Speech at the Asian American Network Forum, Washington DC (12/19)

TD  12/20   6291  
4.0/1 

Good morning,

Thank you So Jung for inviting us to this Forum. Thank you Grace for organizing this Forum. Grace is also our Chapter's Advisor.

My name is TD, and I'm the vice president of 80-20 DC chapter. 80-20 is a national Asian America organization created 17 years ago. Former Delaware lieutenant governor Dr. S.B. Woo is the the current leader of the 80-20 national organization.

80-20's mission is to win over equal opportunity and justice for Asian-Americans. If 80-20 believes a political candidate, a piece of legislation, or a lawsuit that has beneficial effects to Asian Americans, we will use all our resources to call our voters to support the political candidate, the legislation, and the lawsuit.

8020 Washington DC chapter works with the national organization and focuses on local political process. The following are what we have done in the past:

1. We encourage Asian-American voters to vote. We worked with the Fairfax County parent group and encouraged voters to vote in last November's county and school board election.
2. We supported TJ, Thomas Jefferson High School, to maintain high admission standard to admit talented students.
3. We demanded the White house and the Department of Justice to stop racial profiling and targeting Asian-American scientists.
4. We organized a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court to stop discrimination against Asian-American students in college admission.
5. We worked with other community leaders. We invited Herndon Council woman Grace Wolf as our advisor. We supported the establishment of "Comfort women memorial peace garden" in the court yard of Fairfax County Government. We worked with FCPS Minority Achievement Oversight Committee to help reduce achievement gap of minority students. We worked with Asian-American Coalition for Education (AACE), a new organization, to file complaint against Harvard University for their discriminatory admission practice against Asian American students.

Next year is an election year, and we need to increase Asian-Americans' voting rate. It is a challenging task. I am looking forward to working with all of you to encourage our voters to participate in American political process. 

Tasks ahead of us next year:
1. Election/voters turnout.
2. Next spring, we will help AACE file complaint against Yale University for its discriminatory admission practice against Asian Americans.
3. We will work with Virginia General Assembly to approve governor's1 billion investment to education.
4. We will also work with the University of Virginia to obtain admission data to make sure its admission policy is fair to Norther Virginia and to Asian American students.

We do not want to be a silent minority, and we want our voice to be heard both locally and nationally.

Thank you!