Jerry Brown | Interview 16 | July 9, 2019

Interview #16: July 9, 2019

Shafer: This is July 9, [2019]. We are at the Mountain House with Governor Jerry Brown and Martin Meeker from Bancroft Library, Scott Shafer from KQED, and this is interview session sixteen. So Governor, we were talking about your mayoralty, and I think we left it off talking about the charter schools. And we wanted to delve a little bit more into the school stuff. You wanted to appoint a different school chief than was there, and I think you supported George Musgrove, I think his name was?

Brown: Yeah, he was there for a while.

Shafer: Yeah, and the board pushed back. They wanted Dennis Chaconas. What did the school district need? Like what were you trying to accomplish?

Brown: I thought that there was not nearly enough focus on raising the achievement levels of the students in Oakland. There was talk about lots of 00:01:00things. But there still--to this day--is not the focus on achievement that I think is crucial.

Shafer: And does that include testing? I mean what does that entail?

Brown: Yeah, well, we have a state testing system, and the schools in Oakland do very poorly. And now, if you're going to be successful in getting to college, you're going to have to do better on those tests. So they have to prepare these kids. And yet, probably the majority are below their grade level--probably the majority of students in Oakland schools do not achieve the grade level that is expected.

Shafer: How much of that is poor teachers, how much of it is, you know, bad administration, poverty--all those things?

[side conversation deleted]

Brown: It's all those things, but there are schools in California where the kids come from very low-income families, with some of the same challenges in Oakland, 00:02:00but they achieve at the appropriate grade level. So that requires great leadership, great teachers, and creating an atmosphere in the school where learning is emphasized and learning is encouraged by very thoughtful and creative ways.

Shafer: Why did you think Musgrove was the guy versus Chaconas?

Brown: I just thought Musgrove knew how to manage. You know, in retrospect, I think Musgrove was an effective person, and I thought he could do better for the school. It turns out that Chaconas left in a few years, and the school was financially quite stressed. Of course, so have people after him, so there's a basic problem in Oakland that their desire to spend outruns their available 00:03:00money. And the problems of lack of discipline, lack of inspiring teachers--lack of whatever, I know it's a very tough job for a teacher, so it's all of those things.

I mean the fact is there's a gap based on income in America, in California, between the kids from better-off families compared to the kids with not-so-well-off families. And changing that gap is not business as usual. You have to get good school leaders and good teachers, and you do need the money to make it all happen. So as we talk, it's still a contested matter in California, and they're still talking about it. They meaning the state board, the politicians, the legislators, the advocates. They keep talking about--well, the kids need this, they need that, and the fact is there's a gap between the middle 00:04:00and upper-middle class, and what we might call lower-income families and their kids. That's there. That's why I wanted to put a stronger man at the helm, and he had his problems. But every superintendent since then has had problems, and Oakland today is still facing bankruptcy and low scores. So that's why I came up with the idea of creating some schools that I could shape to deal with the problem. And I would have to say that we're still struggling. We have not achieved the goal, but I've gone back. I'm now the chairman of the Oakland Military School, and I'm going to work to raise their scores, and I can say it is not easy, but it is very challenging.

Meeker: Can you talk about that a little bit more? You have closer insight and 00:05:00information on the Oakland Military Institute [College Preparatory Academy] as well as the Arts School. [Oakland School for the Arts] What are the things that you think can be done in those specific settings, and that specific location, to--?

Brown: Well, the Arts School is doing well, although--it's doing well, and it attracts a more middle-class clientele because of its requirement of some artistic skill in order to get in, so their scores are much higher. The military school has struggled with the concept of what is a military school? What is the framework? What does it do. And my original idea, and my continuing idea, is the discipline and inspiration of--a military framework should be the catalyst that 00:06:00enables these kids to attain grade-level performance. That has not happened yet, but I'm now back--have attended two meetings and spent literally a hundred hours probing into the scores, the personnel. And I will say that long before the--no, not long--within the next couple of years, I hope to achieve the goal that I set forth in 2001.

Meeker: What was that goal? Can you articulate it?

Brown: A prep school in Oakland that would enable kids from all backgrounds to get into college. Now, it is getting kids into college--70, 80 percent get into college, four-year college. Many of them go to two-year colleges. But I would 00:07:00like to see it perform at a higher level, and I think the assumption I'm making is that the military model is a very powerful ingredient. But because of the general feelings about the military and the discipline, and what have you, there has been a reluctance--there has been, and because it's part civilian, part military, it has been difficult to implement. So it's, this is a very live issue as we talk.

Meeker: When you've done this study, what have you found at the Military Institute? What answers are you getting in terms of why--?

Brown: I don't think the discipline is adequate. And I think the framework of teaching does not draw on the best we understand about teaching today.

Shafer: When you say that discipline is not adequate, what do you mean?

Brown: Just what I said.

Shafer: But what does that look like? What would adequate discipline look like?

Brown: Well, that looks like--people don't wear the uniform properly, when they're late to class, fighting on the schoolyard, talking back to teachers, not marching in the manner that the California Cadet Corps expects. So now this is the great challenge. How do you bring that about? Well, tune in--I'll tell you in two years.

Shafer: Why is that so important to you?

Brown: Because of the very challenge of education. What do we do about the gap? I mean we've got, now, a gap in healthcare; we've got a gap in housing; we've got a gap in education; we've got a gap in income. Now, I would like to see, myself, how we can best encourage and inspire and educate kids who don't do as 00:09:00well as more advantaged children do in our state. And I believe that instead of just focusing on six million, which is California, focusing on six or seven hundred is better--it's a more manageable number of people, and I think all of the issues of the larger six million can be found in the subset of a charter school.

And there are schools that are doing much better than other schools, so we do have examples. But it's still, all these decades later, we have--there has been improvement. There has been an increase in the performance on state tests, but 00:10:00of course what happens is the tests are changed. We had something called the TerraNova test, then we went to the STAR test, and now we're at the Common Core Smarter Balanced Tests. And so these are three separate regimes, and there's a turbulence. There's a churning in the education world, maybe driven by textbook publishers, maybe driven by the cult of innovation--whatever the case may be--or maybe by the frustration of not achieving what is desired. But I would say that the same debates that took place when Wilson Riles ran against Max Rafferty continues, with the same issues today as it did back in the 1970s.

Shafer: How tough was it to attract quality teachers to Oakland?

Brown: It's hard. First of all, the housing prices are very expensive. Now it's 00:11:00hard because the conditions are difficult. You know, the goal is to take whatever students apply--and even students that are disturbed and impaired, the goal is to mainstream them. And even when they're in class and create disturbances--it's very difficult to manage that. And I know that--well, first of all, I have nieces that are teachers, and so there's a frustration out there. And it's not paid anywhere near what the job is worth--and how tough it is. I think the general--I'd just say--I was going to say the general laxity, but maybe that's a little too old-fashioned a word. But somehow, there has to be a 00:12:00greater discipline.

Now, it may be that a lot of kids are not that interested in what the standards are. They'd be more interested in other types of learning, and we're trying to do that with career education, career technical education, but it's a continuing, churning of the latest idea, book, technology, program, teaching style, accountability measure, metrics--it's just bundle of ever-changing stories, that I've encountered since the day I ran for the junior college board and talked to some people from RAND about education. And then becoming governor and appointing Mike Kirst as the president of the State Board [of Education], he served eight years under my first administration, eight years under my second. 00:13:00And yet these same stories are told over and over again, and the reason why that continues is that most people haven't been around very long, so that they forget that this is an old story, not a new story.

So something doesn't work, pass a law. The law then leads to a regulation. Then after a decade or two there's so much regulation we try to pare back the regulation and tried something else. Then you try something else and they say, "Well, the schools--they're getting out of control. They're not performing. We need more state control." So you go back--we're kind of in that trend. Under the local-control formula, we stripped away a lot of categorical programs and prescriptions from the state, and gave more authority to the local school. Now people are saying, "Well, that authority's not being used right. The extra 00:14:00money's not going to where it is best needed." So now we need new rules. And new rules are commands from the bunker, from the capital, that have to be enshrined in either a personal email to the school, or a regulation, or a law at the legislature--or all of that. And it is all of that, and the story then continues, and that's where we are today.

Shafer: When I talked to Libby Schaaf, she told me that--I asked her if you'd given her any advice when she became mayor. And she said something to the effect that--I'm paraphrasing, but, "He told me don't think you can fix the schools, because you can't."

Brown: Well, she hasn't.

Shafer: [laughing] She followed your advice. But I mean do you feel like that's--?

Brown: And what about in Los Angeles? [Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa said he was going to fix the schools, and they just had a huge strike complaining about all sorts of things going on.

Shafer: Did you come into office as mayor thinking maybe you could have a bigger impact than you did?

Brown: Well, it goes back to a conversation that Ivan Illich told me about, with 00:15:00Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria. And this guy, the Austrian president said to Ivan. He said, "Ivan, stay out of the school business." So that's been a cautionary light that I've had for many decades. But I'm in the school business, and very much so: the local control funding formula, that Proposition 30, the extra tax revenue; the fighting of the Obama Administration around the Race to the Top; the veto of the bill that would say that willful defiance is no longer a cause for expulsion. So I would say I'm up to my eyeballs in education. But I still recall the admonition--be careful of the education business, or don't get 00:16:00into it--but I'm into it.

