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- Hello, everyone.

And welcome to Crosscut Northwest Newsmakers.

I am your host, Monica Guzman.

And today we're gonna talk about all the things that divide us with someone who knows what it might take to bring us together productively, Seattle zone, Eric Liu.

But first, I wanna thank all of you for being here and give a big shout out to everyone who sent in your questions for Eric ahead of this event.

Those questions and submissions let us know what you wanna know so that we can plan conversations that are as useful and interesting as possible.

If you didn't share a question ahead of time, don't fret, you can use the comments section on your right to submit one anytime during our conversation.

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Our guest, Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University, a national organization that aims to build power for the widest number of people for the purpose of building the most inclusive democracy imaginable.

Talk about ambitious and awesome.

He's the author of several books including, "The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker", "The Gardens of Democracy", coauthored with Nick Hanauer, "You're More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen's Guide to Making Change Happen", and most recently, "Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy" based on the civic sermons he delivers at his regular civic Saturday events.

Eric's no stranger to politics and philanthropy.

He served as white house speech writer for President Bill Clinton.

And later as the president's Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor.

He has served as a board member of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Washington State Board of Education, and the Seattle Public Library here at home.

He's also a co-founder of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.

Busy guy (chuckles).

Eric Liu, welcome to Northwest Newsmakers.

And thank you for joining us today.

- Monica, it's so great to be with you.

- So to give our viewers a preview of our conversation we're gonna start with discourse and democracy, Eric.

Getting real about some hard questions tearing into us these days as individuals and as Americans.

We'll then turn to Seattle after that.

It's placed in this broader tension between division and unity as well as its political character and what it means.

Then we'll finish up going deeper into our politics and the American identity.

Then open it up to all of you, our viewers, as I ask Eric your questions.

So Eric, I'm so excited to talk to you today.

This is definitely a wild time and a lot going on.

So we've obviously been through a lot these last few years and last few months.

So before we get into the thick of it I wanna know how are you feeling about America's overall civic health right now?

- Well, let me start just by saying thanks to you, Monica, to the whole Crosscut team, all the partners in Cascade Media.

Actually, this is not just pandering to the folks who are tuning in right now.

One of the things that gives me some measure of hope is that as broken as national politics has seemed over the last, it's not just the last four years, it's sort of been over the last decade plus, if you look a little more closely all around the United States, there are little buds sprouts of innovation and reinvention in civic life happening.

And cross-cut is one example of that, the way in which this new approach to civic and public media is arising in ways that are not just a transplanting of old forms of media and old forms of journalism, but are far more participatory, far more engaging of the communities that they're report on and represent.

And then there's just a wide range of participatory everything that's starting to show up, participatory budgeting participatory policy-making, participation in different domains and realms.

And I think because my work both allows me and requires me to look away from the other Washington and things that are arising across the land.

I'm net hopeful actually as much darkness and challenges there is, and I'm not naive.

I mean, I think we face so many compounded, simultaneous, potentially existential crises in our country.

And our democracy has been revealed to be very fragile in even recent months.

And yet, I think there is so much cause for hope that the resilience of the body politic though tested is still strong.

And I think as we get into this conversation more, I can tell you more about some of the kinds of people and the kinds of activity that I'm seeing that gives me that hope, but just top line.

I'm not that I'm not... - You're not (indistinct).

- I think we have a huge task.

I'm not depressed about the State of the Union.

- Yeah, and we will definitely dig in more into that, into the specifics for sure.

First, a bit more about you.

In some ways, and I've been telling people this, it seems like you've been thinking about citizenship and civic power before it was cool, before confronting our division seemed like a life or death thing for our democracy as I think a lot of people are waking up to that awareness now.

So take us way back if you can.

What was the moment that this work became compelling to you?

- I think there was no single moment.

I wish there were a cinematic thingy that I could describe and we could- - Right, you can do with the- - But honestly, it was the accumulation of a lot of things.

I am the child of immigrants.

I think that's probably the most important thing to begin with.

And my parents were born in Mainland China, went to Taiwan during a time of war and upheaval and revolution, came to the United States in the late 1950s and made a life here in the upper suburbs of New York city, outer suburbs.

And one of the things that I grew up absorbing, it was rarely vocalized, but it was definitely a sense in the air was basically, all I had done was to have the dumb luck to be born here, that it was my parents who had made the hard choice.

My parents who had made the taking the risk, made the sacrifices.

And having had the dumb luck to be born in the United States at a time, essentially at the peak of American power.

