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BOSTON (AP) — A refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge’s brutal rule has turn out to be the primary Cambodian American mayor in america.
Sokhary Chau, a metropolis councilor in Lowell, Massachusetts, was unanimously picked by his council friends to imagine the legislative physique’s high publish on Monday. He additionally grew to become the town’s first Asian American mayor.
“God bless America, proper? I used to be a refugee, now I’m mayor of a serious metropolis in Massachusetts,” the 49-year-old, who works for the U.S. Social Safety Administration, mentioned after being formally sworn in. “I don’t know if that might occur wherever else on the earth. I’m nonetheless attempting to soak up it.”
Chau, in his inaugural remarks, mirrored on his household’s perilous escape from Cambodia and the previous industrial metropolis of Lowell’s deep immigrant roots.
Positioned on the Merrimack River close to the New Hampshire state line, Lowell was an early heart of America’s textile trade, drawing waves of European and Latin American immigrants over generations.
As we speak, the town of greater than 115,000 residents is almost 25% Asian and residential to the nation’s second-largest Cambodian neighborhood.
“As a proud Cambodian American, I’m standing on the shoulders of many immigrants who got here earlier than me to construct this metropolis,” Chau mentioned Monday earlier than a crowd that included his spouse and two teenage sons.
Chau recounted how his father, a captain within the Cambodian military, was executed by the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975 in the course of the nation’s civil conflict.
He mentioned his mom, who died final 12 months, managed to maintain her seven kids alive for 4 years, surviving “landmines, jungles, starvation, illness and uncertainty” to ship them safely to the U.S.
Chau mentioned America could not have “streets paved with gold” as his household imagined whereas dwelling in refugee camps, but it surely’s a land the place democracy is feasible due to “methods of checks and balances” and ideas like equity, equality and transparency.
In an interview later, Chau mentioned he was round 9 years outdated when his household initially settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the assistance of the Catholic Church — an expertise that prompted the household to transform to Christianity.
They made their approach to Lowell’s rising Cambodian neighborhood within the mid-Eighties, the place a few of his older siblings instantly set to work in native factories.
Chau, nonetheless, continued his research and ultimately earned a scholarship to Phillips Academy, a unique boarding faculty in close by Andover. He went on to Macalester Faculty in St. Paul, Minnesota, the place he studied economics and political science, additionally on a scholarship.
Earlier than operating for workplace, Chau mentioned he labored largely in monetary providers, together with operating a mortgage lending firm in Lowell together with his spouse earlier than the housing market crashed within the early 2000s.
Chau’s election follows the ascendance of latest Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, whose dad and mom immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan. She was sworn in last November as Boston’s first lady and first individual of shade elected to the publish.
Chau can also be among the many rising record of Cambodian American officeholders in Massachusetts: not less than two different metropolis councilors, a faculty committee member and two state lawmakers, all from Lowell, in response to Vannak Theng, president of the Cambodian Mutual Help Affiliation of Better Lowell.
However whereas Cambodian Individuals served on native boards and state legislatures nationwide, none have been elected mayor, in response to the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Research, a Washington nonprofit that helps Asian Pacific Individuals pursue public workplace and maintains a list of present officeholders.
The truth is, Lengthy Seaside, California, dwelling to the nation’s largest Cambodian neighborhood, solely elected its first Cambodian American city councilor in 2020, the group famous.
Chau’s election additionally comes on the heels of a federal courtroom lawsuit that argued Lowell’s election course of violated the voting rights of minority residents, who comprise almost 50% of its inhabitants.
A recent settlement within the case prompted the town to alter its election course of, beginning with the 2021 elections. The consequence was the town’s most various class of officeholders, mentioned Oren Sellstrom, litigation director at Legal professionals for Civil Rights, a Boston group that introduced the 2017 swimsuit.
“Simply 4 years in the past, the town’s elected officers have been all white and largely unresponsive to the wants of the town’s communities of shade,” Sellstrom mentioned. “This historic change within the metropolis’s energy construction would by no means have been potential below the outdated electoral system.”
To make sure, the mayoral workplace in Lowell is essentially ceremonial.
The town, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Boston, is run by a metropolis supervisor picked by the council. The mayor is successfully the council president, main its conferences and likewise serving as chair of the town’s faculty committee.
Nonetheless, Chau acknowledged his election’s significance to the broader Cambodian diaspora, calling on others to step up of their communities.
“We are able to not be simply victims,” he mentioned as he closed his inaugural remarks. “It’s our time now to be leaders and to succeed.”
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