate because of that influence from him. I'm definitely more liberal leaning, but I think conservative. And I have a number of friends from Kingsburg, Libertarian. And I think that a number of the values that they adhere to and some of the reasons that they think the way it's reasonable to me, even if I don't agree with it. But that's also part of the reason that I want to talk more. I was interested in this project, but that I would like to talk more with my dad about stuff because also he's in Texas, and that's a whole different bag of beans down there in the Longhorn State. So it would be interesting to know, like, how he's engaging in local politics or what he thinks of the state. And we don't have that kind of conversations.

[34:21] RUSSELL PERSON: He's retired now, I take it.

[34:23] RHEA WILLIAMS: Yes.

[34:25] RUSSELL PERSON: You're pretty young, so it's not necessarily obvious, but. But I guess from the military. Most of them were in there for only 20 years anyways.

[34:34] RHEA WILLIAMS: So, yeah, I think what, he had 38 years or close to 40. Oh, yeah. He retired as a master chief, master sergeant and the Navy master chief.

[34:46] SPEAKER C: So I just pasted a few questions in the chat. If any of them seem of interest to you, let them inspire you. Yeah.

[35:07] RHEA WILLIAMS: So I'd be interested. Yes. From being in Bakersfield. I don't know if this is accurate. It's just kind of. My dad lived in Bakersfield for a little bit. It seems a little hyper conservative in Bakersfield as opposed to maybe A place like Fresno or Clovis. I don't know if you find that accurate.

[35:28] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, the way I describe it as Bakersfield voted 55% Trump. Yeah, so, I mean, 55, 45, you know, it's not all one way, but the Central Valley is definitely more conservative than Los Angeles or San Francisco.

[35:46] RHEA WILLIAMS: Sure, that's for sure. So do you feel like those areas are a misunderstanding of Central Valley? Because I think, you know, I have friends that live in Los Angeles, a lot of friends that live in the Bay Area, and I think a lot of times me being more liberal, I often get lumped in to this big conservative area. And it's like not all of us are as conservative and even some of the people that are conservative aren't as right wing as you might think. So do you think that people with different views or beliefs than you kind of misunderstand where you're coming from or what you're trying to achieve?

[36:26] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh, I think very much so. You know, I don't really think that the goals are the same like it's been described in the past between say, Republican and Democrat. But it's like going back to what I talked about before, which is the role of government. The idea of the role of government is very different, very different. And like I said, I don't think people should be just, you know, cast out into the streets. But at the same time, I think that people do far worse than they would do because they found an easier pathway. And it's a pathway of at least partial dependency as well.

[37:13] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, nc, I think that I'm an advocate for heavier social services, but I also see people that get so tangled up. I had a friend that was trying to apply for unemployment for Covid, had never been on unemployment and just first got a rejection after, like having to wait so long for the paperwork to process and then the whole process for dealing with the rejection and going through the mediator, all this stuff that I don't think a lot of people realize that when it doesn't work out, it's just mucky and it takes forever. And so it's, you know, on one end of it, yes, I like that that safety net is there, but having seen people struggle just to get that, just to get, especially in that Obamacare marketplace, which was just crazy when that thing opened up. And so I am an advocate on one end for less, I guess I want to say more functional government. And I don't know if that's achievable with less of it or not.

[38:15] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, you know, A lot of these things are great. You know, I want everyone to live in a house like I live in, have tons of free time and all the rest of it. But it's, you know, people don't often talk about who's going to pay for it.

[38:29] RHEA WILLIAMS: All, right?

[38:30] RUSSELL PERSON: That Person that would like to get more assistance, I don't really think they're thinking about it. Nor do people that advocate large government, that someone else suffers for their benefit, that, you know, they're. They have to pay more and more in taxes and you have to pay. If you don't pay, eventually they'll come to your house and you'll be out in the street. So it's not voluntary. If you don't vote for it yourself, someone else is voting to make you do it.