So at the peak of the most powerful nation in the history of the world in the late 20th century, the question that was kind of implicit was, well, what am I gonna do to be useful?

What am I gonna do to kind of earn it and make all of that risk and sacrifice somewhat worth it.

And so, that was a deep, unspoken sense that was just in the way that I grew up.

In Chinese, there's a phrase that no kid likes to hear, which is (speaks in Mandarin), which in Mandarin, it just means useless.

You don't wanna be called useless, whether that's because you're shirking doing the chores or because you're shirking showing up for community when people need your help.

Like, don't be useless.

And I think the affirmative of that trying every which way to be useful was a big part of my second generation, Chinese American household.

My specific exposure to politics and government didn't come till I was in college.

In high school, I was involved in things, but not particularly civically.

And it was college that first exposed me to Washington DC, to government, to policy making.

And, of course, as you said, in my bio, I spent a bunch of formative years in DC working in government for President Clinton and before that in the Senate.

But I will tell you, those are the things that are in my bio, my white house, et cetera, et cetera.

But by far, the greatest part of my formation and education as a citizen, as someone who thinks about civic life, and power, and responsibility, and by the way, when I say citizen, and I talk about our organization in Citizen University.

You see that sign behind me, citizen power now?

I am not talking about documentation status.

I'm not talking about passport holding, United States citizen.

I mean citizen in the deeper ethical sense of are you a member of the body?

Are you a contributor to community, someone who takes responsibility for what's happening all around you?

And I would say that it's been the 20 and a half years that I've lived in Seattle that have been my best school of democratic citizenship.

And that's partly because I raised my hand and joined things like the library board, and state board of ed, and so on and so forth.

But it's also because I just got woven into networks of friends, and trust, and relationship where we looked at each other and we looked around and we thought we've gotta do something about this.

We've gotta do something about the scourge of gun violence.

We've gotta do something about the fact that there's declining support for public schools in our city with so many kids in private schools.

We've gotta do something about these things.

And I'll tell you, being on the library board while we were implementing the bond measure libraries for all that built and renovated all of our branch libraries in the downtown central library, that's worth five state of the unions.

That's worth five federal budget processes.

That's worth years and years working in the senate on parliamentary procedure, like actually having to roll up your sleeves in a way that's not about just positioning and talking points, but are you gonna build this or not?

And is it going to be what the people in Ballard, or in the International District, or in South Park need and want, hope and dream for in a library.

The rubber meets the road in a different way there in local schools.

- Yeah, there's something about local, right?

You can feel the impact more.

So turning toward democracy, which is a big part of your work and a big part of the backdrop for all local, all kind of action, really, in this country one of our readers, the way that she put it ahead of this conversation, to her, the idea of democracy has taken some body blows lately.

That may be putting it mildly.

There's the loss of faith in our institutions, the Capitol Hill riots, like the Capitol riots that happened in January, the fractured sense of reality.

You call yourself hopeful, not optimistic you've said, because optimism is for spectators.

But I've gotta ask, and I hope you can be candid here, which of these body blows have brought a hopeful Eric Liu closest to the despair that many Americans do feel?

- Actually, watching, not only the ways in which the former guy in the oval office undermined so many norms, but actually, to me, the deeper disease, it's actually, body blow is not the physical metaphor I would use.

Infection, metastasis.

- Pandemic.

- What's that?

- Pandemic.

- Pandemic, are more of the metaphors.

And I think the viral spread of conspiracy thinking, the viral spread of the big lie that this past election, the presidential election was stolen was the result of fraud.

Seeing the ways in which, and in nearly unshakeable, a hard core of Americans, of tens of millions of Americans are wedded to that is incredibly sobering.

And it really makes you realize that, I think if you take the longer view of American history, that hardcore has always been there.

They used to be called John Birchers.

They used to be called clan members.

They used to be called many other things, but I think that strong core of people who do not want to hear facts, do not want to face the nation as it is, but are operating purely from a sense of often racially motivated grievance and a sense of zero sum thinking that makes them think that any inclusion in our society must work to their net harm.

That's a virus, that way of thinking and being is a virus, and it's got to be contained.

Now, that doesn't mean that the people who've been infected are all irredeemable, people get infected and people can get better.

But I think one of the things that we've got to be able to say honestly about ourselves in the United States is, is that kind of thinking and that kind of attitude, that isn't really for democracy.

It's for my guy winning because my guy's giving the big middle finger to this new emerging multicultural America, he's giving the big middle finger to all of this change that I don't like.

