summary of District 20 Bill Quirk campaign kick off party...
anonymous-114 03/07 5015
4.5/126
summary of District 20 Bill Quirk campaign kick off party
This has been a very interesting exercise , overall we achieved some results, not bad not too great.
I noticed BQ's kick off party after last meeting in his office, but due to hectic personal issues (kids sick, daycare issues ...) I did not print out the flyers to send until Tuesday. on Wednesday Carey, YiZe, Langtian and I sent out some flyers around elementary schools and places with Indian and Chinese population. we were hoping to drive a crowd to show up at his party.
yesterday (March 6) Carey and I showed up at his party. to our surprise, there were very few people, in total there were at most 30, that's including his staff. I had thought there would be a crowded room like Peter Guo's party.
Carey is great, she went straight to socializing with guests and learnt that many of them are union reps, and even gave a flyer to a latino union rep. Carey talked to BQ, but BQ still gave the same talk that it will be stopped and won't have a vote in assembly, particularly because there are already assembly members objecting to it (Ed Chau, Silva )
then we sat down. Carey saw a guest and recognized her as Sarabjit Cheema, the Union City School district board member or chair or something. Carey went to talk to her, and mentioned SCA5, Cheema says she's objected to it and already signed petition (later she said she has 2 sons going to Berkeley and UC San Diego ). Carey asked her to talk to BQ, Cheema said "why not now?", then we went to BQ again. This time BQ still carried the same logic, but gave more details, I guess. he said "Paul Fong is against it, so it will be stopped", we said "Paul Fong never publicly said it". he said "Paul Fong sits next to me (in state assembly) , we are very close , I'm fully behind him, I support whatever he does (something to that effect, don't remember exactly ) ". he said basically that the assembly will be stopped, it will likely have revisions and be sent back to sentate to re-vote, but senate won't have 2/3 this time, so it won't pass the second senate vote. we asked him if he could make a public annoucement to say objection to sca5, he refused. then at the end of the conversation, we said " you chose this indian restaurant as the venue of your party, we recognize that as a token that you see the importance of the indian/asian community here" (he nods), we said "it would be a good gesture to the indian/asian community if you could make a stand on this important issue ". then he chuckles (probably at our stubbornness), and said "I can not stupport sca5 as it is written " (I remember it's the same wording as ed chau , but I don't remember whether he said anything like "keep it between ourselves" or "keep it within this room" ------ Carey please add, or I could verify with Cheema )
later, BQ called us to take a pic. I was really stupid and didn't think much and happily went there, Cheema did too. Carey is smart and refused, because BQ didn't publicly say "no sca5". I really should have just carried a "no sca5" sign and take the pic. BQ used us for our asian faces as a good photo op. BUT, I think it is also a good opportunity for us, because if he posts this pic on FB (I actually want him to ) , then we could go there and comment "thank you for opposing/not supporting sca5 ", and basically say somethng that he didn't dare to say publicly.
overall, I think due to BQ's personal philosophy etc, he's against sca5. but he's not going to be proactive and take a stand, he's hiding cowardly behind those Asian politicians and trying to avoid spotlight. this is largely determined by his political basis: see, there is NOT grassroots support for him, it's all based on organizations (mainly unions, also note that he has antagonized Sheriff's association), he's far-left. I don't think race is an important division in his basis (i.e. he's not concerned about alienating latinos in this case), its just that he's mostly concerned about Unions etc, and grassroots efforts simply are not on his radar (it's like he's a manufacturer, all his products are bought by large distributors, he does not care about end-consumers 散户 at all ).
i think it is possible to let him know the power of grassroots voter movement, well, maybe it's true and he's right that grassroots are really so small compared to union, cuz peter guo only got 600+ donations compared to possible 1000+ of any small union. I think for this district, if we continue the grassroots effort of sending out flyers and have people call him/mail him, we will put ourselves on his radar. more importantly , not just Chinese, we need to get more indians. last time he said "calls are mostly from Asians", I think he meant Chinese.
an important lesson: first time Carey talked to him, he didn't change much. second time, we brought along Cheema, who is a small public official, then his tone changed quite a lot. so ANY small 七品芝麻官 carry a lot more weight than us 屁民, unfortunately on this point there is not much difference between China and US. politics is still to a large extent on the upper level, completely ignoring the real grassroots. maybe the usage of social media and internet will change this, just like amazon directly reaches consumers and kills the dealers/distributors/retailers like macy's. So in our future talks with these guys, it will be a great boost to bring along lower level officials , for example that city councilman from cupertino, or Kansen Chu etc. ****important****!