Oh, by the way, I would just say, in general, that since the Vietnam War and since Watergate, and in the last, I don't know, thirty or forty years, there's great skepticism. The Public Interest magazine, that I think has ceased publication, but it would crank out all manner of critiques on education. There was an article that was actually called, "Nothing Works," about the prison systems--forget rehabilitation, it can't work. And I read much of that stuff, and it fit in with my general skeptical, doubting frame of mind. So that's kind of the environment. And we have, you know, President Trump, I think, operates in that environment, and is in some way a reaction to people who want more 00:17:00certitude, who feel the loss of roots, of boundaries, of structures that--they identify with the normal American way of living. So we're in a turbulent period that is expressed politically, but you can see it educationally, and you can see it in changing forms of behavior--and there it is. So that's what I've lived with in all the time I've been in politics, and even though I see all these questions, it doesn't stop me from trying to provide answers.

Shafer: So when the Oakland School District got into trouble, Gray Davis was governor, and the school district got a loan of, I think, $100 million, and that gave them control over the school district.

Brown: Yes.

Shafer: To what extent did you embrace that, think that was a good thing?

Brown: I thought it was a good thing. [Randolph E.] "Randy" Ward was the trustee. But here we are. It's not that easy to fix, so I think we're facing 00:18:00some of the same problems. I assume there's been some improvement. I haven't followed Oakland closely enough. But the trustee--he had to have a guard with him.

And so the reduction in students from 53,000 to 37,000 means you've got to close schools. But closing a school is closing a place of tradition, a place of memory, and that's not good either. It would be better if they could be left open and somehow worked at a lower overhead. But the way systems work, you can't just keep a school open on a lower overhead. What is needed now is incredible. It's not just teachers. You need all manner of assistants, counselors, this and that--and so it gets very expensive. But I see the closing of a school--it's 00:19:00like closing a church. This is where people grew up. Very important. So I understand the resistance. There's deep resistance to closing schools, but the money they have can't support the number of schools they currently have, unless they figure out another way. Maybe to share them with other institutions or something. So these are basic problems of declining enrollment that many inner cities, many city--urban centers face. And that's not just California. You can find it throughout the country. Baltimore, Detroit, just to name two.

Meeker: What was the degree of interaction you had with either Chaconas or Ward?

Brown: Not much.

Meeker: Not much?

Brown: Not much. Look, it's an autonomous government. The school board is elected by the people of the area, the jurisdiction, and they are in control. So 00:20:00it's just like me giving a call to Willie Brown and saying, "Willie, I have some advice for you." That's just unthinkable. It's not done. If I call the mayor of Berkeley and say, "Here, I've got some advice," they're not looking for advice. And you have enough problems in your own city--just like you don't call the governor of Nevada. Now, sometimes we do. I talk about cap and trade, and climate change. But in general, people are focused on their own jurisdiction, and there's plenty--I mean there's something out of the Bible or something, "The evil of the day is sufficient thereof." And so the problems of our jurisdiction are enough to keep us busy.

Shafer: I was going to transition to some other things happening around this time. So--the dot-com bust happened during your first term. It was around 2000 roughly. It went on, but started then. What kind of consequences did that have 00:21:00for Oakland, in what you were trying to do there?

Brown: I can't--I don't recall. I don't know.

Shafer: Really?

Brown: Yeah, I don't think there were a lot of dot-com people--there weren't a lot of dot-com companies in Oakland.

Shafer: So it was more San Francisco probably?

Brown: Um--you know, some companies rose and fall, but--

Meeker: Well, there were a couple new Shorenstein buildings that were built downtown that they had trouble filling around that point in time.

Brown: Did they? But then they filled them.

Meeker: Well, eventually--right.

Brown: Well, that's the amazing thing. The economy roars back, at least it has up till now.

Meeker: Well, shortly after the dot-com bust, or really kind of in the same period of time, we have the attacks of 9/11. Can you recall what--

Brown: What--yeah, but I don't know 9/11, yeah, I don't know that Oakland--I think Oakland kept growing through all that period. Slowly, but it did.

Meeker: Well, 9/11--

Brown: Well, that made all the more important by we want to get people building downtown, get some cranes. At one point there were no cranes in Oakland. You look across to San Francisco, there are ten cranes. Or you look in other cities. So yeah, it really was a place where developers could not find justification for investing their money, and then it changed. I helped the change, but certainly the recovery of Silicon Valley, and its unprecedented expansion, spilled over. And that's a big part of what Oakland is about--and Berkeley too, for that matter.

Shafer: How much of the developers' reluctance to invest in Oakland do you think was just a lack of faith in leadership?

Brown: Well, that was true. But, also, the return on investment wasn't there. You put up a building, if you want to make it ten stories, well, then it's like a third more expensive when you go to a concrete building as opposed to a wooden frame. So they weren't ready to do that. That was a big deal, when someone built 00:23:00one in Jack London, and they went bankrupt. They had to bring in a new builder. The only things that were built, if you look in Oakland, if you went there in 1995 or 1998, it was government-subsidized building, senior housing. That was what they built, something that had government subsidy. There was nobody who said, "Oh, I'm going to take my money and go build something in Oakland." They didn't do that. But now, that has certainly become the rule. But they've done it at the expense--that now a lot of people are priced out.

Shafer: Yeah. One of the things you'd grappled with during this time was Jacques Barzaghi.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: First of all, we've talked about how you met him and that--but what was he, what did he--I'm trying to think of how to say this. Like what role did he play in your career in politics?

Brown: Well, he was a provocative person. He was a great one to hash out ideas. He helped when I was governor. He was instrumental in establishing the California Arts Council, which was important. He attracted Gary Snyder, Peter Coyote. They had a level of flair and artistic capacity that I don't think it's ever had since then. And so I found him an interesting person to talk with. I don't find that many people that interesting.

Shafer: Why are you looking at me? [Meeker laughs] [Shafer laughs]

Brown: Yeah, well, I'm just telling you there's a certain mundane quality about ordinary interchanges. And I am attracted to people with fresh ideas or at least 00:25:00different perspectives, because I don't rely on just one point of view, and I don't, myself, like to have a point of view without challenging it, even myself. So I have always had--I mean just going to the seminary was a very against the grain kind of idea for me. But then leaving that very stable environment, where everybody thought more or less the same, and then all of a sudden--no, I'm thinking very differently. And then going to Berkeley and then to Yale Law School, I developed a certain curiosity and desire to probe into different things, whether it be books or people or different things. And when I found 00:26:00Synanon--I only visited a few times--I found it very interesting. Delancey Street, the Catholic Worker movement. These interested me.

Shafer: And he was a way of bouncing ideas--?

Brown: Well, he was an idea guy, yeah--a critic. He was certainly against the grain. He would have a response that other people would not, so that's valuable.

Shafer: Can you think of an example?

Brown: And as I said in my campaigns, I had these people, Richard Maullin, Tom Quinn, and Jacques, and there would often be three different points of view, so I found that useful. And as a politician, I sometimes would take some amalgam of all three.

Shafer: Was there kind of a--almost like a creative chaos, in a way?

Brown: Well, chaos doesn't sound attractive. But if you're totally programmed and structured, there's not much room for new ideas. In fact, Gregory Bateson inscribed his book Mind and Nature--he inscribed the copy that he gave to me, 00:27:00and in the front page it said, "The new only comes out of the random." So that sounds a little like chaos. And in Greek mythology, chaos precedes cosmos. So yeah, you need a certain random quality in order to let unexpected perspectives emerge, and we did a lot of things together. It was adventurous.

Shafer: Can you think of like an area that his thinking was really, in particular, provocative to you? Is there something--you mentioned the arts council, but was there a--?

Brown: No, I'd just say that he had a point of view that--and I had many different--Jodie Evans, her points of view have evolved in recent decades. But I don't have one set of opinions that I associate with. Although there is a 00:28:00certain tendency, if you look at the people that interest me.

Shafer: Iconoclasts maybe?

Brown: Well, yeah, but very accomplished. Bateson, Illich, Gary Snyder, August Coppola--Francis Coppola's brother. That guy seemed to know whatever you raised, Dante, Shakespeare, postmodernists. He'd read a lot. And, in fact, I don't know that I've ever encountered anybody who had read as much and could tell me something. So I find that I like that. I like to look at--you know, even this book I just--In the Ruins of Neoliberalism. This is not on the KQED recommended list. But it's interesting. It's going into the issue of where are we, in the 00:29:00culture, economy, politics of 2019? So that interests me, but that was the same thing in 1975 when I said we're going to bring a new spirit to Sacramento. Somebody asked, "What is this new spirit?" Well, it'll unfold. So it's an adventure, a discovery, trying to deal with the same problem we're dealing with today, and that is the discontent that is roiling the American system of government--and the European. This is not something that is new. It's been around, and as I say, that I am very taken with key ideas, and I mull them over for decades.

For example, I still recall [laughing]--maybe I've said it before in these 00:30:00talks, but Mark Schorer, the very famous teacher in Berkeley. My sister had him--I didn't know that then, but I know it now. But I took his class in modern British literature. And I remember his last day on the stage. Did I mention that to you? Well, he would be smoking a cigarette, and he was up there in Dwinelle Plaza--Dwinelle Hall, one of those halls there. And he took a drag on his cigarette and he exhaled, and he said, "This is the way the world ends, on a downbeat." No, he said, "This is the way this class ends, on a downbeat." [Shafer laughs] And he took a drag, another drag on his cigarette, and he said, "But that's the way it is." [laughing] Well, that says okay, now what are we going to do about that? [Shafer laughs] And Bateson, in the Steps to an Ecology of Mind, has an essay that says if we don't shift our relationship to nature, to 00:31:00the overall ecology, that in twenty years you're going to have mass destruction. Well, we didn't have twenty years. That would have been 1990, but here we are in 2019 and we're getting closer.

