Group Is Pushing Asian Americans to Take Up Politics

In a time when national minority organizations are pushing for better representation on network television, a handful of Orange County Asian Pacific Americans have been training to establish a foothold in a different arena: local politics.

While the number of Asian Pacific Americans has more than tripled in Orange County since the ‘80s, the group is conspicuously absent from local leadership positions. Garden Grove has Mayor Pro Tem Ho Chung and Westminster has Councilman Tony Lam, but for the most part that’s where the representation ends in Orange County.

“The depth and talent represented in the Pan-Asian Community in Orange County has been largely unrecognized and untapped,” says Audrey Yamagata-Noji, a Santa Ana Unified School District board member.

In response to the nagging void, the Los Angeles-based Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics launched a first-of-its-kind training program this year designed specifically for its politically underrepresented Orange County community. The program, Building Community Through Leadership, graduated 23 students last week at the Garden Grove Community Center. Graduates represented local Asian Indian, Cambodian, Filipino, Hawaiian, Hmong, Japanese, Khmu, Korean, Laotian, Samoan and Vietnamese communities.

“We want to form a council where we can actually nurture and continue to organize the projects we’ve been working on,” said Tieri Pa’ ahana Bissen, one of the program graduates.

A main project the group is organizing is a countywide education conference to address diversity in the public schools.

“Asian Pacifics are very sensitive,” Bissen says. “If they are misread by the teachers they tend to withdraw into themselves.”

The nine-month training program covers topics such as grant writing, nonprofit organizations, media relations, communication skills, team building and an introduction to government.

“They know the issues. They have the passion, the commitment,” Yamagata-Noji says. “But in our society that’s not enough. You have to know who to call, who to get the commitment from and then how to get them to stick to it.”

That’s the other big project the group is working on: getting the Board of Supervisors to recognize May as Asian Pacific Heritage Month.

The program also focuses heavily on cultural values and diversity within the Asian Pacific community. “Just because the United States government puts us in one group doesn’t mean we know everything about each other,” Yamagata-Noji said.

Networking and creating a strong Asian Pacific community in Orange County is the ultimate goal of the program. “I think this is the first step; we have identified ourselves as leaders in Orange County,” Bissen says. “It’s going to be a long process for us to begin working with the community. But from my assessment of the people in the class, we have come together and we will stay together.”

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Chris Ceballos can be reached at (714)-966-7440.