On March 9th, 2023, Leaders and representatives of AALC and ACAN from Austin, College Station, Dallas, and Houston led by AALC Chair Ling Luo joined the AAPI Legislative Action Day to visit the TX legislators organized by ATJ, OCA, Impact, APAPA, and SAVVTX. With a busy schedule, we divided into two groups and visited 11 legislators’ offices. We met with Gene Wu for State Representative 137, Rep Lalani, Rep Vo, and Rep Jetton. We shared our concerns, frustrations, and opposition to the discriminatory SB147, SB711, SB552, and HB2788.
Democratic legislators Lalani and Vo expressed their opinions and support for our effort to fight discriminatory bills similar to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Rep Lalani taught us how to communicate with legislators more efficiently. Rep Gene Wu has been the leading voice and leader of the fight against racist bills. Reporters from the NHK media network followed our visits to 6 legislators and covered how AALC organizes AAPI communities to fight the SB147 bill.
Democratic Senator Chuy Hinojosa became coauthor of SB 147 at the last minute before the Senate hearing that had over 129 Chinese Americans and other AAPI member’s strong pushback in testimony. We don’t understand why Senator Hinojosa wanted to become the co-author of such a discriminatory bill by ignoring the damage and harm to the AAPI communities. We also were declined the visit of the Senator by his office but talked to the chief of staff only. The chief of staff explained that Senator Hinojosa added his name to the coauthor list because he wanted to be part of the process! We are strongly concerned and oppose his choice to stand with Senator Korkhost and support the racist bill!
Not all visits were fond memories of GOP legislators. When we went to senator Korkhost’s office to meet their policy staff at the appointment time, we were declined by their staffs when the policy staff was obviously in his office. Visiting Angie Chen Button was another rejection. In the end, Rep Jetton’s office tried to decline the meeting but failed. Rep Jetton finally received our group into his office after we insisted to meet him. Jetton is the author of SB 2788, an even more hidden agenda criminalizing individual property buyers with any assumption of the ties to foreign adversaries. We expressed our concerns about the potential harm to the AAPI communities. But he danced around topic of national security, and his staff hurried us out of the office after 5 minutes leaving many questions un-discussed.
It was a good experience visiting our representatives during the session. Learning legislative procedures and process is critical for ordinary people to understand their rights. We elected our reps to work for us in that capital building, not to abuse the power to write up all sorts of bills to harm our community. We will watch closely on the legislature to protect our fundamental rights, not stripped and deprived!
Thanks to Zhenggang Cheng from Dallas, Dr. Wei Li from College Station, Hugh Li, President of ACAN from Austin, Sophia Xiao, Chuck Guo, Lin Yuan, Stella Liu, Bruce Bai, and Jiajie Xia for participating in civic engagement and learning how to become a part of the legislative procedure and political process!
Thanks to Co-Founder Alice Yi, Lilly Thiu of ATJ, Debby Chen, President of OCA National, Francine Ly, President of APAPA TX, Rish Oberoi, President of Impact, Woori Junto, and SAAVTX co-organized this « AAPI Advocacy Collective » event. Over a hundred AAPI members from across Texas participated in this action to visit legislators and express their pros and cons on many bills, such as school vouchers, LGBT issues, gun controls, AAPI history in teaching, etc., that concerned them.
AAPI is waking up, and AAPI is in action. AAPI is voting too! We will build our voting power together to protect our communities from the power-abusing legislators!