tonight on kqed newsroom, communities are reeling in the aftermath of multiple mass shootings in california in recent days. we will talk with reporters who have been covering the tragedies. gun violence and gun ownership are on the rise in asian-american community, we discussed this alarming trend with the executive director of the aapi victory alliance. what is the future of transit in san francisco? we speak with muni director jeffrey tumlin about the

agency's financial woes and his vision for better public transportation in the city. ancient artifacts glitter and gleam in this week's edition of something beautiful. hello and welcome. this is kqed newsroom . we have had multiple waves of gun violence in recent days, spanning the state from southern california to half moon bay to oakland, leaving at least 25 people dead. the motives behind the shootings are varied and murky, what is clear is the devastation left behind in the wake of these tragedies. joining us now are two of our reporters who have been on the scene in half moon bay talking with community members about the shooting deaths. thank you for being with us. so tell us about how the

farming community is responding, the shootings happened at two agricultural facilities. how did this unfold through the week and where does the investigation stand now? >> this all started on monday, basically two shootings at separate mushroom facilities in half moon bay, being viewed as an act of workplace violence, the shooter going to ese two facilities, he worked at one and used to work at another and targeting coworkers or former coworkers and potentially trying to turn himself in, he was found at a sheriff substation ultimately where he was arrested. that's kind of where the investigation stands. this is now in the hands of san mateo county district attorney. >> what more can you tell us about the suspected shooter and his possible motives? >> the suspected shooter is being charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. we also know that he is a

chinese citizen and in an interview with nbc bay area he mentioned he does have a green card and also that it wasn't difficult for him to obtain the weapon back in 2021. >> you visited a reunification center there, tell us about what you are hearing from people they are in the community and how they are responding. >> this was a reunification center set up at a community hall just hours after the shooting had taken place, obviously an incredible amount of grief on the inside with family members learning of this news and a real scramble for law enforcement to try to get information to family members and track people down. the fact that family members of these victims live in many different countries around the world, that was in large part a reason why it took days for just the names of the victims to come out. the difficulty in contacting families and providing appropriate language services and other things like hotel rooms and basic services at the

scene as the week has played out, but i will tell you, monday night you saw a stream of volunteers of members of the community showing up at this reunification center with blankets and food and coffee, trying to help out. i talked to one woman pretty late into the evening who showed up to volunteer and she said she'd spent the last two weeks helping out with folks who had been evacuated during the flooding that really hit these communities leading to damage at farms, so just compounding crises for these communities. >> wave after wave. you've also been speaking with people, some of whom new victims and some who knew the shooter, tell us what you are hearing. >> people are devastated and honestly really shocked. everyone i spoke to said half moon bay is a peaceful, tightly knit community so they never expected something like this happen. i spoke to some people who knew one of the victims and they all said they were from the same pueblo is him in mexico and

they knew him well, and he was just here to work hard and send money back to his family, so to hear that he was senselessly murdered was heartbreaking for them and then there is a community organization that says this is gut wrenching, they knew the victims and they also served the shooter so they are very close to this tragedy. >> governor newsom was out there this week to speak with the community. he really shone a light on the conditions that people are living in there, so let's take a listento that. >> some of you should see where these folks are living. the conditions that they are in, living in shipping containers. folks getting nine dollars an hour, do you want to verify the california minimum wage? it's not nine dollars an hour.

>> what you think about his comments in his their action being taken? >> that was like a record scratch moment. we expected him to talk about gun violence and it was right off the bat he was talking about housing conditions and the fact that farmworkers are not being paid california's minimum wage and it's like did he just say he's witnessing wage theft right in front of his eyes? and in the subsequent days, his administration has said they are looking into these farms and the conditions that they are providing. úin addition we heard the governor layout the political response of this taking aim at kevin mccarthy, the speaker of the house and republicans response to this date >> because they haven't spoken about it at all. >> open to that point he was saying mccarthy despite being from california he had those pair of shootings happen and he's not given enough of a response and calling out the party for their stance on gun control and legislation and i did sense political fatigue on