And if the only way my guy can get in there is in anti-democratic ways, so be it.

And I'll make up whatever story it makes me feel good about that result.

That's a dangerous thing to let spread in the body politic.

And we've got to try to unwind that.

And our work at Citizen University, just to back up a step, you used the word a moment ago, Monica, faith.

Faith in institutions is declining.

So much of our work at Citizen University is about trying to build a culture of powerful, responsible citizenship.

And that depends on faith.

Democracy works only if enough of us actually believe democracy works.

If we do, then we have a chance at making this thing mean something, making the words of the constitution actually come to life.

If we don't, if we assume that the game is rigged, we make it so.

If we assume that everything is a lie and everything's fake news, we make it easier for authoritarians and demagogues to manipulate us into believing that that's the case.

And so, but the thing about cultivating or rejuvenating faith in democracy is it can't just be a matter of me wagging my finger and saying, believe more in democracy, you should believe better and believe harder.

No.

There is a reason why people don't believe anymore.

Our institutions have gotten unresponsive.

Our economy has gotten so unequal and so rigged in ways that have left huge numbers of Americans out of any notion of the American dream, right?

There's a reason for that.

But the way that we redeem that faith is to be honest about what's broken and then to take responsibility together for trying to fix it without scapegoating without fantasy solutions, without imagining that there are child eating conspiracists out there who are trying to do all this harm to us but just by saying, look, things are broken and no one's coming to save us, except us deciding to show up together.

As a university, we're trying to get people, conservative, liberal, rural, urban, red, blue, places, to come together and rehumanize civic life in a way that provides at least the basis for us to begin again to try to deal with common problems in common ways.

- So let's talk about that.

Let's troubleshoot that.

One of the more popular questions we got ahead of this event was just how.

How?

How do we talk across these big divides?

I mean, you talked about the big lie.

There are folks on either side who believe vastly different things that are quite convinced of it.

So let's do a scenario here if we can.

Let's troubleshoot this for everyone watching.

Let's say you have a strong opinion, you're full to bursting with it.

You open social media to share it.

Let's say your real concern about one of two things.

Either you believe a, that there is voter fraud to guard against.

Maybe it's not that egregious, but you're really concerned.

And laws like the ones that Georgia passed to regulate voting are a step in the right direction.

Or you believe that there's voter suppression to fight off.

And Georgia's law is just one more body blow to democracy, one more infection.

So what do you do with that opinion?

How do you share it, what do you do with the conversation it sparks?

- So I think if you're at that point and that is your form of engagement, and you're wondering what the result will be of that form engagement, you've already pretty well narrowed the field of what is possible.

- Talk more about that.

You're talking about social media.

- Yeah, social media.

I think the answer is long before you get to the point where you think that the way for you to participate meaningfully is to post an opinion on social media and then hope that you don't create a giant storm of counter-accusation and counter conspiracy thinking, you're late in the game and you're working with very little.

I think the way that we've got to do this, and is coming much farther up the pipeline, much farther up the process here.

When I spoke of rehumanization, I think one of the most important things in any democratic society, but especially a diverse, multiracial, multi faith one like our own is that you've got to first spend a huge proportion of time building trust and relationship, trust and relationship.

- And can you build that on social media?

To what extent?

- I don't know that you can right off the bat.

But look, I think you can do things.

I'm not saying that everything has to be in person.

The pandemic has taught us plenty of relationship building and rehumanization can happen through this kind of medium.

But one of our programs at Citizen University is called Civic Saturdays.

And these are gatherings that are essentially a civic analog to a faith gathering.

It's not church, or synagogue, or mosque, but it has the arc, and the flow, and the feeling of a faith gathering where everybody is welcome.

And you end up next to either in real room or online, a stranger with whom you don't know whether you share worldview, faith, values, whatever but your first questions that you're asked are not, do you think that Georgia is fraudulent, or suppressing voters, or guarding against legitimate fraud?

The first question is something that is deeply human and cutting through small talk, cutting through pretense, like, what are you afraid of right now in your life?

Who are you responsible for in your life?

Who are you letting down right now?

And these questions, they just come right in a way that just makes people deal with each other in a different way.

And that's a different basis on which who shaped you most.

How do you try to pass that on, right?

Those kinds of questions get you both in a different level than social media, particularly political social media primes us to be in but what they also do is they open our heart channel, right?

They open our hearts in a way that allow us to say, okay, well in a little while, I'm gonna learn that you and I voted for very different people and you and I believe very different things.

But I already learned that you and I were shaped by the same kind of trauma early in our lives.

