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.
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October 31st, 2007 
