ExclusiveFighting Crime with Kindness: Corny or Real? | Tom Tait

None of this I could have predicted. None of it, it's beyond anything I could have predicted. It all goes back to Dr. Jajewski and he says in medicine you either treat the symptoms or you could stimulate the body to heal from within ballistically. I think the same principle applies to a city. You either treat the symptoms or you could stimulate the city to heal from within and he says I think that's something to do with kindness. It was a light bulb moment. We should change the culture in our city so we're a kinder city, one of kindness. It wasn't a city hall thing. This is about the people taking control and changing their culture. The Dalai Lama, he had heard about it. He had invited my wife and I to meet in India. People get connected through acts of kindness. That's the mortar that holds the bricks together. It creates a community, it creates a neighborhood and I got the idea from a six-year-old who saw it clearly. We're Tom, it's great to have you on. Welcome back. It's great to be back. We want to talk to you about an important topic that we didn't cover with you last time. It's kindness and you were former mayor of Anaheim and you made the city the city of kindness. Can you tell us what you did there? Well, probably the best way is I can start how I came about this idea. Start from the beginning for me politically. I was actually appointed to the city council back in 1994 and I served for 10 years on the city council. I never thought I'd run for office but because of circumstances at that time I got appointed and then when I was in I ran for re-election. In 2004, so I'm about to finish my term and I've got to leave office and I thought I was done with politics and I noticed around town that these signs were going up that said, simply said make kindness contagious and it didn't say having to do with buying something or some sort of commercial thing. It just said make kindness contagious. I remember seeing that and I remember how it just lifted me up. Multiple signs or just one? Multiple signs and my wife called me and says a friend of hers called her and said I think Tom should meet this guy who's putting these signs up around town. I scheduled a time on my council days and his name was Dr. Jajewski and he came into my office. I remember it like it was yesterday and he came in and just had a lot of energy. He's from Argentina and he had that energy. It reminded me of that movie Life is Beautiful, the actor in that, if you remember that. Just big energy. He came in and he told me a story about his daughter, Natasha, his little six-year-old daughter who had died in a car accident, tragically died that summer before. He found all these beautiful things that Natasha had written about kindness as a little six-year-old. How the community came out and said when other kids were playing video games or whatever, Natasha was always writing and talking about kindness. Dr. Jajewski says, he's a holistic doctor, in medicine you can either treat the symptoms or you can stimulate the body to heal from within holistically. He says I think the same principle applies to a city. You either treat the symptoms or you could stimulate the city to heal from within. He says I think that has something to do with kindness. Probably because I had 10 years of sitting on that city council and I was contemplating how the city hasn't really changed much in any kind of deep way since when I started until I finished. It was a light bulb moment where when you hear the truth, you know it. I knew that had to be something deeper. I know also from business that it's all about culture. Why is one business worth more than another business? Why is it more valuable? Why is Nordstrom's different from Macy's? Same ball, one's at one end, one's at the other. Seem like they're kind of the same stuff, but why do you gravitate towards one and not the other? Culture creates value in business and creates what a business is. Successful businesses have successful cultures. Those that don't, don't. I knew culture is important and I thought well if you could change the culture of a city, just like a CEO can of a business, and why not a mayor for a whole city? Have something to do with it anyway. If we could create a culture of kindness where everyone's a little kinder, then I think everything gets better. So that idea came to you when you were terming out? Yes, the idea from Dr. Javsken, this idea of holistically healing the city with a culture change. From within, from the culture change. I did not want to get back to politics, but this idea I could say pulled at me. I think it was having to do with my purpose. I think I prayed to God because I really didn't want to do it, but I felt I had to. It's kind of one of those things if I don't do it and run on this platform of kindness, no one's going to do it and it's just not going to happen. So I felt I had to. Being mayor is different from being on the city council. One thing being mayor is you have to do a lot of public speaking. I had this terrible fear of public speaking. I know a lot of people do, but I had it terribly bad. So you're an engineer, right? Well, actually, no. I run an engineering business, but I'm not an engineer. I always try to avoid situations where I'd have to even give a toast or anything like that. So I'd overcome that fear to do it. So I actually joined Toastmasters because I thought I've got to do that. And also fear of ridicule. I thought running on a platform of kindness, people are going to not think I'm serious, maybe make fun of it. At that time, the word kindness just wasn't even used much. Dr. Jayofsky, I