So there's a general discontent that seems to be more intense than in other periods of history, but it calls forth a lot of fresh thinking or good thinking, and so it isn't the cliché. You can't pick up the average debate in Congress or Sacramento and say okay, I think we're going to find the answer here. It's not going to be there. It's going to be more on the margins: the poets, the independent scientists. So that's why I found Stewart Brand interesting. In fact, he came to--I heard him. His job was just to bring interesting people to 00:32:00talk in the governor's office. And we had Ken Kesey, we had Fritz Schumacher, and we had Arthur Burns [two-time chair of the Federal Reserve], I believe--and Herman Kahn. A very diverse group of people. But out of all that conflict of different ideas, I try to perceive what's a good path forward. Sometimes it has no application at all, but it's interesting. And sometimes it does.

Shafer: So in terms of Jacques, he ultimately left. You actually, I guess, asked him to leave, or he left--?

Brown: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did.

Shafer: But he left the city.

Brown: No, I asked him to leave.

Shafer: Yeah, and there have been allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate things that he had done.

Brown: Yeah, yeah.

Shafer: How aware of that were you? Did you ever talk to him about it?

Brown: Not really. First of all, there's been a real shift in cultural mores, you know. Men are being held to a standard that was not much of a--it was not 00:33:00the same standard thirty years ago. And that's all to the good, and that's where we are. So he definitely had a way that--that would not be acceptable today--or at least had a way then.

Shafer: And did you just--did you just feel like this is too much of a cost to you politically or--?

Brown: No, but he got into a verbal argument with his wife, and she called the police, so I thought that was enough. That was it.

Shafer: Yeah. Did Anne have any role in any of that?

Brown: No. I mean Anne had her own ideas, which you can ask her. She's very clear and doesn't take too long to come to conclusions. [laughter]

Meeker: Did that end your friendship with Barzaghi?

Brown: Yeah, yeah. It did. Well, I don't want to get into all of that, but I think in the governorship there was more room, there was more--I think there was more scope for him to make a contribution. Municipal government is a narrower kind of venue, and there just really wasn't a role that would work at that point in time. Very different than the 1970s, where we had a freewheeling--it was just a different thing. I mean we didn't have Ken Kesey lecturing at Oakland City Hall. It just wasn't the same thing--it worked, I think, in the governor's office, and afterwards we did certain things. He came with me, went to Japan, so that was interesting.

Shafer: Do you think because you knew him for so long and he was such an integral part of your, you know, personal and political life, that you had, perhaps, blind spots about him?

Brown: Well, I don't think, he didn't--I think probably more, I think, over time, either he became, he did more--he became less acceptable, or the world changed, or both. But I think it was different, whenever that was, 2004 or '05, than it was earlier.

Shafer: Yeah, and so--when you say he changed or he became less acceptable, do you mean that his behavior changed, or like it got worse, or--?

Brown: Well, first of all, I don't think there was a real contribution, didn't really fit. And I think he probably experienced that, and I think that 00:36:00frustrated him. He was a bit too controversial, so that's just the way that goes down. But as far as his behavior, I'm not going to comment on that.

Shafer: Yeah, what--what was it like having to tell somebody who'd been so close to you--?

Brown: Well, that's not--it's not easy. But on the other hand, it was such an obvious--once you call the police on a domestic violence claim, even if the wife then withdraws it or it doesn't turn out to much, that was enough.

Shafer: Crossed a line.

Brown: And I think--yeah, and I think there was a--yeah. So, yeah--these whole discussions about men and women and what--harassment, they're always difficult to deal with. And they're not always as obvious as they become later, when you go around and you start asking people, "Well, what did he say?" And, "What 00:37:00happened?" Then the stories come out in ways that certainly didn't--don't appear before one of these incidents.

Shafer: So you're up for reelection, and you run--you had token opposition, I think, from Wilson Riles, Jr., and you got 63 percent of the vote. Did you see an irony at all, in the fact that you were portrayed as the conservative in that race?

Brown: Well, I think Oakland was changing. I think the stagnation that was due a lot to the economy, and also maybe to the politics of the time. But there was a real felt need in action, in development, in stronger public-safety measures. But over time, then that was experienced by some as, as not what--going against 00:38:00things. They didn't like that. So Riles became the advocate for rent--we had rent control, but for greater rent control and for--it wasn't very clear where he was going, but he was the advocate of the discontent from a more left perspective. But I still--we got a lot of liberal votes, I would think. But it becomes--what did you say--is it paradoxical?

Shafer: Well, did you find it ironic, you know, that you were portrayed as the conservative in that race, or relatively conservative.

Brown: Well, I don't think I was portrayed--the conservative/liberal didn't work in Oakland.

Shafer: Shades of blue, I guess.

Brown: Well, no, I don't think it was that ideology. It was--Riles, there were specific issues. The only one I can remember is rent control, and maybe there 00:39:00was another one.

Shafer: Was there sort of a discontent in the African-American community?

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: That was part of it as well?

Brown: Yes. I think that was part of it, definitely.

Shafer: And what exactly was the complaint?

Brown: Well, I met a woman, an African-American woman, getting off a plane in New York City. I remember walking up the gangway. She said to me, "Mayor, why are you driving the blacks out of Oakland?" I said, "I'm not doing that." She said, "Well, you're raising all the rents." And she, I think, felt I was raising the rents. But the rents were rising because Oakland was becoming more attractive as a place, and there was all this surplus money flowing out of the growing prosperity. But that was felt as a change. Once I compared it, I said I looked at the outward migration of African Americans from Richmond and from San Francisco--and from Oakland. And it turned out that by a slight amount, there was a greater percentage of migration from Richmond and San Francisco than there 00:40:00was from Oakland. And yet the people in Oakland are not looking at Richmond, they're just looking--"oh, there's fewer members of my black church, or now there's all these new people coming in," whether they be Spanish-speaking immigrants or white yuppies. The world was changing, and it has continued to change, so that creates its own feeling, its own reaction.

Shafer: And that's part of the sort of dynamism you wanted, isn't it, in Oakland? You know, to have more of a sense of--

Brown: Well, that's what I wanted, but I certainly didn't want things to become so expensive that you can't even have retail stores. All you can have is, you know Silicon Valley offices with all the enormous money they make, and that's happening in San Francisco. How do you even have a little grocery store or a shop if somebody from Facebook or Google, or the future Facebook and Google, can 00:41:00pay so much more? So there is a dilemma here. The prosperity has its own negative consequence. Of course, the other side is if there is no prosperity, and you have 10 percent unemployment and you have empty spaces, that's another problem. And you can see that in parts of Detroit. I saw that in Baltimore when I was campaigning in '92. I saw it in the South Bronx in 1976 when I was running for president, just appalling rubble, just incredible. Children playing in what used to be a stairway, it's just a rubble of bricks, but still connected to a brownstone. So there is this decline, and then there's a rise. But the rise comes from a market-driven influx of capital, and it also has its own destructive consequences. And that's what people felt in Oakland. Some people felt that in Oakland--other people didn't.

Shafer: Well, and that--another word for what that woman on the plane was describing is gentrification, right?

Brown: Right, but that's an interesting word. Does that mean anything that's better, that's come from a nongovernment source? I mean there's a certain ideology there. If your medicine has to be government medicine, if your housing has to be government housing, if your schools have to be government schools, that's a very different America than we've had up till now. But there are people who, whether they realize it or not, that's what they're advocating. Now, on the other side you can point to capitalism, the rise of the 1 percent. The CEOs are now making many, many, many times more in their income than the average worker in their company. These are all big problems--scandals. And how to manage that is what we're listening to--how Trump has one way, and Bernie Sanders has another way. And neither way is acceptable to a majority of the people yet.

Shafer: You won that election handily. But you also lost some support in the flatlands, I think, you know to Riles, from four years earlier.

Brown: Well, I think a third of the precincts I did not win. In fact, I went over and--I looked at the worst precinct. I think I got 36 percent of the vote. I went around and I looked and I saw in one place, it had a peace flag hanging on the window. And someone else down the street, they said, "Oh yeah, this guy was--he used to sell--provide us our dope." I think they said that it was pretty convenient. Hmm, so okay, this is a different. [laughing] This was right near Berkeley. Oakland near Berkeley on Shattuck Avenue. I walked down that street, and I said okay, they're not going to like a crackdown by the police or--whatever.

And that's still reverberating to this day. You had the Occupy movement. They wanted to sleep over in the city--in front of the city hall for several weeks. And then finally they got them out of there. We still have these--although you have more--you have a lot of unresolved dilemmas. And prosperity is a dilemma and lack of prosperity is a dilemma. Either way you look at it, you've got to manage, but in a different way.

So when you're looking at that vote, I thought that was some disapproval. But the fact is, the overwhelming majority--by a huge amount, liked what I was doing and continue to like it. Now, that doesn't mean there isn't a vocal group. But I don't see any way, as a politician, that I can be the favorite of a third instead of the 60 percent. Someone might say, "Well, we'd like the third--what 00:45:00the third thinks is really what the right path is." Well, that might be. That'd be a good course to teach at the local junior college, but it's not a viable governing road map.

Shafer: But it's interesting you actually deliberately went to the precinct you did the worst in.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: Like what were you--?

Brown: I just wanted to see what it looked like. [laughing] What are these people thinking?

Shafer: Did you knock on any doors? [laughing]

Brown: I also went to the precinct that I got 85 percent, and that was up in Montclair. And I said okay, there's a difference there.

Shafer: Did you knock on any doors? [laughing]

Brown: No, no. I just, I just smelled the environment. I can figure out what's what. But these were the differences. Because the downtown people--well, it's almost like--I don't want to call it a game, but there are roles that are socially assigned. And there's the role of the dissident, the role of the opposition, and then there's the role of the majority, of the status quo. And I 00:46:00was working with the status quo, or I was working with a governing majority.