this issue, newsom has admitted it, he didn't go to press conferences in monterey park when the shooting happened, he opted to spend time with members of the community and talk to small business owners because i think you get to a point where it's like what more can i say? i think that's kind of the fatigue you might be hearing from lawmakers. in addition to the fact that california has passed a lot of progressive legislation when it comes to guns, and even though experts are saying a lot of that has made a big difference in stopping mass shootings, there is no press conference or moment marked for shooting that doesn't happen. lawmakers show up to these events when a tragedy like this does happen and i think you are sensing that fatigue from a lot of them. >> i do want to switch tracks for a moment, video was released today of the attack on paul pelosi. we are not showing it because it is very graphic, but nancy pelosi spoke afterwards saying she won't be watching it herself. >> she thankelaw enforcement response. a number of media organizations filed a motion to get not only

the video release but also the interviews that happened after the fact with police, despite both the defense and the district attorney's office not wanting this out at this point. >> thank you both for being here. the attack in monterey park in southern california occurred just as celebrations for the lunar new year were underway. there, 11 people were killed, and nine more injured when a shooter opened fire at a crowded dance studio. the gunman is suspected to be an older asian man and several of the victims were also of asian heritage. guns and gun violence have been more prevalent in the asian- american, pacific islander community in recent years in our next guest says that is in part because this group has been targeted by the gun lobby. joining me now is the aapi victory alliance executive director. thank you for joining us.

tell us the intersection we are seeing between the recent gun violence and the community. >> this is a newer phenomenon in that both of these acts were they were also targeting asians. in addition to that peculiarity they were also older asian man which doesn't really fit the profile so i think there's going to be a lot to unpack going forward and are we providing enough mental health services for those in ne? so we are just in the early days of this, but i think a lot of the on the ground community organizations are responding in kind and we are trying to do all weekend at the national level to bring more attention to this dire situation. >> the gun industry has really been targeting asian americans and pacific islanders, especially since perhaps the shooting in atlanta were several asian women were killed who had been working at spas

there, and also in the week wake of the anti-asian sentiment that we saw arise during covid. can you tell us about the impact this is having as the gun lobby really trains at sites on the asian-american community in terms of looking to expand its gun sales? >> two things, one is there was actually a flattening of gun sales in the late 2000's, i'm sorry, 2019 to 2020 timeframe, so the gun industry started looking at, what can be captive markets going forward and they have done psychological profiles essentially on the aapi community and said we are going to start marketing to this community directly. there has been ads and direct marketing campaigns and they've started to put asian americans phases in gun catalogs and we have resulted in kind actually purchasing guns because we are a community in fear. >> i think that's important,

you and i are actually part of this community as well. i do want to share one of those ads you just mentioned. let's take a quick listen. >> my name is chris chang and i am a gay asian-american professional sports shooter. i implore asn americans to join us in defense of freedom and our universal right to self- defense. >> what do you think when you see ads like this come out? >> i'm heartbroken, in addition to the miss and disinformation that's being perpetrated by the nra in these ads, i don't think, there was likely not one mention of gun safety in this ad. the nra used to be known as the premier gun safety organization. i actually went through nra training when i was in the boy scouts growing up, so this

entity now has turned into an organization that strictly lobbies on behalf of the gun industry and as they expand into new markets, unfortunately they impact the community as a captive audience. >> you did a poll last summer and learned that apart from economic concerns, gun control is really top of mind, it's the top of all of the concerns for the 2000 aapi respondents. >> this was shocking to us. it had always shown up as a top 10 issue in surveys going back over the last 10 or 15 years, and what was really alarming for us is, gun violence, gun control, top issue, the top non- economic issue, this poll was fielded somewhat after the texas incident but i'm sure in the minds of a lot of folks, the atlanta spa shootings and shortly thereafter, the shootings in indianapolis was also in mind as folks responded

to this, but this i think proves more than anything that all our community organizations, as well as the larger gun violence prevention movement needs to take a little more attention to the fears that were ing driven post covid and our responses in terms of buying guns in our concern of gun safety and gun control pit >> we have touched on it a little bit with mentioning these different groups who have been impacted, but the aapi community is not homogenous, úit's a lot of different people from different communities and cultures, many languages spoken. how does that impact your work as you look to amplify the power of the voice is a community politically? >> we are the most complex, representing over 20 major nations, we speak over 100 languages and dialects. we are the most complex demographic in the united states, we are not bound by a common language. so that does make our political

