REMEMBER US?

Afghan Americans Struggle to Raise Funds

“Where the TV’s at, that’s where the mind is. So it’s definitely been tough,” said Vaus Aslaun, founder of the website VirtualNation, which matches volunteers with redevelopment projects in Afghanistan. “We’ve seen this happen in the past with so many other countries.”

Though there are no numbers to track the trend, the initial private-sector rush to fund reconstruction appears to have slowed to a stagger. And that donor fatigue has alarmed Afghan Americans who believe this may be the country’s last best chance to escape decades of dysfunction.

There’s no shortage of explanations for the drop in interest.

The public may be overwhelmed by the plethora of groups that sprang up to accept donations last fall; people may believe all’s well now that the shooting has been over for months. Or they may just not care anymore.

“Charitable giving is often very much tied to the event of the day,” explains Rick Cohen, executive director of the Washington-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. “The problem for charities is that effective work requires sustained giving, because problems take time to solve.”

In this case, Cohen said, donors may even worry that giving to a charity tied to an Islamic country will attract unwanted scrutiny from the U.S. government.

Whatever the reason, the impact can be stark.

“This time last year we had no problems if we did a fund-raiser. We had people coming in left and right,” said Khaleda Atta, a 23-year-old mortgage banker who organizes the Bay Area’s large Afghan American community. “People are starting to get a little worn-out.”

One of the groups Atta helps, the Society of Afghan Professionals, is selling $25 tickets for a Christmas Eve giveaway of a donated 2000 Toyota Echo.

They want to raise abut $100,000 to build a girls’ school outside Kabul — they’ve raised about $4,000. Last weekend, volunteers who staffed a donation table outside a Wal-Mart in Union City said they didn’t raise a single cent.

What a change from a year ago, when Afghanistan was headline news and President Bush asked kids to donate $1 to America’s Fund for Afghan Children. That fund swelled to $11.2 million. At an international conference in Tokyo, governments pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction.

But that money has been slow in coming — and that is a major problem according to Afzel Rashid, a prominent Afghan American from Sacramento who is on a commission charged with resurrecting Afghanistan’s legal codes.

“The main infrastructure projects will create employment for people who have nothing else but to go to the warlords and get paid,” Rashid said. “If we don’t do that it will become another failed state and we will have to deal with the same issues.”

Rashid said he identified with the fatigue felt by both Afghan Americans and the broader public. In the last six months, he has been on three one-month trips to Afghanistan.

“My family is going, ‘When are you going to stop?’” he said.

The drop in private funding worries Arzo Mansury, press officer at Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington. Still, there have been bright spots. This week, she received a large hand-knitted blanket from a fifth grade class from Rochester, N.Y. that wanted to help keep Afghan children warm.

“What’s important is not necessarily that Afghanistan dominate every moment of the news,” Mansury said. “What’s important is that the governments of the world know it’s important to develop Afghanistan.”

— By Justin Pritchard, The Associated Press

IN THE HEARTLAND

Rep.-elect Hoon-Yung Hopgood

Rep.-elect Likely Michigan’s First APA Lawmaker

Hoon-Yung Hopgood’s campaign literature for an open seat in the Michigan House described his life as the American dream.

It’s a good description. The South Korean orphan who was adopted 26 years ago by a Taylor, Mich. couple is believed to be the first Asian elected to Michigan’s state Legislature.

Hopgood, a 27-year-old Democrat, was elected this month to represent the 22nd House District, which covers Taylor and Romulus — the area around Detroit Metropolitan Airport. He will replace Rep. Ray Basham, a Taylor Democrat Hopgood worked for as a legislative aide.

There isn’t a large Asian population in the 22nd District, Hopgood said. Voters didn’t directly ask Hopgood about his heritage, but he said they did ask how long he had lived in the area.

“I would say that I’ve lived here since 1976, and lots of people would say, ‘That’s longer than me,’” Hopgood said during a recent interview. “It was fairly easily addressed.”

The Asian population is 1.8 percent of Michigan’s 9.9 million people, compared to 3.6 percent in the United States as a whole, according to the 2000 census.

Although the census said the state’s Indian American population grew by 70.5 percent between 1990 and 2000, there isn’t a concentrated Asian population in one area.

Daphne Kwok, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, said most Asians elected to office don’t come from areas with large Asian populations.

Nationwide, 69 Asians were elected to state legislatures earlier this month, Kwok said from her office in Washington. Many of those were elected in Hawai‘i, she said.

“It’s very exciting for the Asian American community,” she said of this year’s elections. “It’s an area we are trying to encourage Asian Americans to get involved in.”

Hopgood said his interest in politics was piqued by his late father, Rollie, a former member of the Taylor City Council and president of the Michigan Federation of Teachers and School Related Personnel.

“Both my parents gave me my values and morals,” Hopgood said. “But politics I got from my dad.”

Paul Wong, dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said the first election of an Asian to the state Legislature is a positive step. But he said it’s also important to add Asians to Gov.-elect Jennifer Granholm’s administration.

“In the last 30 years there’s been a lot of changes, especially with two people now on the president’s cabinet,” Wong said. “It’s about political participation and political empowerment.”

— By Amy F. Bailey, A.P.

CORPORATE CORRUPTION

Ex-China Exec Jailed on Embezzlement Charges

A former executive in the New York office of a Chinese government petroleum company was jailed without bail Monday on charges of embezzling $10 million.

Jian Jun Li, 56, pleaded innocent to grand larceny and other counts after he was extradited from Australia.

Li is accused of stealing the money from the Chinese company Sinochem in 1994 and using it to buy property in New York. The theft was discovered in 1995 and Li was summoned home to China, where his passport was confiscated.

Prosecutors said Li had another passport and soon slipped out of China. He was arrested in Australia about three months ago, said his lawyer, Martin Stolar.

Stolar said his client was unjustly charged. He said Li had loaned the money, at his manager’s direction, to a real estate broker for investment on Sinochem’s behalf.

“These were legitimate loans, perfectly kosher,” he said. Stolar also said the loans were repaid and Sinochem made money on the deals.

— A.P.