(Part III of III)
“AMERICA is once again at a moment of reckoning. Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart. Bonds of trust and respect are fraying. And just as with our founders, there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together. Our country’s motto is e pluribus unum: out of many, we are one. Will we stay true to that motto?” — Hillary Clinton on July 28, 2016.
“Fifty-two countries have had a female head of state already and Clinton would join Britain’s second female prime minister, Theresa May, and German chancellor Angela Merkel at the top table of elected leaders were she to win the US general election in November.” – Dan Roberts and Lauren Gambino, The Guardian, July 28, 2016.
Come Nov. 8, 2016, we have a choice.
Will we choose Hillary Clinton, who is conversant about foreign policy, can be trusted not to lose her temper over a tweet and can sustain the strategic leading role of the United States of America?
Or will we choose the media-known, unqualified candidate, who is perceived by most, unless his rabid followers, to be lacking in good manners and right conduct, as he scorns and marginalizes communities of color, starting with Mexicans being accused as rapists and criminals to Muslims, to women, to Asians, to gays, to Blacks, and now Filipinos whom he accused of as coming from a terrorist country?
Would we still waste a vote on Trump, when he is clearly unfit in temperament and foreign policy know-how to be in the White House and has no clue about what domestic needs for increased minimum wage, jobs, child care, paid family leave, health care, good schools, affordable housing, tuition free-college, immigration reform to reunite our families, common sense gun safety laws? Other than that, he has filed bankruptcy five times and has been involved in 3,500 lawsuits.
I vividly remember a loyal Filipino-American businessman, also a Republican, who told me he is ready to vote for Hillary Clinton as his party does not have a good candidate worthy of the White House, even if 16 candidates vied for that office before the primary.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said, “Donald is not making America great again, Donald is making America hate again.”
“It’s difficult to go forward if we’re always looking in the rearview mirror.”
At a meeting in Pakistan with university students, Hillary Clinton fielded a lot of questions. As she wrote in “Hard Choices”:
“Why are Pakistani exchange students in America stereotyped as terrorists? How can we trust America when you’ve let us down many times before?…I tried to provide full and respectful answers. It is difficult to go forward if we’re always looking in the rearview mirror,” I pointed out. The mood in the room was sullen and aggrieved, with little of the positive energy I had encountered in other university visits around the world.”
I met a fellow lola, Joselyn Geaga-Rosenthal, from our Asian American community. It is Hillary for her, as she spoke of her admiration following her career as first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, US senator and secretary of state to hopefully the next president in the White House. For Joselyn, it is an easy choice, brought about by due diligence and active participation in the political process, she has attended at least two other DNCs and has seen Hillary speak at UCLA when she was a student there.
Joselyn articulated the forward growth of this former first lady, who advocated for child care very early in the 1960s, worked for 8 million children to have health care insurance and fought to desegregate schools in the South so black children can have access to these publicly-funded schools, as much as the white children.
I was quite surprised with how much she knew, including the story of Dorothy, Hillary Clinton’s mom, who grew up in San Gabriel Valley.
What lesson did I learn from her? That your excitement about the political process is internally generated: the more we research, the more we dig for accurate information, the more we become interested in the political process, thus the more invested we are!
Our national democratic leaders are into our community’s and region’s interests
Do you know that President Obama has done 11 visits now to Asia? The latest will be on Sept. 2-9, 2016 to China and Laos. I mention this because it was Hillary Clinton who asserted: “I step off the plane for the first time as Secretary of State in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 16, 2009. I broke with tradition to make my first trip to Asia, signifying our ‘pivot’ to the region.”
With this pivot to Asia, she visited with students from the school President Obama attended as a child in Jakarta, Indonesia, in Feb. 2009. Indonesia, she says, “is an emerging regional power and home of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an important partner in our engagement in Asia.”
And in a photo with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, she describes, “The rise of China is one of the most consequential strategic developments of our time. This isn’t a relationship, which fits neatly into categories like friend or rival, and it may never be. That is why I spent so much of my time working to create the right balance.”
It took a million air miles to open doors of diplomacy, in 112 countries. As Hillary wrote in her book, “Over four years we spent a total of eighty-seven full days in the air!” We are just now seeing the fruits of her diplomacy, some seven years later, facilitating what Sec. of State John Kerry is now accomplishing.
Do you also remember her personal visit to the Philippines, where she reaffirmed the United States’ ties with the Philippines on Nov. 16, 2011? Or that as senator, she spoke on the Senate floor to support our Filipino-American World War II veterans?
Can you think of another presidential candidate surpassing Hillary Clinton, who is this connected and for our community’s interests?
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright said, “when I step out of the plane with the USA painted on it, I know my president should have a cool head, a big heart and that this is not a reality show.”
Madeline Albright reminded us that a victory for Trump is a gift to Putin, and in the last few weeks, we came to know of how the Democratic Party’s database was reportedly hacked, per FBI reports, by hackers working for Putin.
Hillary Clinton is also the presidential candidate who has appointed Jason Benjamin Alinea Tengco, a Filipino American, as her outreach director for Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). He represents us well.
Hearing unfiltered messages through active engagement: moving the ball forward
When I got to the DNC, the first thing I saw were young parents carrying their babies tucked in Gerry carriers, older folks in wheelchairs, some walking with canes, and many folks of different ages, nationalities, creed, religion and sexual orientations.
“There was a movement of love and compassion which speaks to our hearts and consciences. Every senior in need of care is my parent. An attack of their race and religion is an attack on us. This movement fueled by love can never be stopped or defeated,” said Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii.
Stand up and “do the most good,” kept getting repeated by speaker upon speaker.
Hillary as first lady obtained help for a mother whose child had dwarfism syndrome. She supported the first trafficking law, making it a punishable felony, as trafficking had become the 3rd biggest crime in the world.
Hillary believes that women must be in parity with men, that “when women are held back, democracies falter.”
Ima Matul, a survivor of human trafficking, addressed the DNC to speak of her horrors which started when she was 17, a victim of human trafficking who found her home at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST).
When Hillary became senator she became the best economic development officer for New York and when she spoke of women’s rights as human rights, she also believed that human rights are gay rights.
According to President Bill Clinton, Hillary has done more at age 30 than many public officials have done in their lifetimes.
Even with such effective public service, she has been the most strictly scrutinized public official for the past 20 years, who is hyper-scrutinized for every mistake she makes such that the media have a caricature of the real Hillary.
The real Hillary, the real one, according to Bill Clinton has drawn praises from Republicans. When she was secretary of state, she was a “real changemaker [that] represents a real threat. You nominated the real one! She’s still the best darn changemaker I have known,” Bill asserted.
And President Obama drew the loudest applauses when he said, “You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. You can read about it. You can study it. But until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis, or send young people to war. But Hillary has been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions.
“She knows what’s at stake in the decisions our government makes—what’s at stake for the working family, for the senior citizen, or the small business owner, for the soldier, for the veteran. And even in the midst of crisis, she listens to people, and she keeps her cool, and she treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds, no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.
(Applause.)
“That is the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman—not me, not Bill, nobody—more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”
Will America become the 53rd country in the world with a female head of state come Nov. 8, 2016? That is up to you, my dear Asian Journal readers who are also registered American voters who will take the time to vote for the real one!
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 9 years now. She contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Mexico and 22 national parks in the US, in pursuit of her love for arts.