think, kind of brought it through Natasha, kind of found this beautiful word and brought it out. Dr. Jayofsky says kindness is much different from being nice. And actually, they're very different. And he says there's love behind kindness. And kindness is doing something for someone else with no expectation return, helping somebody else. Where nice is really you're doing something for somebody who likes you. So it's very self-centered. Kindness is other-centered. Just putting it out there. No expectation for anything. No expectation. It just really gets to what love is. And so there's love behind kindness. When you had this idea, you were concerned that people might, you might face some ridicule. Yes. Did you talk to some friends? And how did that go? It wasn't typical. I mean, typically you run on issues. And I call it symptoms. And part of this was, you know, on the council, I felt after 10 years that I had been treating symptoms. As I mentioned, you know, you either treat the symptoms or stimulate the city to heal from within. And symptoms, I really felt after 10 years is kind of the whack-a-mole game of symptom treating. Crime goes up. Hire more police. You know, things like bullying at schools. Things like senior loneliness and neglect. Things like that, that the city's working on, that you're really just putting Band-Aids on things. So when I decided to run, I had overcome the fear of public speaking, fear of ridicule. And I talked to some of my friends and they thought, that's kind of, you know, I think they thought I was a little, a little crazy for running on this platform. Kindness. But I felt I was pulled to this idea. And I really had to do it. So my first campaign event, I remember I was standing up there and someone asked why I'm running. And I'm like, okay, here goes. And I said, you know, I think it's, I think we want to, we should change the culture in our city. So we're a kinder city. One of kindness. And I said, I think when that happens, everything will get better. And I saw people in the audience, like nodding their head in agreement. And afterwards I talked to some of them. They said, you know what, we all think that something deeper needs to happen, the way that we govern and the way that we are. So anyway, so that was my first, okay, I think I'll, you know, I think people get this. So I ran on that platform and I ended up winning by a lot. And then once I was in office, you know, so I get elected and I think this probably happens a lot. So now I'm mayor and I ran on this platform of kindness, you know, now what do I do? I had to come up with some, some things, some policies and things like that. So the first thing we came up with was this idea of, we called it High Neighbor. And actually I kind of, I borrowed that from back in the fifties in Anaheim, when Anaheim was a small town and growing so fast. I think it was a Lions Club that had a program called High Neighbor. Neighbors getting to know each other because everyone was moving in so fast. This massive growth in Southern California. And I thought I'm going to have a High Neighbor program because part of our problem in Southern California is so many people, it is relatively new. And then we also, it's designed around the automobile, around the car. We come home from work or whatever, and we pull in the garage, close the garage door, backyard, big fences around the yard. And we're to ourselves, as opposed to maybe other parts of the country, where it's maybe is designed around older, maybe you have front porches, people walking in the neighborhoods. So those neighborhoods are more connected. So I thought, you know, we need a little more help here. We have to be mindful of connecting. So I started this High Neighbor program. But it's very important. You know, there's very important civic reasons to be connected in your neighborhood. And actually, and people get connected through acts of kindness, if you think about it. That's what, that's the mortar that holds the bricks together, that creates a community, it creates a neighborhood, creates that resiliency that we need. So it's very important for community policing, you need to know that if you see a van pulled up three doors down, you should be able to call your neighbor and say, is that your van? Or maybe, you know, hopefully, it's not somebody ripping you off. And if it is, then that person calls the police. And so that's a big component of community policing. And it's important. Our police chief at the time told me, he says, you know, criminals will know intuitively whether a neighborhood's well connected, and people are looking out for one another. So it's important that way. But also, you know, I remember when I was mayor, there was a tragically, there's a middle school kid who was killed, who was tagging, part of a tagging gang. And he was he was murdered by a rival gang. And I thought, you know, maybe when he was 10, or 11, and he's in that neighborhood, and maybe somebody, maybe his parents are working a couple shifts, and maybe someone in the neighborhood tapped him on the shoulder and said, Hey, you're going in the wrong direction, and maybe help mentor him back, or kept an eye on him. And so I know when I was a kid, growing up, I cared about my parents, what they thought about me, but I also cared about the neighbor, you know, Mrs. Rudy down the street, who is keeping an eye on me. So that's part of being in a neighborhood and keeps keeps us all safer. And we look out for one another. So it's important for those reasons, those those, you know, I guess we'll call it public safety reasons, but also, you know, for, for emergency response. So, you know, here in