Meeker: So when you were walking in that neighborhood in North Oakland, and you're saying okay, these people are sending a message that says we feel like we're not being--our problems are not being paid attention to--

Brown: Yeah.

Meeker: --did, in your second term did you say--okay, maybe I should pay some more attention to this?

Brown: Well, I am paying attention, but the murder rate is also going up. It was rising in the last few years that I was mayor. I said what the heck--how do we take care of that? And so that was a challenge. It's like schooling. What can the government do, and what do the people do? And now the crime rate is going down, and the Oakland police have been under the control of the federal monitor, for now, fourteen years. And they're still not viewed as having achieved the 00:47:00culture that the federal court wants. So these are dilemmas. People want public safety, but they don't want any police misconduct. And so these are issues that people have to face. So when you said a message, what was the message? I didn't say, you know, what more are we talking about? I think a lot of these things are symbolic. There may be--I think people vote, they identify. So possibly, if you've got a peace symbol in the window, then somebody's saying the government is insensitive. It's not listening to us. Maybe that fits the way you feel about things.

Shafer: Or you have a military academy.

Brown: Yeah, but I don't think many people know about that. I think the military academy is totally obscure.

Shafer: Really?

Brown: Yes, no doubt. I mean maybe some people--nobody's thinking about the Oakland Military Institute, except me. I'm thinking a lot about it, but I don't think they are. And people don't know about it. You can ask them.

Shafer: Really? I'm surprised.

Brown: Yeah. Well, because you're so engaged in the KQED world, you think people know those things. [Shafer laughs] But go down the street and ask five people. Some of them won't even know what KQED is. [laughing]

Shafer: Well, that wouldn't surprise me.

Brown: Yeah, well, because we live in different--the very, the knowledge consumers, the information consumers, are a class apart. And then there's the ordinary people--they're getting a different message.

Shafer: You mentioned the court oversight of the police department.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: And then of course the state stepped in with the schools. And when you were governor the last time the prisons were also--had oversight.

Brown: Right.

Shafer: What are your thoughts about that? You know, the courts coming in, Thelton Henderson with the police department, for example, and really imposing their will?

Brown: Well, I still have questions about the police department. How to understand the best way to police. And there's a real challenge to how we do that. And it has been a challenge since the Detroit riots, where the police invaded--came in and arrested people for some minor gambling or something. And then the Watts riot, which was the highway patrol arresting some guy for breaking the driving rules. And then things explode. So this is hard stuff.

I would say, about the intervention of the federal courts in the prisons was absolutely a positive outcome. I thought the money spending was out of control. 00:50:00But the fact that the Supreme Court, five to four, validated the idea the California prisons were overcrowded and had to be reduced--had to be reduced because people weren't going to build a new prison. And then that, implemented by the three very liberal judges, very, very liberal judges--that outside force was absolutely necessary to what we did in the realignment and the reduction of prisons. It's extraordinarily hard to reverse. In other words, California had 25,000 people in prison, maybe a few more--it fluctuated. And then, by a series of laws and initiatives, all attempting to crack down on crime, the prisons 00:51:00exploded 500-600 percent, depending from what date you measure it.

And now to go the other way, because you're always talking about a dangerous person--a Willie Horton, the proverbial axe murderer. Because if you start reducing from 173 [thousand], say to 125 [thousand]--what is that? That's over 40,000, 45,000. Of that 45,000, that maybe was imprisoned, how many of them are going to do something really bad? The odds are those 40 [thousand]--if you were picking odds, you know something bad has to happen. And not one thing, many things. So once that happens, then people start screaming. People will run against the candidate, will blame him. And so then the opposite is lock more and more people up. But even if you've locked up 300,000, there's a million felonies a year. There's 2,000 murders a year. You know, less than half are ever 00:52:00arrested, and a smaller number are--

Shafer: Solved.

Brown: A lot of--most of them are convicted. I'm just saying, it's very hard to manage, because one crime on television, repeated over and over again, becomes the prevailing reality. And if you had something to do--by releasing that person, it's your fault. Just like [Gov. Michael] Dukakis; even though he had no idea about that weekend furlough, that was the [1988 presidential] campaign, and he lost. So everybody knows that. So the only logic to prevent that is to have endless increases in prisons. Now, that was the rule until the mood shifted. And it shifted because--you know, you can only go so far, and then you usually get a backlash or a reaction. So now the word mass incarceration has been put into the vocabulary. And with the Court, and with the mood, things have changed.

But I can tell you, in getting bills passed as governor, particularly the second time--very difficult. It really took all the skill and effort at my command to get, for example, the felony murder rule changed a little bit. To get the idea that you can have a twenty-five-year enhancement if you use a gun in the commission of a violent crime--to get that restored to a matter of discretion by the judge, instead of being mandatory. That was very difficult to make that happen. So just in general, this is a very fraught area, and the police as well. So the outside intervention becomes an autocratic imposition on the popular 00:54:00will, and it is--I think it is necessary. But now, when it gets to something like busing, does that work? No, that certainly broke down in California.

Shafer: Judge Thelton Henderson oversaw the police department. And--you know, he was pretty tough on the city for--

Brown: No, he was.

Shafer: And here he's a liberal icon. African-American judge. What are your thoughts about him?

Brown: Well, I visited Judge [Henderson]. I thought we were ready to get out of the case. He didn't think so. And I thought well, we're doing everything we can. We're spending more money on health care. We spend $18,000 a person on healthcare, more than any prison, I'm sure, in the world--and more than most people in the free community. We give everything, from sex-change operations to colonoscopies to, you know, psychological examinations. This is first-class healthcare. Okay, far better than they're going to get when they go back on the street.

Shafer: But Henderson was the police department, wasn't he?

Brown: And the prisons.

Shafer: Oh, he did both? Oh, that's right.

Brown: The Plata case. [Brown v. Plata, 2011] But now--I came, over time, to realize that without the courts we could not have any real prison reform. It can't happen. So the democratic system is such that the vicious crimes that are committed by the few, become the threat to the many. And without a court saying thus it shall be, the politicians will never do it.

Shafer: You think that's true for the police department as well?

Brown: Yeah. But, now, how you manage the police department, that's always a question in my mind. What do you do? You've got vicious criminals out there that kill people, that rob, maim, steal. How do you deal with these people? They're not following the Marquess of Queensberry rules. You know? They're not Eagle 00:56:00Scouts. And I don't know the answer to that. They're working it out in Oakland, and maybe we'll know in ten more years, after they've been through it.

Now, with all the reforms they're putting on--they have a lot of reforms. When you draw your gun, you have to file a report--just to draw your gun. That's called a use of force. And then you've got to stop and call in the sergeant. And if you're on the street, anybody in an apartment house that might have seen it, you're going to go knock on doors and contact witnesses that you think saw the use of force, and then fill out the report. Well, that being the case, how many times are people going to draw their gun? And if they're not going to draw their gun, are they going to get out of their car, or are they going to keep on driving? So that's called de-policing. Now, other people would say it's working.

And, in fact, in Oakland the crime has come down. So I'd say this is a matter 00:57:00that warrants careful study, and I'm not, since I don't have a police department. I would be in it a lot more. But there is something strange in a court order that goes on fourteen years, has the same two lawyers represent the plaintiffs, who sit in meetings every three months, quarterly, and they discuss their improvements. And they're still working on a computer that will identify misconduct. And again, it's this quest for endless data. We want to know early signs of police misconduct, but they never can get that computer right. They can never get it inputted--this takes a lot of work. It's parallel to, by the way, the quest for data in education, where now the authorities want to get the data in preschool, maybe in childcare, and get that data--and with the data, they're 00:58:00going to change behavior and get the people who weren't doing what we want to start doing what we want. And that's the same thing in the police department, this endless data.

But what often turns out is when you know more and more, it doesn't make you more satisfied. But it makes you want to know--you're always identifying problems, and it's never quite working. So this idea that you have 700 policemen / policepeople, and you're getting the data in a constant flow. It's inputted, it's managed, and everything is just hunky-dory--well, that's a utopian idea, but I don't think it's happened yet. Until that happens, they're going to be under the thumb of the judge, maybe like the prisons.

But I like the Oakland cops. I like the Oakland Police [Officers'] Association. I always had a good relationship with them, and that was my sense of what a 00:59:00mayor was. But that was before a lot of--before all these killings that have been all over the county, and before Ferguson and all that. So it's now a different environment, and I think time will tell if they can actually work toward a viable reformed police department.

Shafer: I mean that's kind of a general theme of government, isn't it? And democracy, where--it's a pendulum.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: You know, like something terrible happens, and you pass three strikes. And then you see--but that was excessive. Or you go from Bush to Obama or--

Brown: Yeah, that's exactly what's happening.

Shafer: And I mean in laws, passing laws as well, in government--governing. You just--you do what you think is the right thing, or it's a reaction to something. But like--what you did with criminal justice reform. You came back to change some of the things you did the first time.

Brown: Yeah, but a lot of things that were done were done after I left. I created the fixed sentencing, and that had two major flaws that I didn't fully 01:00:00appreciate. One is that by having a fixed sentence, you take away the possibility of incentives for good behavior, namely reduced time, based on the behavior in prison. That's opposite of a fixed sentence. And the second thing, the flaw of the fixed sentence, was that the legislature did the fixing. And therefore, based on any bad crime or news stories, more new crimes and greater punishments will be added endlessly. And that, starting in 1980-'81, it continued. It never stopped. So we went from twelve prisons to thirty-four prisons. And in fact, the latest prison was built under the receiver. It's supposed to be a hospital prison in Stockton. So that's the thirty-fourth, I 01:01:00think, prison. That's a big number. So when is enough enough? And in some minds, the state's gone too far. And they want to go back to more incarceration. But that's going to run into a lot of heartburn. So I don't see that happening as yet. I don't see it happening, and I think our prison systems reinforce crime. I think there's a lot of room for more reform on who goes to prison, what they do in prison, how long they stay there. I think we're still at a very primitive stage in our incarceration business.

