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Both Margaret
Chin and Rocky Chin (not related) have been activists in the
Asian and ethnic communities of New York for close to 30
years. Margaret was associated with LaGuardia Community
College and is a member of AAHEC. Both are running in the 1st
District of New York City for a seat on the City Council in an
election this fall. Moderator Betty Lee Sung called attention
to AAHEC's non-profit status and said as a 501 organization,
we cannot support or endorse any political candidate. If we
did, we would lose our tax-exempt status, so this meeting is
an educational forum, to let the candidates inform us about
the issues they are running on, and to relate these issues to
CUNY, AHHEC and higher education.
Margaret spoke
about her involvement with the Chinatown community. She
attributed her motivation to Betty Sung;s Asian American
Studies classes, which inspired her to help the large influx
of immigrants pouring into Chinatown nearly 30 years ago. She
organized day care for garment workers, got jobs for Chinese
employees on the Confucius Plaza project, founded Asian
Americans for Equality and now serves as it executive
director. She also coordinated English language classes under
the auspices of LaGuardia Community College for Chinese
students offered right in Chinatown. Now she looks back
proudly at all the graduates she has helped to find better
jobs because of their acquired language skills.
Margaret is
especially supportive of our proposed Asian American Asian
Research Institute. She relates that in her service in the
community she felt handicapped because of lack of data, which
has been gathered or acquired, but no one has pulled the data
together. She is working with Queens College on how
discrimination affects Asians, and 6,000 Asians are being
interviewed. She hopes the Institute will become a reality so
that the interviews can be analyzed meaningfully.
Synopsis by
Betty Lee Sung
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