Southern California, and we're one day closer to that big earthquake, or, or, or whatever, if we're not connected in our neighborhood, in our community, when those things happen, we're in deep trouble. So you know, what we're going to have to know that in five doors down is is a family of five. And I think sometimes, local governments say, Hey, you know, just, we'll take care of everything, we'll have the fire department, we'll get there, we'll help. But when those big disasters, there's not enough firefighters or police officers, not even close to enough. And they might be at the hospitals or something. So it's gonna be neighbor helping neighbor. And you have to know in your neighborhood that, that, you know, that Joe has a construction company or, or Mary Mary's a physician, you know, there's five, you know, five doors down that way, or whatever it is. And those connections have to be made before that disaster happens. If they're not, then we'll be very fragile. People will come out of their homes and not know what to do. But if they're connected, we'll be able to help on those emergency situations, not help, but actually take care of things. And you see that in certain communities around the country, that how they respond. Yeah, people know each other, the neighbors know each other, they kind of connect. But here, somehow, we don't have that. Here, we're challenged. I spoke back in Washington, as mayor about this idea of resiliency, and to folks at Homeland Security, because they're interested in how you create a more resilient country. And it's just, again, it's one of the things that gets better with kindness. One of the, you know, many, many things that get better is that it creates that, that resiliency. So it's important for policing, it's important for emergency response. But also people are just happier when they live in a community where they care for their neighbors, and they know their neighbors care for them. And you can, you know, you talk to people live in those communities. One thing when you're, you know, you run for office, you walk a lot of neighborhoods and knock on doors and meet people. And some neighborhoods are neighborhoods where someone could win the lottery, and they're not moved from that neighborhood, because it's where their community is, and they love it. And other people might, you know, if they don't have that, might want to look for the next, you know, move out for any reason. So people, when they live in one of those neighborhoods, and it's connected by kindness, that's what does it, they're just happier. And how did that program work? How did you guys do it? Well, a lot of things with when you're mayor, is you have, you have some authority to work with the city council and pass ordinances and things like that, which are effective, their laws. But I think a bigger thing with culture change is, is I, I use the bully pulpit as mayor. So I just talked about it all the time, and got the city start talking about it, and let people know that it's part of your, our civic culture. It's part of our ethos, is that we're going to connect, and we're going to look out for one another. So I just started talking about it all the time. Just like in a business, a CEO, if you want to develop culture, the leaders, if people know it's important to the leader, it becomes, oftentimes becomes important to other people, following that leader. So essentially telling people that you can go talk to your and build a relationship with them, and this is what, this is good for the community. This is, this is who we are, and this is who we are in Anaheim. We changed, actually changed our official motto in the city to City of Kindness. We, we changed the flag to reflect kindness. So things like that, you'll do a lot of it to let people know, hey, the idea is that at the end of the day, the goal was, if you're walking down the street, and when you think about being from Anaheim, that person thinks, okay, I'm from Anaheim, or it's part of my civic duty to be kinder. It's part of our ethos. It's part of who we are as a city. When that happens, I think that chance of that person doing a kind act is a little bit greater. And when that happens, so the way I look at this, I guess maybe because I'm in business, I'd like to think of things on graphs. So if you measure all the interactions in your city every day, millions of them, and if you could label those as either kind or not kind, right, and not kind could be ignoring somebody. So put them on a graph, kind acts up here, not kind acts up here, right? Now, if you could change the culture where the chance of doing something kind is a little bit greater, where the culture changes, then that, you could actually make this go like this. And when it goes like this, literally everything in your city gets better. I've been thinking about this for almost 20 years, and I cannot think of one thing that does not get better if everyone's a little kinder, or you increase the chance of kind acts. Those symptoms I was talking about, public safety, crime, that'll drop. Bullying at schools drops. Senior loneliness. Imagine knocking on a neighbor's door, a widow, who said, come on over for dinner. You can build all the senior centers in the world, and it won't have that kind of effect with neighbors doing things like that. Or someone's teenage kid taking out her trash every week. Things like that creates that strength. Kindness is, it's not that we need studies, but there are all sorts of studies now that prove this. But I think Stanford started a department or a center in their medical school studying the effects of being kind. And it's one of the healthiest things you