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November 11th, 2008
Thank You from Virginia AAPI Field Director Bao Nguyen
Posted by Eugenia Beh
A beautiful testimonial from VA AAPI Field Director Bao Nguyen - thank you to Bao and to VA for making this happen! :)
This journey has been incredibly tiring and I have spent the last few days resting and reminiscing about it all. With that said, I wanted to thank you all for being part of this amazing journey. We were able to turn Virginia Blue for the first time in 44 years, we were able to put this country in the right direction again, and we were all a part of history as we helped elect the nation’s first African-American President. This could not have happened without all your efforts.
Please take a moment to remember why you personally got involved with this campaign. For me this campaign was about recapturing something that was lost to me. It is about my parents who escaped a war ravaged country with a hope for a better future. They came over here with nothing but an idea of America: an America that offered opportunities to anyone who was willing to work hard enough for it, an America that treated everyone equally and with respect, an America where anything was possible. When they arrived, they worked long hours knowing that nothing would be handed to them but they knew they could always depend on a government that didn’t turn its back to those in need. Through their hard work and the opportunities afforded to me, I was the first child in my family to graduate from college.
I remember my first week of college vividly. I was in school in New York and the second day of school was September 11th, 2001. However, the memory of seeing the burning towers from my campus isn’t the image that sticks in my mind today. What I will always remember is what happened on September 12th when I saw people from all over the world, of different races, ages, religions, and genders come together to do anything they could to help in the midst of tragedy. I believed that the current administration had wasted that opportunity and it made me disillusioned about our government and made me question my own idea of America. It wasn’t until I heard a young state senator from Illinois speak that I believed in America again. When I graduated from school, I joined AmeriCorps helping low-income Asian immigrants in New York who had suffered from September 11th. I continued working to provide social services to low-income immigrants in New York until I started working for the campaign . As I met supporters and worked with volunteers such as yourself every day, I saw people from every walk of life fighting for change and to me, it felt like September 12th all over again. The only difference was that instead of uniting out of the ashes of tragedy we were united under the hope that we can keep the American promise alive.
On the night of November 4th, when Senator Obama became President-Elect Obama, I finally rediscovered for myself the idea of America that my parents had left their homeland 25 years ago to find.
Thank you all for helping me to discover it again.
Bao Nguyen | Virginia AAPI Field Director
350 South Washington Street | Falls Church, VA 22046
(571) 839-0641 | bnguyen@vaobamaforchange.com
Posted in Asian Americans and Politics, Asian Language, Fundraising, Grassroots Campaigning, Horse Race, Obama and Asian Americans, Testimonials |