activation efforts and our outreach much more complicated, but what we really have to do when we go in and organize certain communities and certain states, we have to develop at least a minimum of five campaign and outreach plans. >> and you have a lot ming forward in the next couple of years because political election cycle is ramping up again. >> one year from this month, we will have the first caucus, the first primary. so there is a lot to unpack, but no doubt that the situation is going be another impetus for political activation of the ap aapi community. we've seen record turnout in the trump years, and i can guarantee this will lead to further activation and outreac and i think our politicians and policymakers really need to pay attention to this moment. ú>> t

now to urban affairs, in san francisc, the municipal transportation agency called muni is in charge of all transportation from buses to rail to cars, to street closures , and bicycles and parking meters and like all transportation agencies, it experienced a tremendous drop off in ridership during the pandemic. the agency is now in the recovery phase, working from home remains popular which means there's much less traffic going to downtown san francisco, resulting in lower revenue. joining us now to discuss this time of change and what lies ahead is muni's director of transportation, jeffrey tumlin. thank you for being with us. >> thank you, it is great to be her pit >> you took over leadership of the agency in december 2019 right before the pandemic and you got walloped by it like so many other transit agencies. take us through a brief history

of how the agency has done from then until now, the roller coaster, if you will, of the highs in ridership, the pandemic lows, and where you stand at this point. >> in december 2019 i was very excited to be working on solving some of the agencies structural problems, dealing with capital project delivery and agency culture and modernizing the organization and then of course, three months later we were in lockdown. muni ridership dropped to nearly 0, our parking revenue dropped to zero, and we were facing the worst financial crisis in our agency's history. i'm really proud of the way the agency pivoted in order to protect the health and safety of our workforce and to restructure the whole transit system in order to accommodate completely different patterns of travel. to focus on essential workers and focus on getting people to the medical institutions and

the other essential institutions that were still open, as opposed to serving office commuters todowntown that no longer existed, so we rebuild muni seven times in order to make it more efficient and in order to simplify it so that we could make the system work for who was traveling. we also built 21 miles of new transit only lanes in order to make sure that muni could be faster and more reliable , in order to meet social distance requirements on the buses. we eliminated schedules and switched to what we call headway management in order to make muni more reliable at least on its mainlines than it has ever been in our recorded history. >> so was the revenue starting to come back at this point? >> the mta is an enterprise organization, we are expected to be self hunt funding and historically we've been funded through transit fares, parking fees, and a fixed chunk we get from the city's general fund. >> and that's a third, a third, a third, basically? >> roughly. parking is down about 15

percent, transit revenue down about 60 percent, so we are sustaining ourselves through one timefederal relief. that money was expected to have run out over a year ago and we've been spreading it out because we knew san francisco's recovery would be slow, but we fall off what would be called a fiscal cliff in fiscal year 2024 so we've been shifting money out of our department of transportation funds in order to sustain muni and buy us more time but the conditions are dire and we are going to need either funding from the state, or we are going to need to identify new sources of revenue within san francisco, or we will be facing pretty significant service cuts yet again. >> this is all happening, you are at this point now with even more economic headwinds coming your way because mayor breed has said there's a $728 million shortfall in the budget that

the city is facing and she's asking all departments to cut, so are you looking at cutting at muni as well? >> yes, we will have to. we have one-time funding that will buy us time, but the cuts to the general fund shorten our timeline for when we are going to need some additional relief or new funding or we will need to cut service. in the meantime we are continuing to cut maintenance as the organization has done for over 50 years in order to prop up operations, and that is not stainable. we can see what happens when you cut maintenance by looking at the situation in boston. we are also not investing in technology and we could look at southwest airlines in order to see what happens if you don't keep investing in upgrading or technology. >> give me an example of what that looks like in sentences go. what sort of technology needs to be upgraded? >> all of our technology. our train control system in the market streets away is loaded off a 5 1/4 inch floppy drives.