I already learned that you and I are worried about the same kinds of things to our children right now.

I already learned that you and I have struggled with the same kind of problems of addiction, or job loss, or health in our families, and so on and so forth.

And that's a basis from which then to rehumanize.

That's the step one.

Step two, and this is long before you get to a Facebook post.

Step two is then building a certain set of skills of how actually to listen and engage constructively.

You're involved with an organization called Braver Angels that does this, but that by design bringing red and blue people together for structured interactions at the Aspen Institute, which is a think tank based in DC.

We and our partners at Allstate, and Facing History, and ourselves have launched something called the Better Arguments Project.

The better arguments project has the premise that look, it's okay to argue in American civic life.

America is an argument.

The point of being an American is to argue all the time about what does it mean to be an American.

- We just have to argue, well, somehow.

- The point is not to have...

Exactly, our job should not be to have fewer arguments.

It should be to have less stupid ones.

And less stupid arguments, there's actually a way to do that.

There are steps, and principles, and methods that you can actually do to ground yourself in history, to ground yourself in emotional reality and relationship.

And to start in a different way about how you get to these questions.

But, again, long before you get to arguments about voting, about immigration, about vaccination, about taxes, you've got to spend a far deeper amount of time building trust and relationship.

And that's why so much of our work at Civic Saturdays, and we've trained 125 people now around the country to lead Civic Saturdays in their own communities is emphasizing place, people, and community first.

Not to pretend that, oh, we're gonna be a partisan, politics is something else.

No, politics will seep its way in eventually, but we've got to first tend to that, so the heart side of civic life if we're gonna have a shot at healing the whole body politic.

- So you mentioned that politics will seep its way in eventually.

I wanna turn to Seattle a bit into our area and its political character.

Back in maybe less strenuous times, you called Seattle a Goldilocks town.

We're not too big, we're not too small, we're not too hot, we're not too cold, but we are a pretty deep shade of blue when you look at the whole spectrum, with red so silent, sometimes it seems like it's barely even here.

When it comes to this question of what divides us and what can unite us and particularly how Seattleites relate to the rest of the state, the rest of the country.

Is that a problem?

To what extent is that something we need to pay attention to?

- Yeah, I mean, I think it's a problem anytime any community gets too homogenous.

And the homogeneity of Seattle is both ideological and increasingly demographic.

When I said those words about Seattle, that was before this incredible Amazon-led tech boom that we've been in over the last decade, decade and a half.

And that has transformed every dimension of the character and the spirit of our community.

When I first moved to Seattle in 2000, the discussion then was how this city had just been in the process of digesting all of the wealth created by the prior tech boom, the Microsoft tech boom.

And all the phrase then was Microsoft millionaires were changing the character of the city.

And South Lake Union at the time in the mid '90s, there was a proposal to turn a lot of what's now, Amazon land in South Lake Union.

But back then was just low slung, industrial buildings and so forth to turn that into a kind of a Seattle's version of Central Park in a project called the Seattle Commons.

And that thing got shot down because there was so much resentment and resistance at all of this new wealth and fancy people wanting a nice, fancy park, ironic how it turned out by voting that down.

It just cleared the way for Paul Allen to say, "Okay, well, I guess I'll turn this into office complexes for the giant tech boom that's coming.

And that's only hastened the homogenization in our city.

- So what do we do about that?

Because it's not been a thing that one citizen can change very quickly.

- No, it's not.

But I think there's two things that we can do for those of us who live in Seattle right now.

First of all, for people like you and ME, Monica, who've been here a little longer than five years, we have a kind of an affirmative responsibility to acculturate the newcomers to Seattle into a civic sense of what it means to show up in this community.

When I moved here 20 years ago, there was still a strong enough sense that, hey, you can't just come in here as a fancy guy from DC and assume that everybody's gonna think you're cool.

You gotta show up at stuff.

You gotta go to community level meetings, you gotta join your local district democrats meeting.

You've got to go and participate in school levy and so forth.

And I would say that huge numbers of this current wave of young, super educated tech newcomers go to work, go back home and are not connected enough to the texture and the civic life, the arts life, the education life, the social services life of their neighborhoods and of the city as a whole.

And so ,we who've been here longer have to do this not in a way of, hey, you guys are bad, but more in a way of, welcome.

It's so great you're here.

We wanna bring you into the fold here.

We want you to join this committee.

We want you to be part of this board.

We want you to show up at this gathering in your neighborhood.

We wanna see you.

We want your voice there.

