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Dear Neighbors,
A warm thank you to everyone who attended and participated in our virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday. It’s clear Eastsiders are engaged, they care about each other, and they’re extremely dedicated in banding together to strengthen our neighborhoods. If you missed the event, you can watch a recap here. Please continue to reach out to us with additional questions or input.
May is AAPI Month
May is nationally recognized as AAPI Month – a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. President Jimmy Carter signed legislation (Public Law 95-419) on October 5, 1978 to make annually the week of May encompassing May 7 and May 10 as Asian American history week, to commemorate the first arrival of Japanese Americans (May 7, 1843) and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroads respectively (May 10, 1869).
We stand on the shoulders of great ancestors, and that is why we have the privilege to exercise our rights and power today. For this month of May, we owe our thanks to Jeanie Jew, a former Capitol Hill staffer, who in the 1970s, upon observing the lack of recognition of Asian Americans in the Bicentennial celebration of 1976, approached US Rep. Frank Horton of New York to do something about this. Jew's great-grandfather, M.Y. Lee had come to America to help build the railroad. Like countless others, he labored to build bridges, span chasms, carve out caves, dig ditches, break rocks, flatten and move earth, dynamite away the hills and valleys of America to connect us by train coast to coast. Representative Horton and Senator Daniel Inouye worked hard to recognize the first week of May for Asian Americans in the legislative session of 1977.
As a state legislator, I thank Representative Horton and Senator Inouye for recognizing us. I honor and respect the pioneering leadership that Asian Americans before me such as Senator Inouye have modeled so that a generation later, a new Hmong son of refugee parents like myself can run for office in Minnesota.
COVID-19 Update from Gov. Walz:
From building out critical hospital capacity to launching a landmark testing strategy, Minnesota has made meaningful progress in preparing for the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Minnesotans have made this possible by staying home and holding down the rate of infection.
But now is not the time for sudden movements. There’s more work to be done. We need to keep this virus at a simmer, not a boil. We must prioritize the safety of Minnesotans while taking cautious, strategic steps toward getting people safely back to work.
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