Shafer: So at some point you decide you're going to run for the attorney general.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: To what extent--?

Brown: Well, I was termed out. I termed myself out, since I put on my own term limits as part of the strong mayor initiative.

Shafer: How did you decide to run for AG?

Brown: How did I decide?

Shafer: Yeah, I mean like, or--?

Brown: Well, tell me--give me another choice.

Shafer: Well, as I was saying, well, did you--?

Brown: These things fall into place, you know? Something's available, and I'm a lawyer, so--

Meeker: Well, in 2004, there's speculation that you were interested in Barbara Boxer's senate seat. The guy who wrote the Oakland ecopolis article suggested that you were even considering a presidential run in 2004.

Brown: Well, I always consider runs for a lot of things. But it didn't seem viable.

Shafer: Which one?

Brown: Running for president/running for the senate. See, I've had the good fortune of running for offices for which there was no popular incumbent.

Shafer: That's a good strategy.

Brown: That's called timing. It's called luck. So Bill Lockyer was termed out. Okay, so that's--

Shafer: Was that a job you wanted?

Brown: Yeah, I thought it'd be good.

Shafer: Why?

Brown: Just because I'm a lawyer. I'm interested in legal questions. Anne was a lawyer, and we talk a lot about law. And it worked out very well, because she played a real role there--unpaid role, but a role that was well respected within the office. And she knows how to run a law firm.

Shafer: Talk about the role she had in the campaign.

Brown: Well, it's just simple--the campaign for attorney general?

Shafer: Yeah.

Brown: Well, when I told her I wanted her to run the campaign, she said, "I never ran a campaign." I said, "Look, I know all about campaigns, and you know all about management. Put the two together--we can't miss." And that's exactly what happened.

Shafer: And like to what extent were you concerned, as you were running, that--you know, the rising murder rate in Oakland could be a problem?

Brown: Yeah, that was a big problem. It didn't turn out to be, but it was a big problem.

Shafer: You were concerned about that?

Brown: I am concerned--I was, yes, and I never felt that the police leadership 01:04:00was doing all that it could. I felt that if you had a guy like Bratton, we'd bring the crime rate down. But even today, the way you do that--stop and frisk, focused policing--those things now are more problematical.

Shafer: Yeah. Before we get into the AG stuff, your mom died right around this time, 2002. She went to Lowell, I think, High School?

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: She went to Berkeley.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: Something not a lot of women did during that era.

Brown: And she graduated when she was nineteen, I think.

Shafer: Yeah. Talk about your mom. What does she mean to you, and what role does she play in the family?

Brown: Well, this was the traditional 1940s/1950s role of a woman taking care of the family, taking care of the house, while my father, as we used to say, made the money. And I remember driving the car with my mother and we passed the [San 01:05:00Francisco] Mint, and she said that I said, "Oh, that's where they make money. Is that where Dad works?" [laughter] She said, "No, he makes money a different way." I guess he was a lawyer then. So she was there. We had a very traditional family. We had dinner every night, and the mother and father were there--except when my father was out, which became more the case when he was running for attorney general. She organized vacations and organized the dinners, bought the furniture. My father just did his political work. That was what he did, and she did everything else. It was a different kind of world. I've heard my sister, I think--or maybe my mother, I can't remember--that she liked the house on Magellan because it was a block away from West Portal Grammar School, so we could all walk there, which we did. So she planned. But, to the best of my 01:06:00knowledge, she never came to West Portal.

Shafer: You just walked.

Brown: We walked, ourselves. So my mother didn't have to engage in all that stuff.

Shafer: You know, I think--all kids, after they grow up they think of what they got from each parent, you know, if the parents were around. Like what do you think you got from--?

Brown: I have a hard time figuring that out. Yeah, I don't know what--I'd say the main thing is a certain confidence that life has an orderly structure. Because for growing up, there weren't any traumas or any turbulence. Things were very much just one day after the next. It all kind of was working in that middle-class world. And yeah, I don't know what I would say for--

Shafer: What about your--like frugality?

Brown: Well, that's just the way things were. You know, in 1945 there was rationing in California. And we didn't have suburbs yet. The suburb boom hadn't started; hadn't had any cars built since 1941. So it was a simpler--you didn't go out to dinner. Going to a movie--maybe you'd go on Saturday. The kids would go. My family didn't go.

Shafer: But I mean your--I think your frugality has followed you throughout your career.

Brown: Well, but it was a simpler life. You didn't have that much stuff. I remember there was a little boy, a boy that was in my class in West Portal. I remember going to his house. His father was a doctor, and he had a whole room full of toys and things--and wow! I'd never seen anything like that, but that was not common. There just wasn't that much stuff around.

I remember taking a box, a cardboard box, and playing in it when I was very young, like a little machine or something. Playing with a cardboard box, or taking a can and putting a waxed string on it to make a walkie-talkie. There wasn't stuff. You didn't have new stuff. It was a big deal when they--we had an old refrigerator, and they got a new one. Oh boy! We got a new one--I think we got one new one, and we got a new stove--but that was it. From my consciousness, being in that Magellan Ave. house, 1941, leaving seminary in '56, there wasn't a lot of change. So now, when you can go into these stores--Walmart, 01:09:00Amazon--endless opportunities to buy millions of different little objects. It's a different world. So it does seem more alien, that's all.

I don't know if my mother was frugal. We weren't exuberant in the spending, and they didn't have money to be exuberant. They had to be careful. My grandfather, I think on my father's side, died without funds. He had to be supported by his four children. My other grandfather, he died--well, first of all, my grandmother, my mother's mother died, and my father had to take care of the widower, my grandfather. So life was just kind of more basic. You didn't have 01:10:00the surplus that we have today.

Shafer: And what about your mother's attitude about your father running for DA? Like how does she--?

Brown: I can't--I don't think--that was just, I don't think there was an attitude. He was just running for DA.

Shafer: Well, I had read she was not--she didn't want him to do it.

Brown: Oh, did she? I don't know. I have no idea. She never expressed that. I don't think she expressed that--or attorney general. Now, maybe yeah, running for reelection--I don't know. She might--maybe not have liked it. See, I knew she liked being the first lady. I think she liked that. So there wasn't a big discussion. You have to understand. You can't read today's world--the parents did not interfere or partner in our games or schooling. And the family did not 01:11:00give my father advice on what he should be doing. That just didn't show up. So when I read about politicians who say, "I have to check with my family," I have no experience of that. (a) I don't have a family, and (b) that wasn't the experience that I had growing up.

Shafer: Nobody asked you.

Brown: Nobody asked me. No, it wouldn't even be thinkable. It would be--not even thinkable. Just like I find this business of parents taking their kids on a tour of colleges--I have no experience in that. Ours was pretty simple. My sister went to Berkeley. I don't know--she just went to Berkeley. I don't know if there was a tour or not. I applied to Berkeley and Santa Clara. I wanted to go to Santa Clara. My parents wanted me to go to Berkeley, but I went to Santa Clara. But there was no tour involved. So there was more of a demarcation. There was, you know, shopping--you went to the store several times a week. You didn't have 01:12:00big refrigerators. We didn't have a freezer. You had a little thing, a little compartment in the refrigerator, but you didn't have a freezer. So the world has really changed in the meals taken outside, in the travel for entertainment and vacations, for the objects that are bought and paid for. This is a very different world than the 1940s and '50s in which I grew up. So--a little backward maybe, in the ways of today.

Meeker: During your second term as mayor, the state of California experienced some pretty important stresses in terms of the energy crisis as well as the state budget crisis.

Brown: We did when I was governor too. I remember--'73, I was secretary of state. I remember that's when I got my Plymouth. Frank Jordan had a Cadillac, which I was driving around. I kind of liked my Cadillac. When I took out Natalie 01:13:00Wood, at least I could pick her up in a Cadillac. [laughter] But then when the energy crisis came, I turned it in. I said, "I'd better get a more modest car." So I got a Plymouth. That's where the Plymouth started.

Meeker: Did the state budget crisis or energy crisis have much impact on you and your governance of the city of Oakland?

Brown: Well, that was '78 when that happened, '79?

Meeker: No, I'm talking the 2003-2004--

Shafer: The brownouts and stuff.

Brown: Oh, the brownouts--no. No, didn't have an effect. That I can remember.

Meeker: But this then also parlays into the discontent with Governor Gray Davis, and his ultimate recall. Were you engaging much with Governor Davis at this point in time?

Brown: No, no.

Meeker: Even though he was your former chief of staff?

Brown: Yeah, well, it's--yeah, not particularly. I think he supported the 01:14:00Oakland Military Institute and appeared at the hearing before the state board. That was a very important move, so that was helpful.

Meeker: What about when he is subject to the recall? You didn't decide to throw your hat in the ring and--?

Brown: No, I didn't get involved in that.

Meeker: Did you make any public pronouncement in terms of endorsements of either him or--?

Brown: I can't remember. I try not to get involved in everything. The term that is used is: don't bark at every truck that comes down the street. [laughing] Pick your trucks. Now, some people would say that's too limited a role. But I can tell you, if you're on everything, you're going to get scattered and diffused and--

16-01:14:59

Meeker: What were your impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he announces on 01:15:00The Tonight Show that he's going to--

Brown: I didn't see The Tonight Show. I'm not a great TV watcher, except for news, that I can't even look at--although less now. What did I say about--just that he, you know, I liked his accent. [laughter] I think he presented himself well. It's interesting. I mean that's different than wonky policy-oriented stuff. You now, there's a lot of that in the Democratic Party, because, you know, maybe ideas are important or policies are important. There's that word policy, which I don't care for. But Arnold, like Reagan, presented himself in a more interesting human way. It was more like a movie, so it's more pleasant to watch. It's a drama. You're having drama here. So if you're not good at drama, 01:16:00you're going to come over--you're going to come across as dull. By the way, that is a difference, with television where you can actually watch it, and no television, where you read about it in the newspaper. I mean there's always been a certain drama in politics. I think Jimmy Walker, didn't he--the mayor of New York. Didn't he do tap dancing or--?

