Asian Americans for Obama

Toot!

'Toot': Obama grandmother a force that shaped him

Barack and Michelle Worked Their Way Through School

As Asian Americans, our community is often lauded in the media for our emphasis on education.  We see story after story in the news about the recent immigrant who became valedictorian or the child of refugees who won the National Science Fair.  But the part of the story that is often glossed over is the hard work and sacrifice of both parents and children (and not infrequently, other extended family) that made such accomplishments possible.

In a time when tuition rights are skyrocketing and living expenses are on the rise, more and more Asian American families struggle to provide their children with the dream of a first class education.  More and more parents are seeing their kids be offered the best opportunities, only to have to turn them down because of financial obstacles.  The challenges facing Asian American families today are precisely why it is so important to have a President that understands the real world of education.

As Sen. Obama often says, he and Michelle went to school at a time when it was still possible for a hard working middle class family to send their kids to the best schools.  Even then, however, Barack and Michelle needed help.  As an article in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times explains, the Obamas still needed to take out over $80,000 in loans between the two of them to finish law school.  They didn't finish paying off these loans until Sen. Obama got his book deal in 2004 after he sprung onto the national scene with his amazing Senate race and historic DNC speech.

Beyond just loans, however, the Chicago Sun-Times learned that Barack and Michelle held a variety of jobs throughout their school years to earn money, including making sandwiches and selling subscriptions to the New York Times.

Obama's Burlington Connecton

Obama's Burlington Connection

If Barack Obama becomes U.S. president, a Burlington native will become the First Brother-in-Law. Konrad Ng, 34, who left the city after graduating from Nelson High School, is married to the sister of the Democratic hopeful. His father Howard, a retired scientist who came to Canada from Malaysia, and his mother Joan still live in Burlington.

Prof. Cass Sunstein on Barack Obama

The Chicago Tribune has a terrific column today by Professor Cass Sunstein, the Karl Llewellyn Dist. Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, on the "Obama I Know" based on serving as colleagues for over a decade.

Prof. Sunstein is one of the crown jewels of UChicago Law School as the most cited living legal scholar in America today (i.e., his work is cited by other legal scholars in academic articles more than that of any other scholar).  I had Prof. Sunstein for Elements of the Law as a 1L and Administrative Law (for which he wrote the textbook along with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and others) as a 2L.  He's one of those brilliant, lovably scattered "absent-minded" professor types who can give a 20 minute discourse on virtually any topic off the top of his head and always had his office door open whether you wanted to talk the Chevron case or how to manage a baseball team.  He taught me Behavioral Law and Economics, the legal branch of one of the hottest new fields of study in economics, which attempts to supplement classical theories and models with data on how people really behave taken from cognitive science and psychology.  Both he and Obama were consistently among the most popular professors at the law school.  I still respect and admire Prof. Sunstein enormously to this day, and he exemplifies that UChicago philosophy that Sen. Obama embodies to this day - carefully reasoned decision making that takes into account all viewpoints and treats every person's opinion with respect.  A mantra of our classroom debates was that unless you have evidence to the contrary, always presume your opponent is speaking in good faith.

Prof. Sunstein notes how Obama's propensity to listen to others is a great strength, writing:

Obama wanted to consider the best possible defense of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counterargument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said he thought the program was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time.

This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.

This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and evenhanded analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view.

The University of Chicago Law School is by far the most conservative of the great American law schools. It helped to provide the academic foundations for many positions of the Reagan administration.

But at the University of Chicago, Obama is liked and admired by both Republicans and Democrats. Some local Reagan enthusiasts are Obama supporters. Why? It doesn't hurt that he's a great guy, with a personal touch and a lot of warmth. It certainly helps that he is exceptionally able.

But niceness and ability are only part of the story. Obama has a genuinely independent mind, he's a terrific listener and he goes wherever reason takes him.

To read the rest, click here.

Don't Buy the Hype - Support Obama for His Record of Accomplishments!

A diarist over at Daily Kos put together some amazingly comprehensive research on Sen. Clinton's and Sen. Obama's legislative records.  Both of them have passed several great pieces of legislation, and both of them have introduced some great bills currently under consideration.  However, the research seems to show a few things:

- Sen. Clinton has a lot of bills that lack a single cosponsor.  Sen. Obama does in fact frequently get Republicans to cosponsor his bills.
- Sen. Obama's bills generally go farther in terms of the legal reform or change, while Sen. Clinton's seem to reflect the cautious, smaller initiative approach developed for President Clinton by advisers Mark Penn and Dick Morris.  This is not ALWAYS the case - she's introduced some big bills - but Obama generally pushes for larger scale change.
- Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton frequently cosponsor each other's bills.
- Sen. Obama has a very impressive legislative record for a Senator who has been in office for less than four years.
- Sen. Obama's bills cover a broader range of issues.  Sen. Clinton focuses a lot on children and health care (which makes sense), while Sen. Obama covers these issues as well as ethics reform, foreign policy, weapons proliferation, global warming, public health and disease, immigration, voting rights, etc.
- Sen. Obama apparently passed more bills and amendments than Clinton last year.

