Asian Americans Rally for Unity

In an unprecedented rally to unite diverse Asian communities from Little Tokyo to Little Saigon, hundreds of placard-carrying demonstrators converged Tuesday on the south lawn of Los Angeles City Hall to confront thorny public policy issues affecting the nation’s fastest-growing minority.

Organizers called the rally historic because it brought together young and old, immigrant and native-born from the more than two dozen ethnic communities that come under the Asian Pacific American umbrella, including Burmese, Tibetans, Laotians and Samoans. Rarely has there been an attempt to unify these groups for political action.

“We are here to stake a claim on the political landscape,” thundered Warren Furutani, president of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a coalition of 53 organizations. “This is only the beginning.”

Furutani and other speakers at the noon rally announced letter-writing campaigns to protest a variety of issues and seek increased citizenship classes and stepped-up voter registration drives throughout Southern California, home of the largest concentration of Asians in the nation.

They urged Asians to get their voices heard by elected officials--through personal contact and grass-roots organizing--adding that they have been polite and silent for too long.

Referring to the low visibility of Asians at both the Republican and Democratic party conventions in August, Furutani told the gathering that Asians must not allow themselves to be treated as stepchildren in the American family.

“Two weeks ago in Chicago, First Lady Hillary Clinton raised the banner of the American family,” said Furutani, a Democrat. “Did you see anybody that looked like us?”

“No!” replied hundreds, waving banners opposing welfare cuts and Proposition 209, a state ballot initiative that would end government affirmative action programs in admissions, hiring, promotions and contracting.

On Thursday, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, a member of the coalition, is sponsoring an all-day conference on the effect of the new welfare law on the Asian American community.

“Welfare reform is too much about punishment and not enough about what really counts--jobs, training and health care,” said Stewart Kwoh, president of the Legal Center.

He said his agency will go to court to challenge provisions of the statute he says are unconstitutional.

Furutani said there may be a silver lining in the welfare reform law: an intense desire to become U.S citizens, because by becoming citizens, immigrants would qualify for benefits.

He suggested that President Clinton help provide funds for citizenship classes and voter registration.

In the meantime, Kwoh urged naturalized Asian immigrants to vote.

Of the 10 million people of Asian ancestry in the United States in 1994, only 1.2 million were registered voters, according to Levin Sy of the Asian Pacific American Voter Registration Coalition of Southern California--making it one of the lowest registration rates among ethnic minorities. The group aims to register 25,000 Asian American voters locally for the November election.

Speaker after speaker called on the culturally and linguistically diverse Asian American communities to use these issues to unite.

“People united will never be defeated,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center. He also suggested that Asians join with African American and Latinos to make the “new majority” count in Los Angeles.

Attorney Angela Oh, a member of the Los Angeles County Human Rights Commission, said Asian Americans must not allow political opportunists to enhance their careers by using the immigration and affirmative action issues.

“When someone tells you to ‘go back to where you came from,’ say: ‘Home is here,’ ” she said. “Home is where our soul is.”

Kim Ling Lee, 83, a Chinatown resident on Supplemental Social Security Income--the federal program aiding the poor, elderly and disabled--limped up the City Hall steps, helped by a friend, to say that people like her should be not denied government assistance.

“For 29 years I worked [cleaning homes],” she said. “If politicians want to cut, they should first cut their big salaries.”

The 70-minute rally provided a forum for other pressing Asian American issues, such as violence against Asians, which was at an all-time high in Southern California last year.

Emphasizing that Asians are the state’s second-largest minority--having surpassed blacks in the 1990 census--Furutani said Asians have a critical mass.

“People have a stereotype that we deliver with dollars but we don’t deliver with votes.” Furutani said. Tuesday’s gathering is the first pan-Asian effort to change that, he said.