Meeker: The Gentleman Jimmy Walker! The nightclub mayor.

Brown: You've always got to have a certain amount of showbiz, so Arnold had that.

Shafer: Hmm. What did you, I mean he did the whole--we're going to blow up the boxes and are going to get rid of the car tax, which caused a big hole in the

Brown: Yeah, but nobody knew what that was all about.

Shafer: But did you, as someone who was a student of government, someone who'd been in government, think this guy is really simplistic?

Brown: No.

Shafer: Really?

Brown: No, because, first of all, this budget is very remote. Very few people understand the damn budget--very few, even in government. So the fact that he says blow up the--no, I certainly didn't think he was going to blow up the boxes. I saw that as rhetorical, because are you going to blow up the Fish & Game [California Department of Fish and Wildlife]? Are you going to blow up the police? The highway patrol? Are you going to blow up the finance department? No. In fact, government has a structure, so if there's a discontent, you want to say we're going to do zero-based budget or we're going to blow up the boxes. Oh, those are nice things to say, but the inertia of government is overwhelming.

Shafer: What do you mean by that?

Brown: I mean it tends--what is done, tends to continue to be done.

Shafer: By the bureaucracy?

Brown: Well--unless you're going to reinvent everything. I mean do you wake up in the morning and say, "I think I'm going to try on a new identity. I'm going 01:18:00to change my name, I'm going to do the--." No, you have continuity rather than change--unless there's a crisis.

Meeker: So when the recall gets on the ballot, do you think here's the citizens of the state of California going a little crazy again? Or do you think that this was an appropriate--?

Brown: I don't think in those terms.

Meeker: No?

Brown: It just was. I can't remember how I--it was kind of amazing, because it had never happened before.

Meeker: So at least there was some surprise that okay, here's something new?

Brown: Yeah, well it's a big surprise.

Shafer: Right--and also right around this time you closed We the People, I think, and you moved in with Anne.

Brown: Well, she had lived at We the People. She'd already moved in.

Shafer: But you moved somewhere--you moved together.

Brown: Moved to 27th and Telegraph.

Shafer: Yeah. What difference did having a consistent relationship like that--?

Brown: Oh, I mean it's just the difference between not having a consistent 01:19:00relationship. I mean I don't know what--

Shafer: Your sister has told me that if you had married her earlier, you would have been president.

Brown: Well, that's probably true. But she wouldn't have wanted to marry me probably, or I didn't want to get married. So I don't know. I can't speculate on that. Definitely makes a difference. It's been, it's always been, it's been very exciting, very--it's been good in every sense. So we've been working together very closely.

Shafer: She challenges you a lot?

Brown: I don't think she challenges me. She cooperates with me. [laughter] But that's in part--I mean we're not stuck in opinion for no good reason. If someone has a, if you have a, say--I can think of something. And if she says, "Now, wait a minute." Well, okay, if she's right, she's right. She's very flexible. I don't 01:20:00want to use the phrase, I don't like the phrase evidence based, but we do look at reality--what is the nature of the case? So that makes for so you can work out things--you don't have to have too many disputes. And a sense of what's important and what isn't. So some people get very excited about silliness--we like this table, [tapping table] but we don't like that table, so let's really fight about it. Well, we don't do that. We generally agree. I mean when we talked about what kind of a car are we going to get, you know, all electric--well, we got a partially electric car. But she wanted this car. I didn't. I said, "Well, I don't know. We should be getting a different car." But after a while--fine. It turns out, we were hauling a bunch of stuff the other day, and I said, "You're right. We needed a car with a lot of room in the back." 01:21:00[laughing] So, I've learned. I think neither one of us are so stuck that we get hung up on things in a way that would cause friction. There's not much friction.

Shafer: Yeah. You said you don't like the phrase evidence based. Why?

Brown: Uh--because I don't think--they talk about we want courses, we want methods, that are evidence based. Okay, I don't think there's that much evidence based, like on--rehabilitation is a big evidence based--that's the one. Since you don't know the difference between right and wrong, get evidence. So we'll have science tell us. But usually in social science, there's a lot of slippage. It's not like two plus two equals four or gravity falls so many feet per second per second. And therefore, I think you have to formulate what you want to do and 01:22:00not wait for some evidence based. Although you have to see if something is working.

I like the idea of getting the facts, but I think there's a certain fetishizing of what people think are evidence--think is evidence. I don't think we always know. What is the evidence-based way of having a childcare center? Everything is now referable to something that they call evidence. (a) I don't think the evidence is that conclusive, and (b) I think human intuition and artistry has to play a big role in things while we should be assessing the facts as best we can, so it's not an either/or.

By the way, I just want to say I do have some reluctance always emphasizing data, because we're just collecting a lot of data--and schools particularly. On the other hand, data is how you figure out things, like climate change, like prostate cancer--like a lot of things. Data really does illuminate what's going on. So I just have to leave that there, that data is very important. [laughing] And data can be an obsession. So both those will have to sit together.

Meeker: Oakland has gained a reputation for being a center of violent street protest. It seems like--

Brown: You're talking about the violent crime or the street protests?

Meeker: I'm talking about the protests.

Brown: Okay.

Meeker: And so going back to your second term, in April of 2003, there was a named antiwar protest at the Port of Oakland in which--

Brown: A named--?

Meeker: Well, I mean they called it an antiwar protest. At the Port of Oakland, and streets were shut down.

Brown: Yeah, right.

Meeker: There was a standoff, and the police used what the protesters called excessive force.

Brown: They used what is called less-lethal weapons. That can be--we find out later it can be lethal.

Meeker: When something like this happens, when a major protest hits the streets, to what extent were you, as mayor, brought in on crafting a civil response to it?

Brown: Well, the police organized the response, and I had confidence in Chief Word. And whether or not--yeah, obviously, we didn't understand. These little 01:25:00bean bags, if they hit you in the chest at a close range, they can kill you. I didn't know that at the time, and I didn't know what the standard was. Later on, I read, I think, the Israelis had perfected these less-lethal weapons. I think maybe Northern Ireland used them, so I got more of a context. And the police, I think, were not very well informed on the whole process. So my focus was always: reduce crime. So this was a whole other police activity, and, I mean, how do you deal with riots? How do you deal with protests like that? I mean I don't think you can just let a group of people take over. You have to keep the business going, and that was the business of shipping.

And basically it passed over--I mean it didn't continue. And Chief Word had 01:26:00enough credibility that it didn't turn into what it might turn into if it happened today. There wasn't the activism as organized, although that was an organized protest. But, in the aftermath, they brought lawsuits. They had a couple meetings of the city council. The police did their after-incident report, although I don't know that they really analyzed it as well as they should have, and we went on. Handling protests did not seem anywhere near the importance of reducing the murder rate and reducing the crime rate. That was what my focus was. I still think that's important.

Meeker: You know, over the five to ten years after that protest, however, these kinds of protests became much more frequent, much more violent.

Brown: After I'd left Oakland.

Meeker: Correct. Yeah.

Brown: We didn't have any more since--we didn't have any of those. There was no Occupy, there was no anarchists in downtown Oakland when I was mayor.

Meeker: So you don't see any continuity between what was--?

Brown: Well, I see there's a group of people. This is another complex phenomenon, is why I don't like to offer opinions on complex social realities. But one guy I remember--I don't know how I got to see him, but somehow I was over at the restaurant workers headquarters. It was there in downtown, before downtown was redeveloped. And I remember talking to him, and he belonged to what he called Olim. That means hereafter--it was this Latino, although we didn't use the word Latino at that time, grouping, and they did stuff.

And then the next thing is he's sitting out under the tree, the oak tree on the lawn out there in front of the city hall. And then the next thing I know Dolores Huerta is saying, "Hey, you'd better go out and talk to that guy." So I go out and talk to him. In fact, I wrote a proclamation celebrating his protest in some way--I can't remember exactly--and I went out and handed it to him, and he cried. He was so moved. And then I told him--I think later, he was a peace and justice advocate. I was at an event at Castlemont High School, and there he was. He was a hired peacemaker of some kind.

What I'm trying to say is this guy was a full-time protest person until he got his job, in a government job there. So there are a lot of people who are 01:29:00available for protesting, and they believe, they--it's called the movement. And this has gotten more--it's more in evidence today. The movement, of course, was very active in the anti-Vietnam days, but then that went away. And now there are new movements. But are there--the Occupys--and then Occupy Oakland, what happened? It didn't go anywhere. They come and they go. And it's very difficult to know how to respond to those protests.

Meeker: Well, you have an ideology, the anarchist ideology, that manifests itself in the black bloc, which became a very visible and destructive element.

Brown: Yeah, is that still around?

Meeker: Yes, absolutely. In Oakland and Portland, and all sorts of places.

Brown: But is it in Oakland or Berkeley recently?

Meeker: I left Oakland, in part, because of it. [laughing] So--

Brown: Okay, so it's not been around, but it could come back.

Meeker: Yeah. I mean it's certainly active in Portland right now.

Brown: Is that right? Oh, about the--homeless or the immigrants?

