s****e
发帖数: 137 | 1 Author: Haibo Huang. Editor: Frank Hu
We had a great meeting with Senator Marty Block at the OceanAir Town Hall
meeting on Oct 2nd. SDAAFE mobilized ~30 Asian American parents to show up
in the meeting, which is more than 2/3rd of the total who attended. Even
though SCA5 was not on his topic list, and the senator got an earful of SCA5
, with over 30 minutes of dedicated discussion on this topic, with more than
10 Asian American parents voiced our uniform opposition as well as our
reasoning.
Senator Block tried to soft paddle the issue along a few typical but
factually incorrect lines which were immediately corrected by the audience (
Their responses captured in the brackets).
1. Senator Block said that he does not have anything to do with SCA5 (fact:
he was one of the co-sponsors), the legislators heard the Asian American
voices and halted SCA5 even though initially every senator voted for it (
fact: 100% Democrats voted for, and 100% Republican voted against. This is a
subtle hint to him that Asian Americans remember).
2. Senator Block said SCA5 is not for racial preference in college admission
(fact: it changes the California constitution specifically to enable that
by removing “public education” from the non-discrimitory statement, and by
removing “UC/Public School System” from the definition of California
state).
3. Senator Block said he is personally against having different college
admission standards for different people and he only support outreaching to
the underprivileged (Great, SDAAFE and the Asian American community would
like to see about that ).
4. Senator Block said Prop 209 reduced diversity (fact: The inverse is true.
UC/CSU were forced to work hard without resorting too much to race, leading
to a most diverse class with 41% Pell Grant recipients, 42% first in the
family to attend college, 27243 more Hispanics than white enrolled in 2013,
and African American on-time graduation rates skyrocketing 260% since 1996,
all thanks to Prop 209), and that SCA5 only seeks to reach out to minority
to mitigate the negative effect by Prop 209 (fact: see earlier).
5. Senator Block said he will not support SCA5 to come back (Great, SDAAFE
again would like to see about it) and that he is not aware of any attempt to
bring it back (fact: Senator Hernandez, the new California Kevin de Leon,
and the Hispanic Caucus have recently and publicly stated they are committed
to bring similar bills to a head for the 2016 ballot, as published on major
newspapers. For example: http://www.amren.com/news/2014/06/latino-lawmakers-move-to-reverse-decades-of-anti-immigrant-legislation/)
This town-hall meeting was effective in fostering positive synergy with
Senator Block and offered further opportunity to explore common grounds. It
accomplished three objectives:
(1) Senator Block personally witnessed the intensity of our community
opposition against SCA5.
(2) SDAAFE has the willingness to work together with Senator Block.
Hopefully Senator Block can potentially be a conduit to channel our opinion
to other legislators when they try to bring back the SCA5 reincarnation (If
we simply blame Senator Hernandez to have misled him in the earlier SCA5
vote. )
(3) Senator Block made a few personal statements that we can take as good
faith gesture and thank for his passion in education and we hope to foster
our relationship in a mutually beneficial direction.
While we support Senator Block’s own initiatives in granting 4-year college
degree in community college, further follow-up will be planed to discuss
SCA5 and other education issues in greater depth. | s****e
发帖数: 137 | 2 这次会议很成功，咱们亚裔很团结，去了将近30人，成功地让参议员先生感受到了我们
反对SCA5的声音。非常感谢大家的支持和参与！ |
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