And start building that sense of shared responsibility taking.

That's one.

I think the other though, I mean, to your point about even if you do that, it's still lots and lots of people showing up at meetings and the rest.

I think we've got to put more of an intentional effort into circulating capital of every kind.

So I'm a big believer.

The so-called head tax, the Amazon tax that was shut down last year and like city council, you can argue about how well thought out it was and whether the revenues that would have been raised for that were going to sufficient, useful purposes.

But the principle of we have an incredible windfall, an incredible imbalance of wealth in the city.

And we've got to find ways to circulate that wealth into the rest of the life of the city.

I agree with that completely.

I think we've got to do that, and not just to address the obvious crises like homelessness and all people who are unhoused and not getting either supportive housing or the wraparound services that they need to be able to rebuild a life.

But also quite frankly, because circulation of capital is not just about money.

Circulation of capital is about, in the central district, if your viewers don't know of Wa Na Wari, this wonderful, the home.

It's in the central district, which had been the traditionally African-American heart of Seattle and has been gentrified, and whitened, and everything else over the last 10, 15 years.

Wa Na Wari is a house owned by a black family that's been converted into essentially a community arts center, highlighting the creativity, the voice the gifts of artists of color, and creators and building a really beautiful multi-racial beloved community there.

Everybody in this community should be circulating efforts, time, money, and so forth into making sure that places like Wa Na Wari, projects like Africa Town, and renovations like the Liberty Bank building in the central district get a chance to thrive.

There are equivalents like this in South Park.

South park is gonna get gentrified soon enough.

And the remaining Hispanic and Latino community in the city need to make sure there's support for the voices, the stories, the histories, and traditions that are part of the city's life but not often told.

Chinatown in the International District, the same thing.

And so, circulating power in a way that ensures that we enable there to be enough diversity preserved in our community so that this does not just become a giant kind of version of the East side tech campuses that Microsoft has that we remain a city with messiness, with diversity, with complexity, and doing that as a matter of both a public policy but also of citizen responsibility taking.

- So another way that Seattle comes up in this discussion, and pulling us back to maybe the kind of darker red, blue divide that exists nationally... Over the last year, we've seen it a lot.

Seattle keeps turning up in the headlines around the racial justice protests last summer, CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, became this hotspot for debates on violence and defunding the police.

Fox News has done several stories painting Seattle as this cautionary tale of critical race theory going to far.

Seattle pushes the envelope in a lot of ways.

I'm gonna ask you a flat question, knowing that you're gonna make it complex.

Is Seattle's role in these debates as a flashpoint assigned that we're ahead on building a good society or behind on building a united one?

- What a great question.

I think the caricature of Seattle, particularly right-wing national media outlets is a sign that right-wing national media outlets need to create strong men and boogeymen, but what is true of right-wing national media outlets is true also of left-wing national media outlets.

I think homogeneity breeds myopia and not understanding how people from the other side or of a different party might see the world or think things makes you weaker and stupider.

And that is as true in the parts of our city and state and country Where people learn about the world through the gospel of Fox News.

And it's just as true as of people who only consume left-wing media content.

I think one of the things that we've got to be able to do now, and this is hard in terms of a residential thing, we're not gonna be an interesting program, but you're not gonna have a program to say, hey, Seattle is gonna provide discounts for people to buy homes in the city if you are a conservative, right?

- Yeah, imagine.

(both laughing) - We're not gonna do that.

But I think we can take ownership of, again, our own responsibility back to the media content, like there was an ad campaign.

We know when I was growing up in the '70s, that was about food and ecology, but it is true also about our media diet.

And the line was you are what you eat.

And if all you eat is monoculture left-wing or monoculture right-wing stuff, you're not healthy.

And if you can only see that solutions come from one side of the brain, left or right, then you are half blind.

Life requires binocular vision.

And politics doesn't always require 50, 50 binocular solutions, but I think you get into trouble When you think only your side as the answers to stuff.

I am PS, I'm a progressive democrat, like my views on, I co-founded a gun responsibility organization and was one of the leaders for the Fight for $15 in our city and popularizing the arguments for that nationally.

I was an early champion for things like Referendum 74 and marriage equality referendum in our state.

So, I take a back seat to nobody on kind of having those boxes checked as having good progressive views and policy positions.

But I will tell you that I have been formed, shaped, and enriched as a participant in our democracy by my friends who are conservative or libertarian, who are independent and mixed in their way of seeing things.

- And I think a lot of viewers, I mean, several of them will say, "Oh, my gosh, he's very progressive and he has friends who are conservative!"

