Ernest Lee: To described the CCBA, got to trace back to some of the history, because we have 130, over 130, actually over 135 years old. In the old days it was like organizations of basically all the local Chinese. [It] was the place that they can be. They can negotiate, actually they can, they can engage with themselves. Also on an arbitration center, if you will. If they have disputes, they can come to these organizations, and then sometime speak it out, or sometimes fight it out. But, as it progressed, during the Qing dynasty turn of the event, this is the place that Dr. Sun Yat-sen used as the source of revenue to finance the revolution to overturn the monarchy. So, we have a long history of supporting the mainland China’s regime….CCBA, we remain as the Republic of China, the nationalist’s side. And up to this point, we still raise the national flag of the Republic of China, Taiwan, right now. And, so but, from the organization of financing the mainland activities, now we migrated to more like a family gathering organization or social welfare for the local Chinese folk, Chinese American. We also try to retain our heritage and maintain the Chinese education for the younger generation since so they don’t forget all the Chinese language and our heritage and things like that. So it’s more like more like a social organization right now. 

Timestamp: [00:00:33]

Susie Ling: So do you have special interests that are on your agenda that you would like to achieve?

Ernest Lee: Actually one, the biggest one that I ran on my platform is to try to get the [Parking] Lot 45, you know the, that area, to move into, some sort of, getting developers selected and get into the low income housing kind of event…

Susie Ling: So you, on behalf of Chinatown, you feel that low income housing is a critical agenda for the CCBA right now? 

Ernest Lee: Yes, yes. Because that particular plot was the—we have a side organization, a coalition called CCC, L.A. Chinatown Community Coalition…So we’re pushing for some sort of grocery store in that area. The other is some sort of cultural community center. Those are the key elements that we want to see in the project. 

Timestamp: [00:10:31]

Ernest Lee: And we also have a good relationship with the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department]. The LAPD is very important…Some elements in CCCLA, they don’t like LAPD, for whatever reason, they don’t talk to the LAPD. I don’t know. 

Susie Ling: But you feel it’s an important relationship. 

Ernest Lee: For the safety of the neighborhood. 

Susie Ling [00:19:40] So you feel like, as you are the president, it is your job to sort of—

Ernest Lee:  Make sure, yeah, make sure that something happens, this kind of thing happen we make sure that it got, we got noise. Because otherwise, see in Chinatown, a lot of the people, the Chinese philosophy or the way of doing things is, they don’t tell, don’t go to the police, right? Don’t make noises….We’ll deal with it ourselves. Of course we brought up here, I say, you got to make noises. You got an extra big friend with the police. They’ll come and watch you, watch out for you. In fact, that’s what they told us. You’ve got to make friend. Whatever happened, make sure you report it. Once we got the statistics, I can, I can get more people, more police, more patrol, more officers to come to Chinatown. 

Timestamp: [00:18:16]

Susie Ling: Last year, we had a very uncomfortable situation in Monterey Park with the shooting. How did you, as president of CCBA—? 

Ernest Lee: We got into active, pretty fast, because we have three association, right? One is the cemetery committee, and the other is the welfare committee. So the cemetery committee, we can offer them a burial plot, if they’re willing to use it. And the welfare committee can help them with whatever they need. And we team with Chinatown Service Center. Which is why a lot of the medical psychological counseling, that kind of thing, actually from that tragedy, they opened up a, they call it the Resilience Center [MPK Hope Resiliency Center] in Monterey Park. That help people for counseling, any uncomfortable thing they want to talk about. They got some government money.

Susie Ling: That is wonderful because the need was urgent. 

Ernest Lee: Yeah, there’s a lot of need that is not recognized, especially in Chinese, within Chinese community. You know, mental illness is like a taboo…So it’s good that people recognize that. And the government recognized that, give us to open up that center. At that time, we team with, CCBA teamed with Chinatown Service Center, and also the newly founded, I think they called it Chinatown Community Alliance…Three of us, three of us, that actually had a press conference, that announced that we can help the victims of that tragedy. 

Timestamp: [00:25:20]

Susie Ling: So what is the changing role of women in CCBA? 

Ernest Lee: We do have, as you look at the pictures, Mei [Wah] Lau was the first female president. Actually, when she was the president, I was the vice president [laughs]. So, for the supervisors, we do have like several female. So I think the female we recognize the need for female to be equal part of the [association]. For me, I have no problem with that. But for the older folks, I think [laughs]. I think that they still have some, they will not say [they] don’t like it, but they will say, “Let the men do it first.” Because, you look at all the family associations. A lot of the family associations still run by men. The women will have a women’s club. They put all the women on one side. You guys go through, deal with the singing, dancing, cooking, that kind of thing. And normal business will be run by the men. We’re slowly, slowly changing that. Some of the association they allow female president. So it’s slow. It’s a slow, slow, slow progress.

Timestamp: [00:27:49]

Susie Ling: Do you think that CCBA also needs to reach out to our Latino neighbors or African American neighbors? What, how do you feel about that? 

Ernest Lee: Not in the near and foreseeable future, because we have our bylaws that is pretty much  established that only the Chinese is—our mission is to push for Chinese culture, heritage, get better for Chinese American. So in order to reach out for other ethnic area, we got to really think about it. I don’t see, we probably need some major change of the bylaw. Which is probably very difficult to do that right now. People more, right now, involved with getting the communist and nationalist work together as a One China initiative. Right now is that Taiwan and mainland fighting with each other kind of thing, and that, we have some sort of like conflict within ourselves. So we probably want to deal with that before we start reaching out. 

Timestamp: [00:30:59]

~~~~~~~

Susie Ling: So, where do you think CCBA will be in 50 years? 

Ernest Lee: In 50 years? Oh god, that’s—I don’t want to guess [laughs]. I think as long as the, I think the organization’s probably still will be here as the CCBA. Whether it retain all the family association or increase, I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I would say that it will not go away. This is our roots. The root for the—we call it the traditional American Chinese. This is the older, older generation, if you will. 

Timestamp: [00:33:12]

~~~~~~~

Ernest Lee: Chinatown is always, always feel like home. It is our home base, even though we now live in Monterey Park and go all over the place. But when we come to Chinatown, it’s still, it is our home. And it’s too bad, I can see it, the face is changing. A lot of the shops are no longer there, they’re even vacant or took over by another non-related business. 

Timestamp: [00:40:26]

Link to Ernest Lee Full Transcript Interview Transcript