[39:03] RHEA WILLIAMS: And I try and explain that to my students a lot in terms of getting them more involved with local government, because they very disenfranchised with things like a presidential race and the work that it takes, I think, to be as up to date as you can on candidates and going through primaries and caucuses and all that stuff. It just really gets boring to them. And so I talk a lot to them about, you can actually sit down face to face with a local councilwoman or councilman. So I try to get them more involved in local or state politics. Do you have a different view about, like, more centralized versus federal issues?

[39:42] RUSSELL PERSON: Here. Here's an area that we. We might have a certain contention in. I don't know. I won't assume that we do, but there was a proposition that was proposed, you know, back in November, and it was Prop 16. And I'll tell you, I know a lot of Chinese people now, a lot. I know some of them on a personal basis, because Prop 16 was the one that was going to remove the. You can't discriminate towards or show favoritism towards people that are, you know, in education. And I know how the community colleges see it. They're like, I don't think you could work there. You'd probably have to hide if you felt like I did about it. But I just think there's a much better way to go about it, especially for children that want to apply their academic life to them. I'm like the kind of Person I'm ready to write a check to, that kid, my parents, whatever else, whatever, whatever support I can give them. And there's reasons why we don't see the same kind of education levels amongst all of our population groups, but it's not because they're not incapable. This is where I may sound like a little bit harsh because it's hard to really pinpoint why there's an achievement gap. There's been a lot of research to it, but it's not as simple as being of lower income because I'm a, I'm a big believer that it was really never about the money because I've got proof of it. We paid twice as much money over time since the 70s without any different outcomes. The same reading, math, all the rest of it stayed the same. It wasn't about the money. It was about mostly the family. Something about the culture. I mean your, your family culture sounds not unlocked by own. I mean there big push on education and I'm not surprised that you got an advanced degree in your. And you're involved in education. Not at all.

[42:10] RHEA WILLIAMS: And I think for. In my experience and yeah, I think this is, this is an issue in which we think differently because I agree that it doesn't take long to see if something is working. And so if you've been funneling money into and we get a lot of money in education and it goes a lot of places and there are other places that we really don't get enough funding I think. But I'm also a proponent of not doing something that doesn't work. And I now that I'm in higher education and understanding just how much money my district alone has, let alone other college districts or K through 12 districts, it's a huge, it's a huge game, you know, in terms of funding. But I do think that things like recently we had AB705 that passed which basically takes testing out of placement so everybody can go into transfer level English regardless. And we know that people, students of color would routinely get caught in that testing gap.

[43:17] RUSSELL PERSON: And so that's, I studied that too and I agree with you on that very much. So it, you know, we're, we had special classes for kids that tested low and they didn't work. They didn't work. So stop doing it.

[43:32] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right. And that's something that puts money into training. That's professional development for teachers. That's something that we don't have to give anybody an extra grant for. We don't have to give anybody a work study position for, you know, we can keep funds, you know, the same in certain areas by just taking away some of those gatekeeping things. But I think in terms of, I wanted to make a comment in terms of what you said about Prop 16 because I've been on hiring committees and it's really Hard because there's a push from our district to make sure that things are representative. And so it's really hard with these very competitive tenure track positions. You have a lot of people coming, and the district wants to make sure that the pool of people we're pulling from are a diverse pool of people. But then it's like we're just trying to get the best candidates in our discipline, and we want to make sure we're all. We're thinking of equity. Well, I think most of us anyway, are thinking of equity and thinking of diversity, and we have those high priorities. But it puts us in a kind of strange position where we've got to balance that political correctness or whatever you want to call it. That's that promotion of diversity in looking at what's actually on paper. And when we interview candidates and who we have, and that's a huge thing on our campus is hiring because we don't have a lot of people of color. And some people have the assumption that it's because not a lot of us are applying for jobs or there's not as much training or. And so finding that gap, finding really where the issue the problem stemming from is hard.

[45:10] RUSSELL PERSON: Well, I found out a little bit about this from. For Bakersfield College, and that is that the number of qualified candidates can be much lower. Bakersfield College is 2/3 Hispanic. And if you, you know, if you just have a way of finding the number of candidates that meet the requirements, you're not going to find two thirds of the applicants are Hispanic. That's just the way it is.