Meeker: Yeah, there's things going on up there. I guess what I was trying to get at was, in your perch at city hall, as you start to see violence on the streets in terms of protests, what are your interactions with the police? Are you working with them to develop--

Brown: Well, let me give you an interaction: I think on the Oakland urban warfare. I think that was it, not the military school, but I'm not sure. There were protests. I was in my office, and the protesters were trying to break in. And John Betterton, who was my chief of staff, was there. And he hid in the closet in the mayor's office, and I held the door. But I couldn't hold it--they 01:31:00pressed in, and they were right in my office. It just so happened that the police were having a meeting in my outer office, so then they stormed in and they dragged these people out and down the sidewalk. And then that evening KPFA calls and they said, "We want to talk to you about this thing." I said, "I'll be glad to talk to you." And then they switch me on a live--to a guy in jail. [laughter] And so we had a debate on KPFA about whether we handled them with excessive force, and I maintained we did not. Yeah, I was there--I was holding the guy back. And so I guess it took some force. They were using force, and the police used force. Now, whether it was too much, I question that.

So yeah, I do think order is very important. And protest has a place, but if you get too much turbulence, it reminds me of Weimar Germany, and I don't want to see the Brownshirts fighting with the Bolsheviks. The antifa fighting with the 01:32:00anarchists, or whatever those right-wing people are--or the right-wing people, whatever. If you get too much of that, you will get an authoritarian response, and I think we're flirting with that in some ways in the United States.

[technical interruption asking Gov. Brown to repeat the story about the protestors at his office door because he knocked the microphone while telling it]

Yeah, okay. Well, I was in the office, and these protestors broke into the office, and I was in my own office, and they were pushing on the door, and I was trying to lock the door, but I didn't get it locked, so I was just holding it, and they were able to push in--and they stormed in the office. And one of my people working for me, John Bennerton ran and hid in the closet before they got in. [laughing] So it was just me, and I think Jacques was there. And somehow it worked out, and then the police came. And nothing got too bad, but that was my experience with protest, and then the allegation that there was excessive force. 01:33:00But I find it very hard to take the notion of excessive force when someone actually forced the door open against my attempt to stop them from doing that. I thought well, force seems to be what is in evidence today.

So I do make the generalization that this disorder in the streets can reach a point where people will seek a so-called strongman. We certainly see that in the Philippines. It may be different, but we see something like that in Brazil. Trump has those characteristics. And it could go even more authoritarian if chaos and anarchy seems to threaten ordinary people.

Meeker: So when you've got the Proud Boys fighting against the antifa, or the 01:34:00Brownshirts fighting against the Bolsheviks, what's the appropriate response of a city mayor working with the police chief?

Brown: Well, I think you've got to create order. And I know the left position is that it's always the Right's fault or the police's fault. And the fact is, you've got to find a way to chill people out. It's not just at the riot, but before that. You've got to find a way of draining the hostility, whether it's the right or left; you've got to calm them down. If the streets is where the action is, then somebody's going to do it--it'll have to be the army or whatever. People are not going to stand for widespread continuing disorder. Maybe in Berkeley, maybe in Oakland for a while, but eventually, through the democratic process, you're going to get somebody who says, "I'll take care of that."

Meeker: Like after the port protest, was there any attempt by city hall to 01:35:00ameliorate those concerns, and therefore defuse the situation going forward?

Brown: Well, I know there were protests. There were meetings of the city council, and the seats were all filled, and there was a lot of talk about it. But I think--just over time, other issues come along. So that's the point. And the press has to have new news. News is what hasn't happened. So that protest--that happened. After a couple weeks there's something else going on, and then something else beyond that. So if you find a way to wait it out or somehow alleviate the sharp feelings, then it goes away. At least I think that's what happened. Now, did we do anything in the police department? I certainly met with the police and said, "Guys, you've got to train yourselves to deal with 01:36:00protesters." I was very concerned. I did not want another one of those to happen. And as far as I know, another one didn't happen.

Meeker: Well, not during your time there, but certainly a lot of these happened after the fact.

Brown: Right.

Meeker: With the Oscar Grant protests and Occupy Oakland and--

Brown: Right. That all happened afterwards.

Meeker: Yeah, did you follow that very closely? Was that something you were interested in?

Brown: I followed it, but, you know, it's hard to know. All these stories are the police did something, somebody dies, and you have two sides. And the police have their view. And the police are going after criminals, so I think you've got to give them a certain amount of weight. A lot of weight. On the other hand, because of the racial divisions, there is a lot of feeling in the black community and perhaps the more liberal community--maybe in the Latino community 01:37:00as well--that they're being treated differently and unfairly, and that is a very widespread belief.

I reflected on the fact that when I would do house meetings in running for mayor in 1998, and I would do it--I didn't have as many, they were harder to schedule. But we did have some meetings in the black community, in what you'd call middle-class housing, mostly in East Oakland. Invariably, the theme would be, "We need more police protection. We don't feel safe." But at the same meeting, usually a black gentleman would stand up and say, "But, the police--I was stopped." And he would give his story about how he was treated disrespectfully and unfairly by the police. So we got both messages: we need more police 01:38:00protection and, by the way, the police are harassing African-American men. So we had both those stories, and that's why I think being a mayor and being a police chief, being a policeman--it takes a lot of training and a certain amount of luck to avoid greater problems.

And probably a lot better training. I often wondered, why do the police have to get all their gear and their helmets and all that stuff--couldn't we have some unarmed, very clever police individuals that could go grab somebody in the crowd and extract them? I thought couldn't you do that? But the police don't like to 01:39:00take off their guns and like to have their helmets. I often thought if they were trained enough, they should move quickly and grab the people who are violating the law and threatening to throw bricks, and what have you. But that idea has not gone any further. But it's one I've entertained.

I did talk to the police. I can't remember exactly what the outcome, but like all these things, you can have an idea, you can have a story, you can have somebody say something in the newspaper. And when you try to go to an institution that is very structured, and they say, "Now we're going to change things." When you say we--who's we? Are you going to have training sessions? Are you going to have off-sites? Are you going to have all seven hundred people in the police department--hell, that's going to take years. Who are going to be the experts that come in and do it? Are you going to lose interest after six months? 01:40:00Modifying behavior is never that simple--for oneself. I mean you add ten people, much less five hundred people, it becomes very difficult. Then when you have a whole police force or a city, things just don't change that much. Now, I know maybe that doesn't sound upbeat enough. But I do think we have to recognize the continuities that exist, and when there's enough of a threat, you can respond. In a crisis, you can sometimes do things you couldn't otherwise do.

Shafer: What role do you think race plays in these incidents of police use of force or deadly force?

Brown: Well, I think race plays a big part. Race is very obvious. There are strong identities. The policemen have their--what you might call their blue identity. They see the us and them. They're dealing with criminals all the time. 01:41:00They don't stop, usually, driving down the street and say what a fine fellow you are. They're usually stopping because there's a problem. And a lot of the interactions are with minorities, with African Americans as well as Latinos. And that creates, that does create a sense--and historically, there have been deeply racial prejudices in the police departments.

Shafer: And racial profiling is just part of that? Driving while black, that kind of thing?

Brown: Well, that's a whole other question about profiling and--you know, crime is not even across all neighborhoods. There is more crime in some neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods. This is a fact. So you're going to have more police deployment. If you want to look at the murders, murders in Oakland, there are 01:42:00very few white people that are murdered. They're mostly African American, like 75 percent. Mostly just--gang killings or murders of one kind or another. So this is a fact. Now, there's just a lot of racial history, racial violence, racial prejudice, the police misconduct--all of that. It's just is what it is, and you have to work through it as best you can.

And so now, what's the answer? The answer is data, and to collect data. So when you stop people, you write down--what is the perceived identity? And do you think this person is black, a Latino, Arab, transgender, nonbinary, man, woman, how old? And you write that down, and that takes you a couple minutes, and then that is coded. Hopefully, you have a computer in your car and it goes right in, 01:43:00and it becomes part of the massive database. Then six months or a year later, people come--and let's look at this. And lo and behold, you have more black people in that database than white people. Okay, then now the argument begins. What's going on? And we're still in that process. I remember we did collect data--boxes of data have been written down. And, I was told--I never really checked into it--that no one looked at those boxes. The person who was supervising it became an expert in racial profiling. And he is, to this day, an expert that you hire to come in and help formulate your racial-profiling program, which any way you look at it is to collect data, to develop certain principles.

But if you're going to go to Oakland, and you want to stop street 01:44:00prostitution--okay, well, I mean drive around. You're not going to go up to Montclair. [laughing] You're just not. So I don't know what you have to say--but even to talk about it is problematic--any good politician would be well served not to discuss it, because it's not that easy to talk about. There are very strong emotions on all sides.

Shafer: I want to change the subject a little bit. You, during the--I think it was during your second term, changed party--or you had been, I think, registered as an independent or no party preference?

Shafer: And then you switched back to the Democratic Party.

Brown: Yeah.

Shafer: Like--did the party change? I mean because you left because you were disenchanted with it?

Brown: Yeah, I thought that we needed a real change/shake up. But when I'm running for office, I knew you can't run as an independent, and that was a nonstarter.

Shafer: For attorney general.

Brown: For attorney general.

Shafer: So it was a more pragmatic decision.

Brown: Well, I mean we're not in the business of failure. I don't know what that means--pragmatic. To do anything else would be totally foolish, and would be not 01:45:00the decision of any person who had any knowledge or experience about the process. So it wasn't open as a free idea--oh, let's think about running on Peace and Freedom Party, or let's think about just being an independent. There may come a time when that works, but it wasn't going to work for that office at that time.

Shafer: But you know, some people might see that episode of changing, and then changing back, as just--you know, opportunistic.

Brown: Well, everything is--what's the opposite of opportunistic?

