Jay Chen with (mostly) his young campaign volunteers — and a few of us relative elders — in Rowland Heights. Jay is in the middle holding the American flag; his wife Karen is kneeling second to left, next to Jay’s mother.
To all the young people I met who volunteered for Jay Chen’s campaign:
You were awesome. (In fact, I’m willing to be that you still are, and will continue to be, awesome.)
Defeat hurts — that’s how we know how hard we want to work to avoid it. But defeat is not the end of the world. In fact sometimes, like this time, it’s the beginning of a new world. You’ve played a role in the awakening of Asian-American political power in your part of the region — and you’ll be around to enjoy many decades of fruit from the seeds you have planted this year.
It may be hard for you to focus on that right now — so I want to make it impossible for you not to.
You know that Jay worked harder than anyone — just looking over Jay’s 45 pages of photos on Flicker reminds us of that. But he had to do that — it comes with the territory of choosing to run for office. You didn’t have to do what you did — and you did it anyway. I think that you know that you are better for it — and that we in the broader community are better for it.
You’ve learned skills, you’ve made friends, you’ve made professional contacts, you’ve dug deeply into yourselves to see how hard you could work, you’ve accomplished a great deal — and you’ve learned a valuable lesson about defeat.
The lesson is that defeat is temporary. Defeat can itself be defeated — and you have made yourselves warriors in that cause.
I imagine that you might be shocked by some aspects of Ed Royce’s campaign — not so much the huge amount of outspending, but the viciously blatant racist nature of the of the attacks. I imagine that you probably didn’t expect to see them from someone who expected to be taken seriously — someone who wanted to represent a largely Asian district, in fact! — and that they may have seemed unfamiliar to you, oddly unsettling, like something that came out of a different and less enlightened time.
Seriously, who goes around these days using words like “foreign,” “mysterious,” and “deceitful” in campaign literature? Ed Royce — that’s who. That part of the campaign may have wounded you (and worse, your parents and grandparents, who would recognize the style of attacks) — but I want you to know that in embracing that dark side Ed Royce has planted the seeds of his own destruction. It may take a while to dig him up root and branch and discard him — but with your help we will do it. East San Gabriel Valley, Chino Hills, and north Orange County are too enlightened to put up with that — and you, with your continued hard work, will be the ones to end it.
There’s a saying: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Many people in your community may have no idea that Royce even did these horrible things. They may not even believe them until they see them with their own eyes. But the record is there. And if it angers people who are now exposed to it — well, people should be angered by injustice.
You know what that anger at injustice does to people? It leads them to register to vote — and to donate time and money to get others to vote as well. And that’s the whole ball game in politics: if you don’t vote, you don’t matter to politicians. What matters to politicians is continued success — and that is granted or denied by voters. As the African-American community has learned, and as the Latino community is learning, coming out to vote is the key to power. Politicians don’t care about being yelled at or made fun of. They care about being voted out of office.
I had lots of people tell me, as I looked over my own district this year (which largely overlapped Jay’s), that part of my problem is that Asian-Americans don’t come out to vote. Well, you can change that. In fact, not much except for you will ever change that — because you embody the hopes of your communities. (Your elders may not always tell you that, but I’ll spill the secret for you: I’m sure that they’re enormously proud of what you’ve done this year.)
Here’s how it all works.
Jay is about 50% older than many of you. I’m about 50% older than Jay. Many people with whom I worked on our campaigns are 50% older than me. (That’s where it stops, by the way.) Each of us takes strength from the other.
When you look up at Jay, you see someone who has taken a path to success that you can emulate. (And for him and Karen, it’s not just a path to financial success, but to a success of loving and patriotic values, of maturity, and of fundamental decency.
When I and my elders look at you (and, for that matter, at Jay and Karen), we feel the joy and hope of the teacher who sees the young gathering skills we may never have had and moving in the right direction. I took energy from watching your spirit this year and I will take satisfaction from your future success.
Politics is never over. Protecting what is right takes eternal vigilance and achieving what is better requires continual work. You are now equipped to go back into your communities — your high schools, your colleges, your churches, and those parties that I suspect you may have from time to time — with some great stories and reasons for pride.
You didn’t waste your time this year — you stepped up. (And if you were working in Fullerton, Buena Park, and La Palma, you may have also helped to bring out the vote to elect Sharon Quirk-Silva — a monumental and historic victory for someone whose values fit well with Jay’s.)
You give us hope and reason for pride. And in the years to come, as you become leaders yourself, you will give us the satisfaction of being to say: “Yes, I know him and her from the first Jay Chen for Congress campaign, when they were just kids. But we knew even then that they were something special.”
You are exactly that. You were wonderful. Keep being that way in the years to come. Your country needs you.
Thank you for the hope and the joy that you have given me, from watching your dedication, this year.
There’s a saying in Portuguese, from the days of the long and bitter struggle against racist colonialism in countries such as Zimbabwe: “A Luta Continua.” (In Spanish, it would be “La Lucha Continúa.”) It means “the struggle continues” — and so it does.
I hope that you will translate that thought into languages that everyone in your own communities will understand — and that you will share it and live it.
