Next Generation Leaders
November 19, 2008
Despite a decisive Democratic tidal wave on Nov. 4, the ninth annual Leadership Academy for Asian Pacific American Elected Officials that is run by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) continued its slow, steady, multi-partisan approach to growth this week.
Three Republicans, two Democrats and one independent met with prominent APA elected officials, leaders of Congress, APA community leaders and political operatives whose expertise included speech-making, fundraising and Internet strategies.
Mirroring the multi-racial ancestry of President-elect Obama, two of the office holders had parents who were of both Asian and non-Asian background. Reflecting the geographic spread of the APA community, two participants were from California, two from Pennsylvania and one each from Utah and Georgia.
The annual APAICS skill-building and network-enhancing seminar for Asian Pacific American office-holders, sponsored this year by Sempra Energy and Verizon, also featured seminars on key issues such as immigration, voting, the 2010 Census and the current mortgage crisis.
Four of the six participants had military training or had participated in active duty overseas. Their military jobs ranged from Air Force lawyer to helicopter pilot, while the range of civilian occupations in the group ranged from television reporting to teaching elementary school students.
The realities of fitting an Asian face and Asian Pacific American life history into a locale that was not like San Francisco or Los Angeles are always present for John Pippy, whose mother was born in Thailand. He serves as a state Senator from the Southwest region of Pennsylvania. Allegheny County, which is the majority of his district, has a racial composition that is 84 percent white, 12 percent African American, 1.7 percent APA and a small percentages of Native Americans and others.
Sen. Pippy, a Republican, builds cross-party credibility by serving on non-partisan boards of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and the Greater Pittsburgh Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He sits on Senate committees that serve his rural constituents, such as the Game and Fisheries Committee, while also chairing the Urban Affairs and Housing Committee.
On the other end of the continent, Democrat Ted Lieu represents California’s 53rd Assembly District in the Torrance-Venice area of west Los Angeles. His district includes a beautiful beachfront, so he has chosen to be part of the Assembly’s Water, Parks and Wildlife committee. At the same time, as a lawyer and former Torrance City Council member, he has experience with finances and procedure that have led to his being selected as chairman of the Banking and Finance Committee and then the Assembly Rules Committee. A longtime activist on APA issues, he also serves as chairman of California’s Asian Pacific Islander Legislative caucus.
For those interested in getting involved in politics, the life paths of the Leadership Academy participants present several ways to get involved. Georgia State Rep. Charlice Byrd was born in New Orleans and worked as a teacher there. By the time she was living in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, she had become president of the League of Republicans Abroad. After serving as a campaign staffer for many candidates and as campaign manager for her husband’s successful campaign in 2000, she decided that she could be a candidate herself.
Democrat Patty Kim, who now serves as a Councilwoman in Harrisburg, Penn., served as a local Harrisburg television reporter and anchor. Building name recognition as an emcee for local events and serving as a tutor and local volunteer also gave her the following that led to her current service as a member of the council.
Republican Curtis Oda has stayed in touch with the national APA community through service to the Japanese American Citizens’ League. His ties to his local white Mormon constituents have come, however, through his work as a local real estate agent and volunteering in sports, farming and civic groups.
Independent Quang X. Pham, currently not in office but very involved in civic activities in southern California, represents the next generation of APAs who will be leaping into politics. While most people would be content to be living Mr. Pham’s life as a corporate executive, motivational speaker and book author (A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey), Pham feels the need to give back to the country that welcomed his Vietnamese immigrant family.
The ninth annual APAICS Leadership Academy participants represented high levels of achievement, but also great potential. As APAs continue to climb the ladder to our nation’s highest elective and appointive offices, they will be our role models and our champions for the generation that follow them.
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Dear Phil Tajitsu-Nash:
Your continuing witness to the APA journey in these United States of America is reassuring, at the very least.
It is also inspiring, at its best.
And AsianWeek MUST be proud you are a constant watcher on the Beltway front. Indeed, the entire nation should applaud your efforts on behalf of this ongoing experiment in multiracial self-governance.
Such as it is, however.
This single voice, this pointy-headed renegade sitting in the dunce corner of the little red schoolhouse for misdemeanors great and small, present and past, future?, not too likely, continues to question, look askance, indeed, denounce, tomorrow’s, the poor guy has yet to “take office”?, “change” in the “Beltway,” where it is increasingly obvious that NOTHING has changed.
Aside from the Holder and Daschle memos, the news is mostly Sarah Palin country, as in me-Jane, you-Step-’n-Fetchit.
Maybe the “leaked” reports of Likud/Hamas ‘phone calls, never mind those hyped al-Qaeda jeers and taunts, may be countervailng, but the gist of the Obama matter is more of the same and not much of the other.
True, no one in his or her or its right mind would have expected much else, but, today, the world’s hopes, never mind its “dreams,” reside in the likes of the Putins and the Chavezes and the Moraleses rather than in the latterday saints of the neoliberal/neoconners, like Rahm Emanuel or Joe Lieberman.
These guys are part and parcel of the late and unlamented likes of the Rummies and the Cheneys, the latter now “indicted” in a Texas court. And about time.
Dubya next?
So, as this “free-enterprise,” dog-eat-dog model careens mindlesslty into the abyss of its own making, the rest of us “survivors” of debacles past must continue to make do with barter and swap, services for goods and vice versa, and to-each-his-her-own when it comes to healthfare and welfare.
Caveat emptor.
No buyers’ remorse here, since what can we buy? other than our own delusions?
Somalia pirates? The “international law” of the “high seas”?
Where are you, Sir Richard Burton now that we truly need you? And AFTER Kilpling’s “Recessional” at that.
No, folks, there IS no “answer,” and there can be none.
Only the divergent “possibilities” of the present.
And the future?
Frank
P.S.: Oh, and Phil, methinkc it is high time that “we” look past “our” tribal adjuncts into the larger picture of “All There Is,” as posited by Jane Robertses” alter-ego, one “disembodied” entity who called himself “Seth.”
Time to understand that there is only the “I” vis-a-vis the “Thou,” and the oligarchs against the rest of “us,” regarcless of race, creed, color, and/or “beliefs.”
One more unasked-for observation:
Dubya nas, it is reported, been busy both anointing his compadres with “civil-service” sinecures, he has also been busy forefending future indictments.
The former will probably succeed, as witness Chris Coxes’ high posting, never mind those midwestern brothers in arms, but the latter may not quite “take,” as in pre-event vaccines.
This guy is one for the books. Not only is he a throwback to the Neanderthals, he is also scapegrace free of either responsibility OR lack of same.
Like bin Laden, he is but the spent bud of a lifeless limb of fortune and casuistry.
The former may continue, but the latter is past contumely.
This is the apology for a “man’s” inhumanity to mankind, AND the schoolyard bully of all time.
Bar none.
Bar who?
Yeah, that AND Blackwater and Halliburton and the current Dow meltdown.
I am a newly elected Councilmember of Lathrop, California. I was born in Baguio City, Philippines. I am interested in helping the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. Please let me know if I could be of any help. Thank you.
Chris