Shafer: I guess just being--accepting what happens.

Meeker: Altruistic, perhaps?

Brown: Just not knowing, just not looking at consequences. I don't know what that means. So if you're astute, and you do something that works, then you frame it with the pejorative word opportunistic. But if you do something stupid and completely fail, then we just call you a fool. [laughter] So somewhere between 01:46:00fool and opportunistic, I hope I can follow a wise, enlightened path.

Shafer: Fair enough. [to Meeker] Do you want to move on to AG?

Meeker: Well, let's round up the Oakland mayor story. I think, as you approach the end of your time as mayor, you had had this reputation--and if you look at all of the media when you're running for mayor, that reputation comes back, the flaky Governor Moonbeam kind of thing.

Brown: What--when I was running the first time?

Meeker: Right.

Brown: Well, luckily, there was very little media in that campaign.

Meeker: No, no! You got 60 Minutes; Lesley Stahl came out and did a whole thing on you.

Brown: Oh, she did that. That's true.

Meeker: So, I mean that was part of it. The New York Times covered you. There was a lot of interest in your return as mayor, and part of that discussion--

Brown: And she covered that house in West Oakland.

Meeker: Right, yeah, when you were walking.

Brown: And I determined I was going to fix that house. It took about four years.

Meeker: But you did?

Brown: I did. Now it's rented out. But it's very challenging to--you know, because of the receiver. And I called the receiver. I said, "Where are you? What's going on here?" And they couldn't get a bid and--you know, it's not that easy. These things are because there are multiple factors contributing to the way things have turned out. And now to reverse that, you really have to bring to bear a lot of force, and I could do that on a few things where I could personally intervene. I knew that--yeah, I think a lady from San Jose owned that apartment. I think I called her, and then there was some court monitor, and he had his own idea of what he wanted to do--and I had my ideas. And then we got 01:48:00another court monitor--I can't remember how it all worked out--but fixing up an apartment at the particular neighborhood is not a really hot property--maybe now, but it wasn't then. So it becomes--they have to get the money. I can't even remember how they got the money.

But the people who own the properties aren't putting money into them because they're not making that much money, and people trash the lawn or whatever, and so fighting back is difficult. Just like--what happened to Detroit? What happened to Baltimore? What happened to the South Bronx? What happened to East and West Oakland? Reversing all that--it just grows, year after year after year, and then all of a sudden, oh my God, what's going on? And for the most part, but not all, Silicon Valley just brought in billions and billions that was put into 01:49:00the hands of all these people, and they started moving and buying and spending. And now this is where we are. And it'll be something--who knows where Silicon Valley--that may be a bubble. It may pop, and then it'll slow down, and who knows how it'll all happen. If you look at the main street of Williams, it's not what it was a hundred years ago. [laughter] And I said today, even Colusa, I'm told Colusa had a shoe store. There's no shoe store in Colusa today. So the world is in constant motion.

Meeker: Colusa has Amazon now, so they've got a shoe store.

Brown: Yeah, but they don't have a movie theater that's operating, just like Monte Rio has a movie theater that's a Quonset hut, but it doesn't show any movies.

Meeker: So by the end of your term, two terms as mayor, does it seem like to you 01:50:00that your reputation has changed in the eyes and minds of Californians? Have you finally graduated from the Governor Moonbeam moniker?

Brown: Well, I don't know how Fox News would cover it. But I think my time as Oakland mayor was successful. It coincided with a rising wealth. Of course I got out of town before the collapse in '08, and I was able to wait it out as attorney general. I actually went against Countrywide and did different things. And then when I ran for governor, the recovery had already started--and the recovery hasn't stopped. So I've had a certain charmed life when it comes to 01:51:00political choices.

Meeker: After you finished your term as mayor--is there something that you would have hoped that people would have learned about you and what was important to you?

Brown: No. I don't think people are paying a lot of attention to me. I'm flattered that you're here asking me all these questions. But I hope somebody reads all this. Maybe fifty years from now, but things--I'm very impressed with the flow of events. And yes, I remember Oakland, and I remember being very excited every time there was a new apartment or condominium being built I said, "Wow! This is really something. A new restaurant is opening." But then it went on and just became commonplace, and then other things happened. Dellums came, 01:52:00Quan came--and now Libby Schaaf is there. So boy, that just seems like a long time--a long time ago. And even the attorney general, I think it's barely memorable. But that's true of anything. If you ask somebody, "What did you think of the Deukmejian years?" You can't find one in five thousand that could even comment on that! So that's just the way it is, unless there's something really bad--and then people remember that.

Shafer: [President Herbert] Hoover in the Depression.

Brown: Yeah, and he got stuck.

Shafer: What--bad timing. What do you think, as you look back on those years as mayor--?

Brown: By the way, when you say bad timing--we all say that. But that's a profound statement. Could Hoover--you know, if he, if we didn't have that Depression, would he have been elected? We wouldn't have had a [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt.

Shafer: Yeah. No, that's probably true.

Brown: But then I guess that it was going to come sooner or later.

Shafer: That's when your dad switched parties, right?

Brown: Yeah--well, after that, '34 I think. Which, by the way, is an interesting statement, that it took two years for him to change. [laughter]

Shafer: He was not convinced at first?

Brown: [laughing] I don't know. Well, I think the local Republican establishment was strong, and my father was very interested in local politics, so why would you go contrary?

Shafer: Sounds like your decision to switch back to the Democratic Party--practical.

Brown: Well, but I don't understand--are you hypothesizing a parallel universe where reality doesn't intrude, and you have some idealistic set of norms and images? [Shafer laughs] That seems preposterous.

Shafer: When you think back on your eight years, you know, do you have--you probably won't like this question, but like what are you most proud of?

Brown: Yeah, that's a good question. I would say I take the most pleasure in 01:54:00being in this Mountain House, and having restored it after all these many decades. So that, I find--building the house, living here, planting olives--this is, and blending them with the olives that were here 125 years ago--I find that very, I find that enduring. And when we got married, Anne used the Bible that her parents were given by her grandfather, by the name of Baldwin. And he inscribed it, and one of the--it says, "Look to the hills." He's talking about the Bible, and how it isn't power and property, but it's the words of this 01:55:00Bible. And then he has this line, "Look to the hills." And every time I look to that hill out there, I think that this is almost prophetic. [laughing] And I told that to Anne just last night. I said, "Anne, this has been prophesied by your grandfather." And she said that her father said that her grandfather was the closest thing to Jesus Christ that he could imagine. That was her grandfather.

Shafer: That's a statement.

Brown: [laughing] That's a strong statement! But that's what she said. And so we talked about that sitting out there in the shadow--not the shadow, because the sun was going down. So now, if you talk about what--We'll have to see. You know, if that high-speed rail ever gets going, and people riding on that would be quite a--that would be something real.

Shafer: Yeah, what about as mayor, your eight years as mayor?

Brown: Well, there's the restoration of Oakland as a viable and attractive 01:56:00place, but I'm very aware that the surrounding economy very much did that. I anticipated that, and I helped encourage it. I mean I like the fact that when I was mayor that Whole Foods was there. That was a big boost. You know, because to go from driving Trader Joe's around and striking out, and then to getting Whole Foods--and then a couple years later, after I'm mayor, Trader Joe's has two openings--two places. So it was changing. But remember, it was just a few years before that Safeway was leaving the flats, you know? And an economy grocery store came in. Safeway went, and another Safeway store is a church. So it was a growing prosperity, and we didn't have all the problems of the antifa, or whatever that--the Occupy discontent was. So we didn't have that. But I don't 01:57:00know--I always say that people don't write books on governors. They certainly don't write them on mayors--at least books that are read.

Shafer: Teddy Roosevelt.

Brown: Teddy Roosevelt was a president though.

Shafer: Wasn't he mayor of New York?

Brown: No.

Shafer: Or police commissioner. I guess he was police commissioner. Is there anything, when you look, that you came into office really wanting to do that when you left office you felt--you know, you'd fallen short, you were disappointed?

Brown: No, well I would say I'm proud--I would say the--climate change, we really--I was able to keep Mary [D.] Nichols as chair and real continuity in the legislature.

Shafer: But again, I mean with Oakland. Just with--

Brown: Oh, with Oakland?

Shafer: Yeah. Schools?

Brown: Well, the two schools are there. But I think all of that's very much of a work in progress. So I'd say Oakland--it was a great time. I I really liked 01:58:00being mayor. I liked that We the People building. That was interesting. I liked Twenty-Seventh and Telegraph. I liked it more than Anne did. She wanted to move up on the hill, and that was a nice place, but I liked being downtown more. And then I liked--I mean it was finished. That was eight years, now it's time for something else. I didn't think I was going to run for governor. But after four years being a lawyer, I decided I would rather be the client. And the other thing that I'm interested in besides, as governor, is certainly the prison system and improving it. We've done a lot of things in the prison system, both by getting people out sooner, but also trained. We've now had our first class of firefighters that came from prisoners who worked on fires. And that's controversial. A lot of resistance to that. So yeah, those are things that interest me.

Shafer: What--you said you weren't sure you wanted--you didn't know you wanted 01:59:00to run for governor when you were--?

Brown: I didn't.

Shafer: Really?

Brown: I didn't think of that at the time.

Shafer: Huh, I think a lot of the public perception, I think--

Brown: Well, I don't care about--what is the public perception? [Shafer laughs] People who read the Times Literary Supplement? And at times you read the East Bay Express. I mean a different kind of crowd--and the people who don't read either one. They just get their iPhone. So I don't know. There's a lot of--there's public--people don't talk about the public anymore. They talk about publics. They've made it a plural, which I always found rather odd. But I guess it reflects the fragmentation of our time.