Here’s my Chinese New Year’s resolution for Brooklyn’s growing Chinese-American immigrant community: Get more politically involved!
The resolution came to me recently when I called around to a few of Brooklyn’s Chinese-American political leaders to do a story on issues concerning this community.
I rang up Democratic District Leader Nancy Tong, whose day job is working for Assembly Member Bill Colton (D-Bensohurst, Bath Beach) as a community liaison. She never returned my call.
I then contacted Kenneth Chiu, president of the Brooklyn-based New York City Asian-American Democratic Club, whose mission is to “mobilize and empower the Asian-American community in New York City by building a culture of civic engagement and participation.”
Chiu agreed to write an op-ed for KCP on issues facing Brooklyn’s Chinese-American community. I never received the op-ed and Chiu didn’t return my follow-up email.
Certainly, there are a number of issues for which Brooklyn’s Chinese-Americans need strong advocates. Here are a few:
Public school education and the Chinese-American feeling on the street that they are being punished for their success in raising their children to be outstanding students. They understand the political pressure to diversify the specialized public high schools and increase particularly black and Hispanic enrollment, but there is nobody advocating for their belief that those that want to compete academically must study harder and do better in entrance exams.
More affordable housing for the Chinese-American community in the South Brooklyn neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights communities. This lack of affordable housing is the other side of the illegal conversions equation, in which these bedroom communities have a number of two-and three-family homeowners illegally converting their homes to house many of these new immigrants.
Stronger government outreach to Chinese-American-owned small businesses. This includes everything from how to navigate city small business services available to them to advocating for commercial rent control to understanding current ordinances so they get as many tickets.
Getting more funding for Chinese-run nonprofits that deal with an array of social services issues such as senior centers and addressing social ills such as domestic violence and addiction.
These issues are not going away, but they get little airing out because of Chinese-American apathy in Brooklyn.
In February 2016, I wrote an editorial headlined ‘Political Expedience and The Liang Trial’ imploring Brooklyn’s Chinese community to become more politically involved. The column won an award from the CUNY Grad School of Journalism, and many from the Chinese-American community thanked me for writing it.
But that was more than two years ago and here we are in 2018. Since then there hasn’t even been a ripple of political activity from this community to find from among themselves a representative to go to City Hall or Albany.
So in wishing all our readers who celebrate the Chinese New Year the best of luck in this the year of the dog, we also want to leave them something to chew on.
If you don’t have a dog in the political fight, don’t expect to get anything but discarded scraps from the government table.
Editor’s Note: Nancy Tong did not get back to KCP because of a death in the family. We found out about this after this story was posted. Our condolences to her.
