Rigel Robinson: Berkeley’s Youngest, Hapa City Councilmember

Hapa Mag - OCTOBER 7, 2020

By Alex Chester and Sam Tanabe

Throughout the Trump presidency, many young progressives have begun seeking ways to create noticeable change, both across the nation and in their communities — fundamental, lasting change. A generation of young people, pushed to the limits of their emotional capacities, beg the question: How do we most effectively utilize our efforts, dollars, and voices? As a previously unengaged collection of voters activates, many have looked toward their local governments to enact distinct change.

At the age of 22, Rigel Robinson was the youngest member ever elected to city council in Berkeley, California. Affable, articulate, and with a cheerful sense of humor, it’s pacifying to see someone like Rigel as a councilmember in these trying times. Speaking with him reminded us how powerful it is to see yourself represented in government. A Hapa in office is a compelling symbol, acknowledging shared life experiences and issues too long overlooked.

Rigel unmistakably has the heart of a civil servant. He encourages people to imagine themselves in governmental roles, people who may not have ever considered it before. Asian parents have a reputation for encouraging their kids to become doctors or lawyers, but Rigel aims to expand the perceived possibilities for those from such communities. Anyone with passion, drive, and tenacity has the potential to create the impactful changes so many severely desire right now. Rigel is proof. His experiences and motivations leave you energized, whether to lead or to simply become a more active, informed voter.

AC: Many people may not know, and I myself would love a better understanding, so what does a city council (and a councilmember) do?

That’s a huge and really fun question. Between kissing babies, groundbreaking ceremonies using golden shovels, and cutting ribbons with gigantic scissors, the city council really is the rule-making body for any given city. We’re little, itty-bitty legislators passing ordinances to define the law for Berkeley residents, but there’s so much more than that, especially right now. We’re dealing with a quartet of crises: a pandemic, wildfire risk, responding to and meeting the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a financial crisis as a result of the shutdown. We’re fighting fires every day, literally and proverbially, and making sure our residents know where to look for help.

ST: What was the major crisis when you first arrived as a councilmember? Are there any persisting concerns, like aiding the people of Berkeley who are homeless? 

Certainly. Living in Berkeley, and within the greater Bay Area, there is no issue that challenges us more than our housing and homelessness crisis. Berkeley is a city of around 120,000-130,000 people, but we have more than 1,000 unhoused residents. That’s almost 1% of the residents of this city living on the street, in tents, couch-surfing, or otherwise housing insecure. Coming into office, it was always clear that that is the most pressing issue for our community, but coming into the pandemic, it’s become even more clear. In so many ways, the pandemic has exposed the underlying frailties in our safety net and made issues that were already precarious — such as access to affordable housing, access to healthcare — so much more obvious.

ST: Were these things you saw for yourself as a Berkeley resident? What made you decide to get involved in politics?

Just walking through the city of Berkeley, you cannot remain oblivious to the housing crisis. As a resident, you feel the effects of the housing crisis as you’re trying to move. You’re moving into a new shoebox for upwards of $1,000 or close to $2,000 a month, dealing with landlord issues, and trying to cram as many students into a two bedroom apartment as possible — just to break the rent down into whatever fractions make it affordable.

UC Berkeley was my dream school. My family has a long history here, but beneath the blue and gold, you start to realize pretty quickly that there are cracks, and this community is struggling in many ways. There are far too many people unable to make ends meet. Again, the housing and homelessness crisis could not be more severe. That’s so much of what drove me to stick around after working in advocacy spaces as a student. When the opportunity arose, my friends bullied me into running for this city council seat, to ensure that students and progressives in this city have the voice on city council they were waiting for.

AC: What would you say is the biggest difference between local and national government? 

It’s good that people are paying so much attention to national government, federal politics, and the massive races, but the choices that are most likely to affect your day-to-day life are so often being made by your local government, by your city councilmembers or your mayor. Obviously, we’ve seen in the last four years just how consequential and devastating choices made by the federal government are. But in the meantime, something as simple as the re-paving of a street that you bike on every day to get to school or work can have such a dramatic effect on your well-being and physical and mental health, and that’s not in the hands of your member of congress. That’s a city councilmember, who may have run unopposed, who may have been so far down your ballot that you didn’t even notice. You might not have even voted for them, and their name may not even register to you, but they’re the one making decisions that affect your daily life.

AC: You were among the first Asian Americans elected to city council in 40 years, in a city that has a significant Asian population. Any idea why that took such a long time?