Like, that's how deep the divide- - I have friends, I have colleagues.

Just yesterday I did a a webinar with a fellow named Pete Peterson, who's the Dean of the Public Policy School at Pepperdine University, who has led a project called the American Project that's trying to re-imagine conservatism in what they call a conservatism of connection.

And there's an interesting thing happening.

If you look, and listen, and read in some precincts of the conservative movement, and people are saying, you know what, free market neo-liberalism has turned out to be a terrible thing.

Free markets unconstrained have turned out to erode our families, erode our traditions, erode trust, erode community.

And we need to start thinking about community again.

And there was an interesting conversation that's bubbling up on the right that quite frankly, more than a few residents of CHOP and CHAZ last summer would have agreed with.

They would have said, "Yes, enough of this top-down stuff.

Yes, enough of this," just letting either markets or the state dictate things.

We've got to be self-reliant organizers of our own community and our own place.

And those people would never acknowledge that they should be in the same room together having a conversation.

But because I know people in both those worlds, I'm looking and I'm thinking, you know what, there are dots to connect here.

- And again, all that happens- - And we're not as different as we think.

- Solution that everybody comes to consensus.

But a point of realization that sometimes our politics doesn't have to operate on a left-right line.

Sometimes it's more of a circle, and people who are fed up with things from the far left, and signing on with Bernie, and people were fed up with things on the far right and signing up with Trump, will find more than a little bit of overlap in what their diagnosis is, but also maybe the solutions they'd be open to, to contemplating.

- So let's talk about the one identity that does unify in theory, anyway, folks across the political spectrum, and that's the American identity.

I wanna share with you two anecdotes over the last several months.

I told one friend on the political left, my concern that when some folks see the American flag being carried, they might think that the person holding it might be racist.

And her response was, "Yeah, I would think they're racist."

That kind of took me back.

Another story, a friend of mine who recently bought a house in Seattle, the house had a flag pole, and the American flag was on that flagpole.

She took that flag down, worried about what her neighbors might think.

She's also on the political left.

Eric, what is going on with the American identity?

And what do we do about it?

- One of the books that Nick Hanauer and I wrote, actually, the first book that we did together, it was called The True Patriot.

And we wrote this in 2006, 2007 at a time when George W. Bush was president, when democrats nationally were hapless and helpless.

And one measure of what was so frustrating about our politics at that time was the extent to which one party, at that time the republican party had taken hold of the flag, and the signs and symbols of patriotism, which was bad enough.

But that the other party had affirmatively run away from those very same symbols and signs.

And then kind of become allergic to any notion of patriotism.

And our argument in that little pamphlet was that you can flip the labels of the parties about which, at different times in American history, one party or another has held and grabbed the flag and the other has run away from it.

But it is a bad thing for the country when that happens, when one side thinks it has a monopoly and patriotism and the other responding to that confirms it and runs away from patriotism.

And I think the reason why so many on the left have, I mean, it goes back more than this era.

I mean, it goes back at least to the Vietnam era.

But I think one of the things that is going on is a misconstrue of what true patriotism is.

True patriotism is not just something militaristic, jingoistic, like we're number one, yeah, chanting USA.

True patriotism is recognizing that this is a country founded on a creed on a set of promises and ideals.

And the only measure of whether you're a patriot is are you pushing our country and our communities every day to close the gap between our actual community life and practices and that creed.

True patriotism is not my country right or wrong, it's my country when right to be kept right, when wrong to be set right.

And that second part, I think a lot of progressives are down with, like they're down with pointing out what's wrong, they're down with pointing out what's broken, they're down with trying to repair that.

That's called patriotism.

There's been no greater patriot in our lifetimes than people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

There's been no greater patriots than people like John Lewis, there's been no greater patriots than people who have closed that gap between our creed and our deeds.

And that's one of the big reasons why, I'm sorry for your friends and I'm sorry of what your friends might think if they walk past my house, but I've been flying an American flag in front of my house for 15 years since I wrote that book for just this reason, to invite conversation to make people stop and think about what it means to embrace the ideal of true patriotism.

And look, true patriotism, closing that gap doesn't mean therefore signing up with a democratic party platform.

There are again, conservative ways to close that gap also.

There are faith-based ways to close that gap.

There are bottom up volunteeristic neighbor to neighbor ways to close that gap.

The only choice is not between republican or democratic ways of closing the gap.

It's between people who sit back and watch this show and think what a joke.

