Boston Globe Article on APAAC Initiative

Boston Globe Article on APAAC Initiative

ALLSTON
In surge of Asians, few voters
Just 20 register in daylong sign-up drive
By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent | May 8, 2005

Close to 20 volunteers, mostly local college students, gathered inside the busy Super 88 market on Commonwealth Avenue last weekend before defying the cold rain and fanning out onto nearby streets to register voters. Organizers described their mission as the first-ever voter-registration drive targeting the neighborhood's Asian-Americans.

''Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing group in the city of Boston but have one of the lowest registration rates," said Lawrence Joe, youth coordinator for the Chinese Progressive Association in Chinatown. ''Once they're registered to vote, they have one of the highest rates of turning out to the polls."
The association is one of four organizations, including the Asian Pacific American Agenda Coalition, the Boston Asian Students Alliance, and the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, that coordinated the one-day drive last Saturday. The Bay State's Asian population has seen a sharp spike. According to the US Census, it grew 68 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Joe said they chose this neighborhood because Allston-Brighton has a growing population of Asians, but isn't as politically established as Chinatown or Dorchester. Pairs of volunteers went door-to-door hoping to sign up new Asian voters and raise awareness of voting participation in the Asian community.
''We were looking to hit up a few hundred people," said organizer Chi Chi Wu, board president of the Asian Pacific American Agenda Coalition.

Volunteers managed to register just 20 new voters, short of their minimum goal of 30. Almost half of the households canvased were either not home or residents were not naturalized citizens and therefore not eligible to vote, said Wu. Volunteers answered questions ranging from how to apply for citizenship to how to find polling locations.

The registration effort was prompted in part by results of a study released last month that shows that Massachusetts Asian-Americans vote at lower rates than the general population, said Wu. The study, conducted by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, reports 42 percent of the 777 respondents surveyed at exit polls in Chinatown, Dorchester, Mission Hill, Lowell, and Quincy voted for the first time in the 2004 presidential election. More than half said they had limited English proficiency.
''A lot of immigrant populations [experience] a lot of barriers -- language, culture. There hasn't been that outreach. That's what we're trying to do," said volunteer Lisa Vu, a 20-year-old Tufts student and member of the Boston Asian Student Alliance.

Organizers say the upcoming City Council election will be a watershed moment in Boston's Asian community with an Asian candidate running for citywide office for the first time. Sam Yoon, a Korean-American who is director of the Asian Community Development Corporation in Chinatown, has set his sights on a council seat this fall. Organizers of the drive hope the race prompts recently registered and first-time Asian voters to turn out, perhaps building momentum for future voter drives.
''If you look at the City Council elections, you have more candidates of color running," said Wu. ''We thought we'd like to be part of that 'new Boston' and get more Asian-American voters to register. It's important and it affects their lives, especially at the City Council level."

''We have no say in the process right now," said Joe. ''City elections, each vote counts even more because so few people turn out."

Affordable housing and public safety are the top two issues among Boston's Asian residents, he said. Wu said the rejection last year (2004) of Super 88 owner George Luu's liquor license application by the city's licensing board reinforced a common perception among Asians that they have little political clout in Boston. Luu had requested permission to serve alcohol inside the market's busy food court, where several Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese vendors serve everything from bubble tea to yakitori. The board's denial cited, in part, Luu's failure to garner the backing of the Allston Civic Association, an influential, predominantly white group.

Despite last week's modest success, the coalition hopes to roll out voter drives in Quincy and Malden, cities with growing Asian populations, in the near future. The drive represents a new political phase among the city's Asian community, said Andrew L.S. Leong, an associate professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Unlike the past, said Leong, many of Boston's first-generation and US-born Asians see the importance of being part of the political process and are motivated to get out and articulate that idea to others. ''They understand what the issues are and why we should be organized for our community," said Leong.

Christina Pazzanese can be reached at cpazzanese@globe.com.

Volunteer Thank You Dinner