can do. So not only for your community, but it's good for yourself. It's good for your health. It's like not smoking cigarettes type of differential. UCLA started a department of kindness, studying the effects of kindness. So you're healthier on top of everything else. In business, companies that are kind do better. It helps with creativity, collaboration, all those things that companies are looking for. People feel better about the company. Our company, Tate and Associates, it's an ethos. It's our culture. And I think in the nine years, they have this rating of the best places to work in Orange County. And we've been right at the top of that for the last nine years, like in the top 10. And I attribute a lot of that to the kind people who work there. Now, when you were implementing these and you tried to change the culture of the city, was there a moment you realized this is working? So culture change is, it's a long process. And I knew I'd have to continue to work at it and keep it in the forefront. So the first couple of years was kind of frustrating. In fact, one of my residents came in after a couple of years and said, you know, because the kindness initiative, because the first couple of years, it was like the ships were in port and nothing was happening. But then all of a sudden the sails filled and away they went. And it's kind of the way it felt. So the first two years, talking about it, talking about it, and then people started to get it. Did people take it seriously at the city or did you have challenges with that? They said this new mayor is here and he's going to be gone. Right. And he's talking about kindness all the time. And this is, you know, this is city government and city hall. But yeah, no, it was challenging. Because it's very different, you know, when you have a new mayor coming in with this initiative, right? Compared to that, the way people have been working for many, many years, right? It's very different. And it's not the norm. It's working on culture of the city. And it's not saying, hey, we're city government and we're separate from the people. It's really, this is about the people taking control and changing their culture and being led by city government, or maybe not even led by city government, actually, but being cheerleading, I guess. Getting influenced. Yeah, right. And so you said the couple of years, it was slow and then start taking off. When was the moment you realized that it's taking off or people told you? Is there a moment that you can remember? When I started, it was with my chief of staff. We were talking a lot, like, why isn't this happening quickly? And we determined that the enemy of the whole thing was cynicism. And people just think it's maybe a Pollyannish thing, not a serious thing. But what it really took off is I met with the Anaheim City School District Superintendent. And she was a new superintendent and she came into my office and she says, you know, how can we help you on your kindness initiative? So we thought about it and said, how about we do a million acts of kindness in our Anaheim schools? And Anaheim Elementary School District has about 25 schools, K through six. And at the time, Jose Moreno was the president of the school board. And so we decided to do a million acts of kindness, not required and not even, but asked the principals if they would lead it. And almost all of them did decide to sign up. They didn't have to if they didn't want to, but almost all of them did. And then they did like a kind of a Google spreadsheet and started tallying. Each school had about a goal of about 45 or 50,000. And each kid did about 50. Well, just one time we're going to hit a million. And so when that started happening, the kid, cause the kids got it. And the kids, those kids are not cynical. They understand the power of this thing. It's kind of interesting cause it, well, the idea originally came from Natasha Tayefsky, a little six year old, but the kids really drove this. And so they're doing kind acts at a school and at home and we didn't write them down. They would say, okay, this is what I did today or tell the teacher and the teacher would tabulate them. So it wasn't anything real formal. We didn't study any of this stuff. We didn't have to do a double blind experiment or anything cause we didn't care about that. Cause we all, we knew things would get better. But anecdotally, I've, I've, I talked to principals and I said, you know, the, the instances of bullying went way down. Calls to the principal for that just kind of fell, fell off the table. Suspensions district wide, uh, cut in half. Wow. We didn't study grades or things like that, but they all get, we all know they all get better. Everything gets better. Uh, when, when people are in school that, uh, kids care for one another. And then they started to come up with ideas. One school came up with this idea of a buddy bench. If you're by yourself, you sit on the bench and the, and someone will come up, play with, ask you to play with their group or have lunch with them or things like that. Beautiful things that the kids came up with. So anyway, and that spread, I think, to the families and where it really got the city understanding it. I learned if you want to, uh, uh, really have culture change, you need to have the schools engaged in and really get it. And we're really fortunate at Anaheim that the schools really jumped on board. Was there a moment you realized this is hitting families? How did you, how did you find that out? I would hear from people. There was one kid who, uh, I was at the barbershop, get my hair cut and he was waiting. And he had, uh, found out I was a mayor and, uh, I