>> know. >> we have to maintain programmers who are experts in the programming languages of the 90s in order to keep running our current system, so we have a technical debt stretching back many decades. >> so a lot of challenges to overcome. so let's turn from the cutting and the challenges to what has been accomplished recently, the venice bus rapid transit lane is open and running, the central subway line in chinatown is open as of this month fully, and you have projects that are coming up as well, the potrero bechard will include housing which is a much needed in the city so tell us about the expansions that have been happening and what you see coming up. >> we are getting far better success on venice the we thought possible. we got between 25 and 35 percent travel time savings of for people on buses in a dramatic provement in reliability and we are also noticing car traffic is flowing

more smoothly because the buses are not weaving in and out of traffic any longer. we had delays, but we have applied the learnings from those mistakes made many years ago to our newest projects, so we are completely rebuilding the street and the utilities underneath it and the train tracks on top, that project is on time and on budget and will be delivering significant improvements in rail reliability along with pedestrian safety along the length of the street and we are also working on a bus way the entire length from market street to 33rd avenue. a quick portion of that is getting us about a 25 percent improvement in travel speed and that project as well is on time and on budget. >> we did ask viewers to send in questions for you and we got a flurry of them in, so thank you to everyone who wrote in and let me share a couple of concerns because many came in around the bicycle stations

that have been going around the city. kathleen hines wrote and said the bicycle stations are being installed everywhere, does tomlin have a special deal with the bicycle companies? how many disabled, elderly, and families with children can use bicycles for everyday transportation? and mark rapinoe wrote their agency is clearly biased against cars, in my opinion they are being overly influenced aside with the uber political bicycle coalition in a biased manner, please ask jeffrey tumlin why he remained so biased against car owners and parking. parking is one third of your budget, so tell us your response to these concerns. >> yes, we hear those concerns a lot. first of all i love driving. i got my drivers license on the morning of the day of my 16th birthday and i recognize that driving a car is by far the most convenient mode of transportation for most people, and an essential mode for a lot of san franciscans, but the

challenges, even our current economic situation notwithstanding, san francisco is growing. the city passed a housing element this week that will add 80,000 units to the west side of san francisco. in order to make it possible for san franscans who need to drive, to continue to be able to drive, we need to make sure that people who are interested in walking or biking or taking transit, feel safe and that feels convenient and easy for them and that's because of the geometry of transportation. whn i drive, i take up 10 times as much roadway space as i do when i walk or bike or take muni, so as the city grows, we are no longer demolishing neighborhoods in order to widen roads. my task is, how do i take san francisco's limited streets, and manage them to move more people? that means focusing on the most base efficient modes of

transportation in order to benefit the people who do need to drive. that is our challenge. it's a geometry problem and one that requires making hard choices. >> another question came in about fares on muni . is public transportation ever going to be free in the bay area and could free transportation get people to drive less for a greener footprint? >> i would love to make muni free. driving is mostly free for people who are driving cars, the challenge is the way we fund transit in the sentences go bay area in order to make muni free i would either have to cut 20 percent of our service or i would need to identify an additional $200 million a year on top of our structural deficit which is now approaching $200 million a year as well, so that is our challenge, how do we fund transit? >> in the last 30 seconds we have, if you had a magic wand, what would you do to make muni thrive in the coming years? >> the most important thing we need is additional operating finding relief in the short run

and a long-term plan to rethink how we fund public transit, so operating money is the thing i mo need and in addition to that is continued investment in making muni fast, frequent, reliable, and safe. >> the director of transportation for muni, thank you for being with us. the deyoung museum in san francisco is currently showcasing an exhibit 3000 years in the making. ramses the great, and the gold of the pharaohs. let's walk now through ancient egypt and tonight edition of something beautiful.

such an intriguing look into that time. ticket sales for the show support excavation and

conservation projects in egypt. the exhibit runs through february 12. that is the end of our show for tonight, join us next week to talk about afro surrealism with d scott miller, managing editor at the east bay express. you can always reach out to us with questions or comments, find kqed newsroom online and find me on social media. thank you for joining us and we will see you right back here next friday night, have a great weekend. john: tonight on pbs s

weekend, five years in we checks in on the rohingya refugee crisis as more displacedeople make the desperate journey to start a nelife. mcpherson: they're people who nobody seems to want. john: then, with the killings of journalists on the rise, we look at why reporting is becoming more dangerous in some parts of the world. and, the youth mental health crisis in america and efforts in one state to increase access to care. ♪ >> major funding for the news hour has been provided