First and foremost, I would like to thank those of you who took part in the VAYA 5th Annual Street Clean-up. You are the future; and you have empowered yourself to take on the great challenge of making your community a cleaner and better place. In particular, I would like to congratulate the organizing committee (Toni, Kristiana, Reinhart, Nick, Duy) for all their vision, hard work, and outstanding achievement in making this year's event one of the best Street Clean-up ever. A few volunteers even asked me, "Why don't we do this more often than just once a year?" This goes to show that your effort and sacrifices have instilled a greater sense of community engagement and responsibility in the heart of the youths today.
Secondly, I commend those of you who have worked late on the same evening as the Street Clean-up and early the next morning in a last-ditch effort to register many Vietnamese-Americans to vote in the upcoming presidential election. You all have empowered the Vietnamese community by giving them a voice through the opportunity to cast ballot.
My dear friends and colleague, the future of the community is in our hand. Strong or weak, the choice is ours. Clean or Dirty, the choice is ours. Whether we register to vote in the upcoming election or bend down to pick up a cigarette butt on the street, the choice is ours. The little things that we do will leave a great impact on our community. This is why VAYA has chosen to attach to the Street Clean-up event a special message of community empowerment through voting.
Four years ago, our founding leaders and members registered some 6000 Vietnamese voters (half of the total Vietnamese registered voters). They also fought for and secured for our community the access to Vietnamese Language ballot materials. Today the Vietnamese Language program is still in place and the number of Vietnamese registered voters is over 13,000 strong. This is a great legacy that we can all be proud of. And we are still writing the pages of history with the annual Street Clean-up, the VAYA Lunar New Year Tet Festival, and many other projects.
Just as there is no nobler intention than keeping our democracy strong by voting; or keeping the election fair and effective by working the polls, there is no purer intention than the desire to keep our community clean and healthy by picking up trash. If every one of us does our little part on a regular basis, then our city will always be clean. By volunteering our own time to participate in this Street Cleanup event, we declare that "we will not stand for dirtiness", that our community's well being is our priority, and that we challenge all residents, all businesses, all visitors, and all government officials to take responsibility for keeping our environment green.
And finally, by registering people to vote, or volunteering to be poll workers, or working as ballot scanners or supply-pickup specialists, we declare that "we will not go silently into the night; that our voice will be heard because we are speaking not only with words, but with realistic, measurable actions, and that the Vietnamese community will remain strong for as long as there is a single Vietnamese youth picking up trash, or registering people to vote, or working the polls, etc..."
Yet there are still great challenges ahead...but to find out more, come to the VAYA Meetings and the Tet Community Forum this Sunday!
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