gave out these coins and said, city of kindness. And he hit one of these coins. Anyway, he turned, it turned out that he started a group and he started raising money. Uh, when a few years later in high school for, to raise money for instruments for kids. And I think he raised like 20, $30,000 for it. So just things that you couldn't predict. I, at first people would maybe, I would get people coming to me with asking for permission to do something. And I said, you don't have to, you know, this isn't a city led thing. What kind of things? Someone had asked about like a trash pickup program. And I said, you don't, you don't need to ask me for that. It's not that you need permission to do that. So actually they ended up doing a beautiful job, started something called, uh, um, green birds picking up trash. Uh, they would meet every once a month, group of people come to come together, pick up trash around town, litter, things like that. Another guy started something called love Anaheim and kind of through churches, things like that, uh, doing community service projects. The, uh, high school started a service on day. Uh, superintendent there started something. A lot of churches started, um, programs. We did, uh, another program that we did a program called coming home Anaheim. That was essentially, um, getting all the churches that were all throughout the city who were working on who wanted to do something, but didn't know what we got in coordinated. And we hired a group called city net, which was basically about four people. And they would interview, um, uh, people who were homeless and they would present and have a creative file on them. And they would present a meet every couple of weeks with all the churches and say, we've got, you know, Joe here and he's from Phoenix and he hasn't, uh, seen his family in five years and he's homeless and he might have an addiction. And then in church might be raise their hand, said, we'll take them. And they just take that person in and get them apartment or whatever, or maybe, you know, help them reunite them with their family all from all through pure kindness. So that little program coming home, Anaheim, uh, I think about a thousand people were, uh, who were homeless were no longer homeless through just the kindness, coordinating the kindness of the people in our city. Wow. So it's beautiful. People in So essentially what it looks like as you guys develop this program, people first, first didn't essentially didn't, they might not have believed how it could work. And then later on, they kind of started coming out and ask you, what can we do? Yeah. And I think people got it, that it was, it wasn't a city hall thing. It was a people of Anaheim thing. I remember when they had the, um, he had the earthquake, the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We have a sister city there, Mito, Japan. And, um, some kids, uh, put together under the kindness, this kindness idea, uh, what can we do? That would be kind. And they thought about, you know, raising money, but then they thought, you know, what we could do is write letters to them. And so the kids in the schools started writing letters of support, uh, to kids in Mito. And one of our residents took suitcases full of letters to Mito, Japan at their worst moment of letters from our kids to their kids. And I talked to the mayor there, uh, a year later. And he said that meant so much to their city and Mito that somebody across the world, kids were, uh, were concerned and praying and, uh, and care about them. But, and that came, you know, not had nothing to do with city hall or, but, uh, under this idea of kindness. So essentially you came in, uh, with this idea that was kind of out there and you were intimidated a little bit to run on this idea and then you did it. And then it took a while for it to get implemented. And then it kind of took off from what it looks like it was outside of your control. And where did it go from there? I think this whole kindness, when you're in this space, things just happen and you can't predict it or, or, uh, where I thought it would be is I, I never thought it would go. I just wanted to get, you know, my focus was on Anaheim, but then I, I got the million acts of kindness that the kids had done and had gotten the attention of, of, uh, a gentleman named Lama Tenzin, who's the, the emissary for peace for the Dalai Lama. He had heard about it and I got a call from him. He had invited my wife and I to meet, uh, the Dalai Lama in, in India, in Dharmasala. They were, uh, thinking about, uh, a place for the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday. And because of the, the kindness initiative, uh, they were focusing on Anaheim. So my wife and I went back to, to India and to Dharmasala and met with, uh, uh, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and spent three days with, with him and happened to be, uh, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was there with them. And there, there's a book called the Book of Joy that they were collaborating together on. And so he ended up spending three days with, most incredible three days with the Dalai Lama and, and, uh, Archbishop Tutu talking about kindness and compassion and, and all the, you know, those great issues. And then, uh, the Dalai Lama ended up having his 80th birthday at the Honda Center and that got worldwide attention at, uh, to our kindness initiative. And then, uh, I had asked him if he would speak to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which I was involved with. And, uh, so a couple of years later, he came out and spoke to, uh, 300 mayors, uh, at the U.S. Conference talking about