Just a sample of the very long post which is worth taking the time to read:

On Iran: S.J.RES.23 : A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.

On voting: Passed out of Committee and now on the Senate Calendar for Feb. 22, 2008
S.453 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections Please check this out! This is a great bill. We need this. I can't believe that this time voter intimidation is not already illegal.

On veterans and military personnel: S.1084 : A bill to provide housing assistance for very low-income veterans;

On global warming: S.1324 : A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuel sold in the United States;S.1389 : A bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to establish a Climate Change Education Program; S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy. (This last one passed both the House and the Senate as part of the budget bill.)

On campaign finance and lobbyists: S.2030 : A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists; and S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

On Blackwater: S.2044 : A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes, and S.2147 : A bill to require accountability for contractors and contract personnel under Federal contracts, and for other purposes.

On global poverty:  S.2433 : A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.

On global nuclear proliferation: S.1977 : A bill to provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.

Introduction to Barack Obama Video with Chinese Subtitles

Here's a version of the standard intro video from the campaign website that a volunteer has added Chinese subtitles to:

NY Times Interviews Maya Soetoro-Ng

Questions for Maya Soetoro-Ng

All in the Family

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Q: Let’s talk about the Democratic presidential caucuses taking place on Feb. 19, in Hawaii , where Barack Obama was born. Will you be campaigning for your brother? Yes, of course. I have taken time off from my various teaching jobs in Honolulu and just got back from two months of campaigning. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says: “1-20-09. End of an Error.”

What kind of bumper sticker is that? It doesn’t even mention a candidate by name. That’s just one bumper sticker. I have three others on my car, including one that says, “Women for Obama.”

What is the age difference between you and Barack? I’m nine years younger. Our mother, after divorcing Barack’s father, met my father at the same place, the East-West Center on the University of Hawaii campus.

Barack’s father was Kenyan, and yours was Indonesian. Your mom was what used to be called a freethinker, a white anthropologist from Wichita, Kan., who moved to Jakarta after her second marriage. My mother was a courageous woman. And she had such tremendous love for life. She loved the natural world. She would wake us up in the middle of the night to go look at the moon. When I was a teenager, this was a source of great frustration because I wanted to sleep.

She died at only 52, from ovarian cancer ? Today, more than anything, I wish all the women in Barack’s life — our mother, his wife and daughters, my daughter, our grandmother, his Kenyan half-sister — I wish we could all sit together and gaze at the moon.

Your mom has been described as an atheist. I wouldn’t have called her an atheist. She was an agnostic. She basically gave us all the good books — the Bible, the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist scripture, the Tao Te Ching — and wanted us to recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute.

You didn’t mention the Koran in that list, although Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. I should have mentioned the Koran. Mom didn’t really emphasize the Koran, but we read little parts of it. We did listen to morning prayers in Indonesia.

Are you worried about mentioning Islam because it has already been evoked by negative campaigners trying to tarnish your brother? I’m not worried. I don’t want to deny Islam. I think it’s obviously very important that we have an understanding of Islam, a better understanding. At the same time, it has been erroneously attached to my brother. The man has been a Christian for 20 years.

What religion are you? Philosophically, I would say that I am Buddhist.

What effect do you think your mother’s wanderlust had on Barack? Maybe part of the reason he was so attracted to Chicago and his wife, Michelle, was that sense of rootedness. He elected to make a choice, whereas Mom sort of wandered through the world collecting treasures.

Do you think of your brother as black? Yes, because that is how he has named himself. Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.

Do you think of yourself as white? No. I’m half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I’m Latina when they meet me. That’s what made me learn Spanish.

That sort of culturally mixed identity was seen as an anomaly when you were growing up. Of course, there was a time when that felt like unsteady terrain, and it made me feel vulnerable.

You were ahead of the multicultural curve. That’s one of the things our mother taught us. It can all belong to you. If you have sufficient love and respect for a part of the world, it can be a meaningful part of who you are, even if it wasn’t delivered at birth.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON

Campaign Launches New AAPI Website

The Obama campaign has launched its official Asian American and Pacific Islander website, with news, information, and a variety of organizing tools for grassroots supporters.

Visit the new site today at http://aapi.barackobama.com.

Sen. Obama Announces Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders National Leadership Council

Obama Announces Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders National Leadership Council

Continuing to expand on the historic grassroots campaign to bring fundamental change to Washington and our politics, the Obama for America campaign today announced its Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders National Leadership Council.  This Leadership Council consists of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders leaders and activists from across the nation, representing every sector of our society, including community, nonprofit, entertainment, business, government, law, academia and media.

“I am proud of the strong personal ties I have had with the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders communities that go back to my birth, and I am humbled to have the widespread support from these communities in my campaign,” said Barack Obama.  “Like most Americans, the AAPI community knows that with the great challenges facing our nation today, we need leadership that can unite us to bring change we can believe in.”