I'm just gonna sit here and decry the whole thing- - Yeah, here's the bad guy- - Than those who lean in- - And here's the good guy.

- And take responsibility for trying to own it and fix it and sit and fix things.

- So after the mass shooting in Atlanta, which was, man, it was very recent.

Six of the eight victims were Asian.

You encouraged Asian-Americans to claim this country.

So I wanna ask you about that.

As the son of immigrants from China as you mentioned, you offered a fascinating reason why they should claim the country.

And it was a contrast.

You said, America makes Chinese Americans.

China does not make American Chinese.

Advocates have counted more than 3,800 hate incidents against Asians in the last year in America.

How do you claim a country that should already be yours?

- You take a page from the book that African-Americans have written from long before emancipation.

How do you claim a country that should be yours?

You show up, you organize, you use the tools of the law.

You use the tools of civil disobedience.

You build power.

You push against injustice, you activate social norms and shift social norms so that people stop thinking it's okay that this disfavored group is always disfavored.

You begin to mobilize money in ways that make people sit up and listen and realize something's at stake here.

You practice citizenship, small c citizenship.

I spoke at a rally this weekend to stop Asian hate.

And my message, which was semi extemporaneous, because I looked around at this beautiful gathering of people at Hingham Park in Seattle International District, Chinatown.

And people had come to that rally just like they'd been coming for the last four plus years with all kinds of homemade signs and all kinds of messages.

And the messages for the most part were in the negative, stop Asian hate, never forget, prevent abuse of our elders, and so forth.

And I said, I look at this and I see the beginnings of an incredible building of power, and identity, and mutual aid, but we've got to imagine something different and beyond simply stop this, never again, no more of this.

We've got to affirmatively claim the country by showing up at meetings, by voting more if we can, by organizing rallies, by educating people on our past and our shared history in a way so that you're not just saying stop this, but build that.

You're not just saying never this, but always this, always justice.

Let us always have inclusion.

Let us always have a sense in which Asian Americans we're recognized that in a time where China and America are the great polls of kind of gravity and conflict in the world, there's nothing more American than an Asian American dream right now.

And that line that you quoted of mine earlier, my point was that for all that's defected and broken about American culture and politics right now, as a Chinese American, I will say this, we still have, if we don't blow it, an exceptional competitive advantage in the United States that can be summarized that way, which is America makes Chinese Americans.

China does not make American Chinese.

It's not in their operating system, or in their mindset, or their wheelhouse to take newcomers.

Like you, you could get fluent in Mandarin and move to Shanghai and spend the rest of your life there.

You will never be Chinese.

But you and your family, your ancestors came to the United States.

And not only learn the ways that this country, but change the ways of this country, change the voice, change the tambour, change the sound, the palette, the spirit of this country.

And that's how you claimed America, right?

- And that's part of the creed that draws immigrants in to begin with, right?

- That's right.

That's right.

And I think we recommit our faith to that, but for Asian Americans, a lot of whom have been raised in our families to kind of keep our heads down and not get involved in political and civic stuff.

I think many, many of us have awakened that there is no choice now but to step forward, there is no choice but to raise our voices and to do so together, not alone and with a long view in mind.

- So we're gonna move to reader questions, and we've got some really great ones.

So in the interest of trying to get to as many of them, let's see if we can go, let's see if we can do that.

Let's see if we can kind of knock them off bit by bit.

- You're saying stop filibuster.

(both laughing) - I was gonna ask about the filibuster but we're out of time.

So our reader, Sarah Potter, asked this very challenging one.

She said, when I think of the people who participated in the January 6th insurrection, I wonder how I would have reacted had Trump refused to step down and successfully forwarded the transfer of power.

Is there a time when civil violence against the government is appropriate?

Good luck answering (indistinct).

(Monica laughs) I mean, the theoretical answer is, of course, yes, there is a time.

And that's not just in the life of United States.

I mean, I think, if you see what's happening in Myanmar right now, if you think about what's been happening in Russia, the illegitimate suppression of democratically elected governments or illegitimate detention of pro-democracy activists.

Think what's happening in Hong Kong right now.

There is a time where if you think about the story of the American revolution, the answer would be, yes.

There is a time when violence against an inherited constructed civil government is legitimate inappropriate.

But I think just because that is theoretically true, well, actually, precisely because that's theoretically true.

We have an incredible burden in the United States to not be casual about that rhetoric.

And that's among the many dangerous things about the January 6th insurrectionists, is that they've all kind of gotten into this kind of revolution and revolution cosplay.

They think they're acting like the patriots of 1775 and '76.

