Densho Digital Repository - Joanne Chiedi Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-5-11)

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EK: So since starting with the federal government in the early 1980s...

JC: Thank you for reminding me. [Laughs]

EK: I had to throw that in there. You've witnessed and been working through kind of a number of the administrations, right? What strikes you as unique about the creation of ORA and the operation of it having spanned both kind of the Republican and Democratic administrations? And I know we had to go back for additional funding...

JC: I find that people are the same, it's just different programs. It's different decades, I guess I can say now, since I've spanned three decades, I never thought I'd say that. People want to do the right thing, politicians want to do the right thing, people who are elected in the executive office want to do the right thing, and the way you do the right thing is listen to the citizens of this country. So listening to their needs and what needs to change and what has to happen, I've learned that the two branches, the legislative branch and the executive branch are two important powerful branches, and they each had different roles, but they do work together. You can't believe everything you read, that's what I've learned having been misquoted a lot in different newspapers. At the end of the day, there's a reason why we're called the United States. We want to unite people, we want to do the right thing, we want our laws to work. And when they don't work, what can we do to change that? And I learned that you have to give people a chance, and you really have to listen. You can't believe everything you read, sometimes you can't believe everything you hear the first time. But through your own research, and through your own experiences, and through talking things out, that you always can make the best decisions. Sometimes people get real upset about different issues, or they get very impassioned about something, because they read something, or they get misquoted, or maybe you say something that's not really clear. I find if you take the time, through the internet, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, pick up the phone. What I've learned is you pick up the phone or you get out from behind your desk and you go talk to someone. You look in their eyes and you have a conversation. And when you're able to do that, either you get your message across, you're able to diffuse something that should have never have happened initially. But if people see that you care just as much as they do, either about furthering something or about clarifying something, the relationship is much better and you can move forward. Sometimes we just focus on things that are not reality or are misunderstandings, and you waste a lot of time doing that. Just because we have, we put someone behind federal prison, like, let's say, a doctor who is pretty much a drug dealer, he runs a pill mill operation. Not all doctors are bad, and not all people who need opioids are bad, are mistreating them, so you can't just lump everything into one. So I've learned to be calm when faced with an issue, and to kind of sit back and really think about what's going on, and pick up the phone and talk to different people that I believe are either part of the issue, or may have had past experiences. Because there's a lot of wisdom out there that I always like to gain when I'm dealing with something. So being calm and not reacting, I think the redress, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor there was just such a reaction to do something quickly, and I think that that was my lesson, just to sit back and be calm about things a little bit.