The Obama campaign also unveiled its Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders website today (http://aapi.barackobama.com). This tool will provide Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from across the country the ability to connect with one another and to learn how to educate their friends and neighbors about Obama’s record of bringing change to their communities.

Senator Obama was born in Hawaii, a state where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a significant portion of the population.  As a child of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic family that included Asian Americans, Obama lived in Indonesia, sharing some of the same personal experiences that many Asian immigrants in the United States have also experienced before arriving on these shores. 

“My brother is the only candidate with an intimate connection with Asia and the Pacific,” says Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s sister of Indonesian descent.  “Our mother’s work and values brought us into contact with a wide range of worlds. The movement of our childhood and adolescence required that we be able to walk between worlds and, in particular, to communicate broadly within Asian and Pacific Islands cultures.  Barack understands the values, needs, and expectations that are unique to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

“There hasn’t been a presidential candidate who understands the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experience as intuitively as Barack,” says Konrad Ng, Obama’s brother-in-law of Chinese descent.  “I hope that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders will recognize this opportunity to support a candidate who can speak to our diverse communities and bring real and beneficial change to our country.  It is time that we have someone in the White House who can do it all.”

Obama studied and worked alongside strong and diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander populations in Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. After college, he moved to Chicago, another city with a large and diverse Asian American population, where he worked as a grassroots organizer, advocating for civil rights and economic fairness.

“Barack Obama has a long track record of promoting policies that are important to the AAPI community. His depth of experience in bridging the many divides combined with his sound judgment is what I believe will make a better America,” says Ann Lata Kalayil, Chicago-based AAPI community leader and Co-Chair of the Obama Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Leadership Council.

In state and federal elected offices, he continued to push for legislative policies to protect the rights of immigrants and minorities at the local, state, and national levels.  For example, he led the fight in Illinois to identify and end racial profiling and provide health insurance coverage to 150,000 low-income children and parents.  And in the U.S. Senate, Obama has been a leader in the bipartisan effort to enact comprehensive immigration reform. 

As president, he will continue to chart a better course for all Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can be assured that Obama will continue to work for these communities, as he has already demonstrated throughout his life.  Former New York Solicitor General Preeta Bansal says, “As we try to work to clean up America’s image and policy toward the world and its policies at home, I can think of no better leader than Senator Obama, who – in part because who he is and where he came from, but also because of what he believes in – would give America a whole new fresh chance.” 

Members of the Obama Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders National Leadership Council include (Note:  Their affiliation is to be used for identification purposes only):

Nancy Chen, IL, Former APA Outreach Director for the Office of Presidential Personnel (1996 – 1997) and Former Chicago Director for Senator Paul Simon (D – IL) (1991 – 1996); Co-Chair, Obama AAPI National Leadership Council

Ann Lata Kalayil, IL, Former DNC At-large Member and APIA Caucus; Co-Chair, Obama AAPI National Leadership Council

Stanley Toy, CA, Chairman of Los Angeles County Hospital and Healthcare Delivery Commission and President and CEO of TEAM Healthcare; Co-Chair, Obama AAPI National Leadership Council

Preeta Bansal, NY, Former New York State Solicitor General (1999 – 2001) and Partner, Skadden Arps, and Former Counselor, U.S. Department of Justice and Special Counsel, White House (1993 – 1996)

Paul Igasaki, Former Vice Chair and Commissioner, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1994 – 2002)

Angela Oh, CA, Former Member, President’s Initiative on Race (1997 – 1998)

See the complete list after the jump.

Maya Soetoro-Ng Speaks About Her Brother, Barack

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Sen. Obama's Indonesian American half-sister, speaks about growing up with Barack and what this campaign means to their family in a video past the jump:

Obama the Civil Rights Lawyer

Great article in the Los Angeles Times about Sen. Obama's career as a civil rights attorney in Chicago, where he worked with other lawyers representing a whistleblower against the county for retaliation, minority voters against Chicago's discriminatory redistricting for City Council, the first black mayor of Chicago, reformer Harold Washington, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which you may know from their current involvement in several lawsuits on behalf of Katrina survivors against Bush's inept FEMA.

Obama Got Start in Civil Rights Practice

The Los Angeles Times | February 20, 2007

CHICAGO -- Attorney Judson Miner called Harvard to offer a job to a graduating student named Barack Obama and didn't expect to be showered with gratitude. Still, he wasn't expecting the reception he got.

"You can leave your name and take a number," the woman who answered the phone at the Harvard Law Review said breezily. "You're No. 647."

That was 1991 and even then Obama -- the Illinois senator now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination -- was a hot commodity.

As the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of top law firms. He chose Miner's Chicago civil rights firm, where he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Meet Michelle Obama

I think it's pretty telling that the Obama campaign devotes a separate page to the biography of Michelle Obama, Senator Obama's wife and partner.  She is highly accomplished in her own field, and now serves as Vice President of Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Click here to read more, and hear her story in her own words by watching the video featured on her biography page.  Her discussion of her and Barack's commitment to each other and to improving the lives of all people is inspiring.