[45:35] RHEA WILLIAMS: And that's the question is why that is and what we can do to better search for those candidates or support those candidates.

[45:45] RUSSELL PERSON: Why that is, I don't even mind that. But the Constitution says you can't hire someone over someone else that's more qualified because of their race.

[45:56] RHEA WILLIAMS: No. And I don't think the priority that is being pushed, but just an extra kind of. I think, I guess the idea is for us to take a second, a closer look at some applications of people that we might have dismissed of people of color and kind of, you know, well, what are we missing anything? Are we confident in this and just making sure that just kind of double checking and giving something more thought than perhaps they have in the past. I don't know. I think most people would look at things evenly, but I see where they're coming from. It just puts hiring and when you're working for administrative, it puts everything into a little bit of a murky gray area.

[46:36] RUSSELL PERSON: Yeah, they're looking at lawsuits, you know.

[46:41] RHEA WILLIAMS: And I'm like, I'm not.

[46:42] RUSSELL PERSON: I sit in during their Zoom meetings, and they're not even trying to say, looking, you know, looking for or, you know, even prefer. They're saying, do it well.

[46:54] RHEA WILLIAMS: And it's hard in education because there's not a priority on recruitment. It's really, somebody should have the qualifications. They need to come to us. They need to be prepared. And I really appreciate that. But there's something to be said about, you know, going on a search for the candidates that you want.

[47:09] RUSSELL PERSON: I don't. You know, they keep talking about someone that looks like them, and it's like, where did that come from? I mean. I mean, try to tell me that I care if my professor looks like you or looks like another white guy, and I don't care how good you are. And inspiring me, educating me for young.

[47:34] RHEA WILLIAMS: Students of color that don't see. I didn't see a lot of people like me in college, and that's part of why I got to where I was. I wanted to be that Person for somebody else. And I wanted to kind of make it clear that it's not an issue, that there's not a whole lot of African Americans that want to be in education. There's plenty of us out there that want to be educators. But the question is why some of us make it and why some of us don't. And it's not just, I don't think, a matter of dedication or having enough time. I'm not sure what it is, but I think it matters that if you, especially in the Valley, when you have campuses that are so multicultural, you have to have candidates that are kind of filling that out. I don't know why you wouldn't.

[48:18] RUSSELL PERSON: I don't think you need to.

[48:20] RHEA WILLIAMS: I hear you.

[48:22] RUSSELL PERSON: And it depends on the field. You can find lots of black ladies in sociology, but maybe not so many in physics.

[48:28] RHEA WILLIAMS: Sure.

[48:28] RUSSELL PERSON: Or that's just how it is. And that has a lot to do with what people are just interested in doing. You know, it's not because that there were necessarily roadblocks, but let me tell you, my sister was the first public works director in California. If you want to hear about someone that said that there were people that didn't treat her right because she was a woman in engineering.

[48:51] RHEA WILLIAMS: Oh, sure.

[48:52] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh, she can tell you stories. So I don't say that it's not there, but I think it's not that simple either. In history, we call it reductionist, which is trying to describe a very complex Area with a very simple answer.

[49:11] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, and I think that happens when we talk about where money goes and politicians and making decisions is that it's, you know, we need more taxes for this or we need to tax the rich in. But there's a whole lot of what happens when you get the money, what happens at the state level, what happens at my district level and issues that we have. Our district gets money from the state that doesn't necessarily come down for cost of living, that doesn't necessarily go to improving infrastructure on our campuses. So there's a lot of questions, I think for me, more so about how money is spent as opposed to how we get it.

[49:44] RUSSELL PERSON: You're starting to sound like a conservative now.

[49:47] RHEA WILLIAMS: That's fine.

[49:48] SPEAKER C: On that note, I'm just going to put a few. We've got five minutes left. We are a little bit over time, but if you're staying another five minutes, well, you'll have to say after the recording ends, but in this combo I've just put a few questions in the chat just to kind of close things off. If you feel like choosing one and asking each other one of them, I'll.