With admiration and respect,
Greg Diamond
Former candidate for the 29th State Senate District
Greg, I agree. My wife and I had the pleasure of working with Jay’s campaign for some time. His volunteers were enthusiastic, well informed, and very capable. His campaign organization was awesome to behold.
Jay is a man of vision and character. I know losing a hard-fought election is tough. But I hope he finds a way to run again in 2014.
As a constituent of the 39th CD I must say that we deserve a representative who actually works for us. Be a nice change.
So proud of Jay’s campaign. Absolutely amazing. I can’t say I’m surprised but we can see the true colors of Ed Royce…how he bans you from his Facebook page for simply asking relevant questions…how he sends our blatantly xenophobic literature….how he avoids and ducks his constituents. What a horrible representative we have.
I hope Jay will run again and thanks to all his campaign volunteers and staff. I stay up late, but it’s weird that Jay’s Facebook page still lights up with all the pictures being posted throughout the day.
Nice guy but I interned with his campaign for a while and I had mixed feelings. Some of his staff in his OC office could have been better and more professional. Chen is a nice guy who unfortunately despite what his interns and staffers adamantly believe didn’t have a very good shot.
It was such a pleasure and a blessing to work for this campaign. Not only did we have a great time, meeting new people and sharing great memories, but learned so many lessons in life, from literally the works of how to run a political campaign all the way to accepting defeat and finding hope and an optimistic view on things.
There also needs to be a great big thank you to the staff members, who worked morning to night every day, enthusiastically greeting us, helping us, mentoring us both in political lessons and life lessons. I remember driving past the Rowland office once at 2AM and still seeing the staff working. They truly have been the columns holding up this campaign, and the interns really would not have had the eagerness to volunteer without them.
I applaud “Young Intern” for his comments. He was able to find a way to describe the situation and not sound bitter and enraged like Mr. Diamond. There is a lot to be learned from that young person and Mr. Diamond should be the first to apply those principles. In fact, Jay should be embarrassed that someone writes a letter like this, on his behalf, that has only one purpose…to create fear and hatred in the name by using the word racism. We are so advanced as a country, and to write something like this only makes us all take a step back.
I saw so many political ads this year from “both sides of the isle” and no one was afraid to say some utterly disgusting things about their opponents. But, why is it when some people lose an election that everyone must be racist? This is not how we heal our cities, states, or our nation. It is how we divide them and make it worse not only for our “elders, parents and grandparents” but for everyone else as well.
Greg, I think that you should retract your comments and apologize to those who have read them, and those who you think you represent. You should also apologize to Jay, as I will never vote for, or support, a person who has allowed someone who writes the above “letter” as a representation of what he believes. This is not what should be part of a thank you letter to anyone after a defeat. Instead, the message should come from someone with thoughts more like “Young Intern” who finds great experience in the process and understands how important it is in “accepting defeat and finding hope and an optimistic view on things.”
I applaud you “Young Intern!”
Oli,
You certainly raise a legitimate concern over whether I am justified in describing Ed Royce’s campaign literature as “racist.” I have tried to address that in at least one or two prior posts, which you may not have seen, but I take your criticism that I have not been clear enough in this post, not produced enough of an argument overall to which to link.
My concern here is not that Jay lost this election, but in how he lost it. I won’t retract my comments, because Ed Royce’s approach to Jay in his mailers was indeed racist — of a piece with Royce’s previous commentary on Latinos and Muslims, but this time with more pictorial components and “dog whistles” — and that becomes a matter of public concern. That is, it is the sort of thing about which one ought to comment and feel a personal responsibility to denounce.
Instead, I accept the need, based on what you’ve written, to explain them at greater length so that they can be debated in front of an audience of, among others, those in the Asian-American community. (If they think that I’m overreacting, I’m sure that they’ll let me know.) So I will try to critique each relevant flyer, to the point where even you can understand what was wrong with them, and make my argument more explicit. It will take some time — and, frankly, help from others in this specific field — to put things together, but I promise to do so.
Note that I say that you would understand it (something that I’ll bet you already do), not that you would admit that understanding. Your tactic here is to try to convince Jay to denounce my writing as the price of your (feigned, perhaps) future political support. So, I’ll say the same thing about Jay as I once said of Sharon Quirk-Silva: I’m not his agent and I’m not going to desist from writing something just because others want me to — if they do. (Get a prominent Asian-American political group to contact me and I’ll think about it, though.) That’s how I can protect Jay from this sort of extortion — promise not to heed his plea to “pay the ransom.”
“Young Intern,” your education in politics — and specifically in the politics of race and of how people try to penalize criticism of racial attacks — continues. I hope that you find it both interesting and a source of enlightenment. It points to the importance of politics.
Dear Outside,
You wrote “We are so advanced as a country…” Are we really? When most of the rest of the civilized world has universal health care and we don’t, you call that advanced? When companies (banks, Wall Street) gut the middle class even to their own detriment (without the masses, who is going to buy things)? Tell me how that is advanced? The French thought they were “advanced” but then the people revolted.
We still have a ways to go, doncha think?