They think they're being oppressed and they think there's tyranny all around them, and they're not.

And maybe they're not getting their stimulus check fast enough.

Maybe they're mad because a plan to globalize its jobs and offload their jobs to Vietnam or to Mexico, and they're mad at somebody.

Maybe they don't like having a black president and they're threatened.

There's a lot of things that are maybe, but this is not tyranny at the scale of King George and the Stamp Act, and so forth, or the Boston massacre.

And so we have a responsibility to be very careful how we talk about revolution.

And revolution as a matter of mindset, heartset, norms, values, absolutely.

Revolution as a matter of armed uprising against the authorities, you know what, you play with fire when you go there.

And I think the thing that we've got to be able and willing to do, and this is why I am still in ways that I know are maybe less popular with the younger generation of activists, but there is a deep rigor and wisdom to the commitment that King and Gandhi had to nonviolence, the commitment that John Lewis had to non-violence.

It may look to a younger generation today like weakness, or softness, or not enough kind of ideological commitment to the cause, but it's not.

It's deeply challenging to make that commitment and to recognize that the moral power of a cause can be quickly dissipated and spent down.

And if you just start justifying violence at the drop of a hat, case in point, the insurrectionists of January 6th, right?

- Yeah, that it's just an escalation.

So, I wanna move to the next one.

Thank you for that.

Mirena Eden asks what is the most important lesson we can learn from this past year of deprivation and suffering on so many levels?

- I think the most important lesson is you are not alone.

This year has made so many people feel so isolated and alone, helpless, depressed, anxious, fearful.

The loss of life, the loss of opportunity, staggering beyond belief, and it's really natural.

And that's just compounding what was already a deep American sickness of loneliness and isolation.

I mean, pre-pandemic, we were already sick because of how lonely, isolated, and kind of manipulable we were by demagogues and by outrage machines left and right, and how easy it was for us to mistake sitting alone and scrolling through social media for being connected to others.

And then the pandemic came, but the upside of the pandemic is that it reminded us of the power of mutual aid.

It reminded us that people will rush to help one another when we're hurting.

And it reminded us that we can't solve anything on our own, that we've got to pull together in different ways and hold each other.

And that the kinds of applause that we gave for frontline medical workers and essential workers at the beginning of the pandemic, maybe that spirit has dissipated, but I think we've all relearned in a deep, deep way that's sunk in that there's no such thing as someone else's problem.

In the pandemic, you realize we're all better off when we're all better off.

You can't say, "Oh, well, bummer for those poor, minimum wage workers at restaurants and hospitals that they can't get healthcare treatment or health insurance.

Bummer for them, I'm glad I'm not them."

In a pandemic, you are them, because they are just one degree separated from you, because they will take care of your grandmother, because they will clean your house, because they will be on the bus with you.

And so, in a pandemic, we are reminded of how connected we are.

And that's the other side of you are not alone, right?

You are not alone is both, you're not helpless and isolated, but you are not alone also means the world doesn't revolve around you, dude.

You don't get just to build a private bubble of shelter, security, and safety and think I'm good.

Like, I've taken care of number one.

If you couldn't, that's your problem, right?

And I think that is the both sides of you are not alone have been shattered during this pandemic.

And in our work at Citizen University on a kind of civic ethical level is to remind each other all the time about both meanings of you are not alone.

- Thank you.

I think that's a great point to end on.

Thank you, Eric Liu, so much for joining us and talking about all these tough things, but also maybe hopeful things and the ways that we can make these tough things hopeful.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Eric.

- Thank you so much, Monica.

It's been great to talk with you.

- To our series sponsor, Waldron, thank you for making tonight's event possible.

We'd also like to take a moment to thank our members and to remind you that Crosscut is a non-profit, reader supported news site that relies on the support of you, our community, to ensure that our events and journalism remain free for everybody.

Thank you so much to everyone who donated to this event today.

If you'd like to make a donation or become a Crosscut member, visit us at crosscut.com/support.

And lastly, we hope you will join us at one of our upcoming Crosscut events, including the Crosscut Festival, May 3rd through 8th, that features a week of sessions with some extraordinary speakers like House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the author of "How to Be an Antiracist," Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, iconic conservationists, Dr. Jane Goodall, former Seattle Police Chief, Carman Best, Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, and so many more.

You can learn more in RSVP for free at crosscut.com/festival.

Thanks again to our guest, Eric Liu, and to all of you for joining us today.

Have an awesome rest of your Wednesday, and we'll see you next time.