[50:16] RUSSELL PERSON: Choose one of them. First of all, I want to tell you that I had a very long conversation with the black grandmother two days ago that at the end of all of it we were so happy that we had met each other because as I put it, I don't find an intellectual equal that often. And I think about you that way a little bit too. Although we haven't really talked that long. She knew a lot about history and accurate history, so I gave her a lot of credit. But I don't know, I don't really feel maybe, maybe our views of how government can help people are probably still different. But as a Person like, I don't, there's nothing, there's nothing I could criticize about you. I think as far as how we come together, Biden is not doing a good job bringing us together. You know, he's going for the one vote win and his last speech he gave about the infrastructure was, I mean, borderline, like, I won't say dictatorial, but it was more than strong. He's not doing very well there and I'm open minded enough to look for that. And I wrote an essay about it and I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I think the media is what really it's all like, like a soap opera. They feed on it. I think it affects our politicians. They want to get their sound bites in, you know, they, they don't want to look weak. You know, they, they want to be the, the one that has all the power. They want to, you know, like Manchin is a good example of that. You know, he's in the place where he, he decides stuff that I'm not sure if one senator should be able to decide.

[52:09] RHEA WILLIAMS: Right.

[52:09] RUSSELL PERSON: You know, I was arguing about the filibuster. Well, Democrats filibustered three over 360 times last year. It's not Jim Crow. It's about making sure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. I'm never, I don't want even stuff that I would propose to pass by just a couple of votes. That's not what we were supposed to have here.

[52:34] RHEA WILLIAMS: Well, and I think there's more unity in the country in terms of what people think isn't working. And I think it's just, it's especially like you said, just the talking heads and seeing a lot of this stuff being just discussed and just beat over the head with it all the time with this 24 hour news cycle. But then when it comes down to what actually goes down in Congress, what actually happens in your state government, you just don't see the transparency and you don't see the movement that I think a lot of people want. So it's interesting to me. I was not a huge Biden fan either. And I don't believe in kind of swinging the pendulum from one end to the next. Every.

[53:14] RUSSELL PERSON: That's what would happen if they take away the filibuster. It'll just people on the other side will get all worked up. They'll win the election next time and then everything will be thrown away again. So I think a trillion dollars is a lot of money.

[53:31] RHEA WILLIAMS: It is a lot of money. You don't have to think it. It is a lot of money.

[53:35] RUSSELL PERSON: It's like it would. It looked like about 50 semi truck loads of hundred bills when I got a meme that showed what a trillion dollars looked like.

[53:47] SPEAKER C: Right. And to close things off. Russ, do you want to ask Ria one of those last questions?

[53:58] RUSSELL PERSON: I'm kind of curious about how I came across to you. I mean, you're working at a community college and people are more progressive there. I'm not sure if I was challenged on that much other than maybe, you know, the, whether I would help someone that was, you know, homeless or people that didn't have enough food. Did you challenge me enough to find out if I either was different than whatever negative things you have about conservatives.

[54:32] RHEA WILLIAMS: Or I think I don't. Well, to start, I don't really have negative things about conservatives, but I think when I read Libertarian in your bio, I was like, I think we're gonna be able to come together in a mutual understanding on some point, because, like I said, I have a number of libertarian friends. And like I said, my dad's pretty moderate. But I was. I don't think I was too. Well, yeah, I was pleasantly surprised. I had a very nice conversation with you. I think I maybe was expecting things to be a bit more combative. I'm not sure why. I think knowing that you were from Bakersfield, I was kind of expecting a little more, kind of like staunch conservatism. So I'm glad I didn't come up across that. Although, I mean, I like listening to people in general. So, yes, I was surprised, but for the most part, I think you were who I expected you to be.

[55:32] RUSSELL PERSON: Oh, thank you. I do listen to NPR Radio, so I haven't put myself in some kind of echo chamber, and I don't want to be there. Right. I never want to be there.

[55:45] SPEAKER C: All right, I'm just going to stop the recording now.