this idea that we're doing in Anaheim. And he believes that the path to world peace can come about if by creating a culture of kindness in our cities, but particular schools. After that, I get a call from the White House, uh, uh, with President Obama. He had put together a task force on, on race relations and community policing. This is when things were very tense in the country. There was rioting and their, their, uh, officers were shot in Dallas, Texas in the country. If you remember, it was very, very tense time. And he had asked me to be on the task force. And I found myself here I am next day. I'm at the White House with a five-hour meeting with, uh, the president and people from Black Lives Matter and people, and head of the International Police Chiefs Association and head of the police, International Police Union. And, uh, talking about here, I'm talking about kindness because really what, what heals people is on that issue is a community, not understanding the humanity of the, of the, uh, police officers and vice versa. Police officers not really understand the community and the way you bridge that gap is through acts of kindness. And we found that in Anaheim with our police department, kind acts is really what brings people together. And do you have any examples on the, on the police side of it? Like where having that culture helped the community? Well, uh, in 2012, we had an officer-involved shooting that led to civil unrest and rioting. And it was a very, uh, uh, challenging time for the city. And I remember as mayor, I thought, you know, there really wasn't a playbook of how you deal with this. And I, and so I thought, well, how would a kind city respond? And that's what, that's what guided me. And a kind city would respond by listening to the community and not just dismissing their complaints. And we had underlying issues of people feeling, uh, hopeless and left out. So, uh, one of the things we did was we started, uh, uh, connecting the police department with the communities. And one of the things we started having barbecues in some of the most challenging neighborhoods with the police department, putting them on and getting to know people as people. And that act of kindness of bringing food is, is a great way to connect. We did, uh, had something called coffee with a cop, uh, where people could get to know their officer. And then I started highlighting all the kind acts, not all of them, cause there's so many, but some of the kind acts of our police officers to our community, because there's, there's so many of them that people don't see. I remember I saw a, around that time in New York city, there's a, a picture that went viral and it was a police officer who had, uh, had gone up to a, um, homeless guy in the snow and had bought him boots, went to the store and bought him boots. And someone snapped a picture of it. And, and it wasn't a PR campaign or anything. It's just someone snapped a picture of it, real moment. And that goes super viral. And I thought, you know, the New York police department could have, they could spend millions of dollars and not gotten that message across. But that one kind act by that one police officer showed what the humanity of the police officers in the community. So I, I, I really, uh, uh, worked on, on showing the community that the police officers, how truly kind they are and, and also back from the police officers from the community. So Tom, this is a very powerful story. You started, you started doing that and you've got the city going. Do you think other cities can do that now? Yes. And it's, it, it is the, uh, I call it the low hanging fruit if you want to change your city. Cause it's, you're looking around to, you know, it doesn't cost anything and you don't have to get funding for it. And I think mayors and leaders in the city don't really, uh, take advantage of their position of using, using the bully pulpit and talking about, uh, this universe, uh, universal values. For example, the, the, the bullying example, rather than saying, you know, having programs that don't bully and things like that, just say, we want everyone to be kinder. We expect everyone to be kinder than everything takes care of itself. So, so I think mayors in particular have a ability to do this, that they don't take advantage of. So essentially just start talking about it, bring it, bring it front of mind rather than, uh, kind of back there. We all have it in us. Um, so I, I think if, if you're in politics, if you're a leader of a city, but you don't have to be a leader of a city, be a leader of, uh, it applies to everybody cause everyone's a leader of something. Uh, be, you'd be a teacher in a classroom. You can have a group of friends, you can be a family, it'd be your neighborhood. And I think the, the first part is start talking about it and then just watch where it goes. None of this, I could have predicted. None of it is, it's beyond anything I could have predicted. But I think when you're in that space and you're, you're talking about it and you're thinking about it, then it opens your mind. And I think, uh, um, it's kind of why we're here. Not kinda. I think it is why we're here as humans, as people to be kind to one another and to, uh, and to spread kindness. And it all goes back to, really all goes back to Dr. Jayefsky, uh, and his daughter, Natasha. It was, I just, I just, uh, it wasn't my idea. Uh, it's, uh, I got the idea from a six-year-old who, uh, was, uh, who saw it clearly that, uh, we're here to help one another. And if we do, everything gets better. Tom Tay, former mayor of Anaheim. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thanks for having me.