By Thomas Cy Wong,
President, PACC
(Excerpt of speech from 04/28 dinner) We wish to welcome and thank you all for joining us this evening for our inaugural event of The Pacific-American Campaign Coalition. It is wonderful to look out across this room and see so many familiar faces, knowing that we are all joined for the same purpose, to represent our community.
After attending President George W. Bush's recent visit to St. Louis and witnessing such a strong representation of Asian-Americans, PACC co-founder and Vice-President, Mr. Francois Ho and myself foresaw a unique opportunity to expound upon this need for a political outreach from and for our community. Thus, the Coalition was born, to bridge our community and speak as one collective voice; a voice that has been relatively quiet, if not silent in the past; a voice that can now be raised as one for our community; a voice that shall take on the depth and spirit of a multi-ethnic coalition, gathered together to summon greater awareness for out community concerns.
Since our group is still growing and building, we hope to have members of all Asian-American communities represented in the near future and thus, be all the more powerful and true coalition and voice of the St. Louis community. By strengthening our voice we can build stronger relationships with our civic leaders as well.
As we reach out to our Missouri Congressmen and women, local officials and candidates, we create a union of thoughts and ideas that help to raise the awareness for
the concerns of all Asian-Americans in St. Louis. To help bring that consciousness to the
forefront we need the help of many: those that organize, those that listen and those that
act. It is not enough for us to discuss at our dinner tables and around our office water
coolers about what needs to be done to help our community. We must take our united concerns to those that have the power to create grand change. We chose these individuals to lead our counties, cities, states and our nation, so it is our duty to speak-up for ourselves!
Tonight we have the splendid chance to listen to our civic leaders and address questions regarding how our
community can be more effective in the future by raising our collective voice. We are very pleased to welcome Missouri Senator David Klarich, attorney at law and chair of the Judiciary Committee and his wife, Cheryl. Also we have with us tonight, Missouri Senator, Michael Gibbons,
attorney at law and chair of the Ways and Means committee. And our honored guest this evening, Congressman Jim Talent, candidate for United States Senate, and his mother-in-law, Katie Lyons.
I want to say a special thank you to Congressman Talent, Senator Klarich, Senator Gibbons, Dr. William Tao, Francois Ho, Vincent and Anna Schiao, Sherwin and Linda Liu, Denise Sobalsky and Laura Paige. We have a unique opportunity to work together with the business and community leaders, speaking with various government leaders so as to have the chance to voice our community concerns to those currently in or running for political office.
What a wonderful prospect of hope to unlimited success for the future of St. Louis' own Asian-American community, not merely bridging the Asian communities but working
together for a greater good for all within St. Louis. I hope we can join hands to support
our political leaders. |