It’s strange, isn’t it? What’s extra exciting about that is that I share the distinction with one of my colleagues, Rashi Kesarwani. She is Indian American, and we were elected in the same cycle. At the same time, Jenny Wong was elected as our city auditor, the first Asian American elected to that position ever. And you wonder what sort of circumstances made such an Asian wave in our city possible. Growing up, the pressure I would experience from extended family about the sort of professions I should prioritize or go into... public service was never one of them. If we all learned anything from the tragedy that was the 2016 election, it’s that our public servants can be literally anyone. The president has set the bar so impossibly low. I think all over the country, a lot of folks who perhaps never saw themselves in elected life looked at their government and had to ask themselves, “Can this be better? Can I do this better?” We saw such a beautiful wave in the 2018 election of more diverse candidates winning races up and down the ballot all across the country. We absolutely saw a surge for Asian American communities, and that showed in Berkeley.

ST: I’m all for seeing more diverse representation across the board, including mixed-Asian people. Do you identify with the word Hapa, or is there another word you grew up using?

I do. I love the word Hapa, but it’s not something that I had ever heard until I moved here to California. Growing up in a much whiter place than where I live now, my Korean identity existed almost exclusively at home. There was no sense of community around being a mixed Asian American. That changed so dramatically when I came here in such beautiful ways. Maybe the first week of class at UC Berkeley, I met another student who was mixed and she asked me if I was a Hapa. I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what that meant. She had to explain my own identity to me, explain to me there was a community of people that had a name for themselves, that — whether I knew it or not — I was a part of, and I loved that.

There have been so many little ways since moving out here that I’ve tried to re-connect myself to my Korean-ness. That meant taking Korean classes at Cal, which was such a ride. I expected to find dozens of other Koreans hoping to learn their mother tongue and reconnect with their homeland. Instead I found a bunch of Korean drama enthusiasts, none of whom were Korean, and all of whom knew Korean better than I did.

I will say there’s been a lot to work on this pandemic. There’s been so much for the city council to attend to, but personally I feel that my biggest accomplishment through the entire pandemic is that I actually watched a Korean drama from start to finish for the first time, during shelter in place.

ST: Which drama did you watch?

Crash Landing on You. It was a little slow the first maybe four episodes, but then I was stuck, and bawling every episode. It was so good.

AC: What was it like for you growing up mixed in a predominantly white community?

It’s a strange thing to navigate. I think growing up, my social relationship to my race was almost exclusively negative. Depending on who you ask, [I’m] relatively white-passing, and I certainly carry much of that privilege with me everywhere I go, and in everything I do, but I’ve been called a “chink” by strangers a number of times. You can never shake the feeling of realizing that someone thinks less of you based on little more than whose child you are which is so obscene to me. For someone who doesn’t know what an absolute angel my mother is, to think I’m lesser of a person because she raised me, I’ll never understand that.

I remember being told that I was the “cool Asian,” or “cool for an Asian,” or even that I earned the distinction of being an “honorary white,” which I found extra funny because I’m just as white as I am Asian. I know people meant it to be funny or they meant it as a compliment, but the subtext to that is that your “Asian-ness” is inherently lesser and something you have to overcome.

ST: Fortunately, your Korean heritage has granted you a lot of positive experiences as well. You were able to travel to Gongju, South Korea (Berkeley’s sister city). What was that experience like?

That was maybe one of the most magical experiences of my life. It’s a really beautiful, very symbolic exercise these cities are engaged in. The city of Berkeley has a number of sister cities that we participate in exchanges and ceremonies with. Most of those cities share something in common with Berkeley — maybe it’s an element of their political history, their geography, maybe they have a university. So the city of Berkeley is sister cities with Gongju, South Korea. About a year after I came into office, the city of Gonju reached out to our mayor and invited him to South Korea for a sister city visit to participate in this festival of a lifetime they were hosting. The mayor (knowing that a few months prior, the city had just elected the first Korean American to the city council in history) writes back to the mayor of Gongju and says, “Absolutely, I would love to attend and cement our sister city relationship. Also, I should tell you, I have Korean I would love to bring.”

It was so disorienting and special to visit the motherland for work. I had been to Korea twice before with my mother, mostly to see and spend time with my halmeoni and halabeoji. It was always in the context of family. To be there with my mayor, a colleague of mine, and a member of his staff, participating in this ceremony with Korean government officials was absolutely surreal. It was especially surreal just how meaningful it was to the people in Gongju that we had come, especially that I had come. I remember a toast the vice mayor of Gongju offered us. He said it was so powerful and meaningful to him to meet me because he didn’t know Koreans could lead the government in America.

ST: Finally, what should people know about your work as a councilmember?

I’m constantly encouraging more people who remind me of myself to run for office. It’s a strange role and, in many ways, a challenging one to justify doing. It doesn’t tend to pay very well, but these are some of the most consequential roles in every community. You want wonderful people to occupy these positions, and you want a diversity of perspectives on every board making these decisions. Part of that means convincing people that they can see themselves in these roles. It takes a lot to prove it’s worth putting your life on hold to consider running for office, and committing is a labor of public service for at least four years. I know every day in this job has affirmed for me how important it was that I run and how important it’s been to have my perspectives on the table and on the dais. I hope more and more people start to see that they can play that role for their cities too.

*THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY.