[Interview] Korean American Receives "Immigrant Rights Advocacy Award": Eun Sook Lee emphasizes "we need to raise one voice across language groups and generations"
Yonhap News 11-21-07
(Translation from Korean article)
Reporter Gil Hwan Wang ghwang [at] yna.co.kr
Photo Caption: NILC honored NAKASEC and its Executive Director, Eun Sook Lee, with its first "Immigrant Rights Advocacy" award.
Seoul, Yonhap News - Eun Sook Lee, Executive Director at NAKASEC will receive the National Immigrant Law Center (NILC)'s first Immigrant Rights Advocacy award on December 6th at the Doubletree Hotel in Washington DC.
NILC is one of the premier organizations on policy and laws that impact immigrants from immigration and worker rights to education access and other benefits. They are widely and nationally recognized and respected for providing expert policy and legal guidance to many local and national immigrant rights organizations across the nation. NILC honored NAKASEC and its Executive Director, Eun Sook Lee, with its first "Immigrant Rights Advocacy" award.
NAKASEC, founded in 1994, has been at the forefront of the Korean American community's efforts to Fix the anti-immigrant 1996 Welfare Reform to bring back SSI benefits for low-income permanent resident seniors, and has been working for the DREAM Act, which will help undocumented students.
NAKASEC has also worked in collaboration with national organizations to stop SSA No-Match letters. No-Match is a measure that forces employees to verify and prohibit the hiring of undocumented workers.
Eun Sook Lee, who has been an early member of NAKASEC and soon became its executive director, said "I believe it is NILC's recognition of NAKASEC's consistent advocacy for immigrant communities from welfare reform in 1996 to today's fight for comprehensive immigration reform legislation that is just and humane." and added "this is one of the first times that a Korean American organization is being recognized by a major immigrant rights advocacy organization."
Miss Lee, born in Hwasoon, Jeolla Province of South Korea, immigrated to Canada at the age of six, and came to Chicago in 1993. Formerly, she served as the Executive Director of Korean American Women In Need, a bilingual domestic violence service agency in Chicago.
She also serves as the Neighborhood Commissioner of Los Angeles City and treasurer of APIA Vote!.
The following is an email interview with Miss Lee:
Q: What has been NAKASEC's work in the past years?
A: NAKASEC or the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, a national non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, California, was founded in 1994 by local community centers - Korean Resource Center (KRC) in Los Angeles, Korean American Resource & Cultural Center (KRCC) in Chicago and YKASEC – Empowering the Korean American Community (YKASEC) in New York.
The centers sought to empower and improve the lives of Korean Americans as part of a greater goal of building a national movement for social change. NAKASEC is a multi-issue civil and human rights organization that is based within the Korean American community. We promote equitable changes to the political and legislative systems through a combination of education and policy advocacy with grassroots organizing and community mobilization.
NAKASEC and NILC have a long relationship working together starting from our formation in 1994, at a time when there was a tremendous backlash against immigrants in both California and in Congress, which resulted in the welfare reform laws which took away basic benefits to low income legal immigrant seniors, including more than 26,000 Korean Americans. In 1996, immigrant seniors lost their SSI but we continued to organize and advocate and in 1997, we saw the restoration of SSI. In 1998, we were part of the successful national campaign that restored food stamps to low income immigrant families. Since then we have continued to expand our work to advocate for the educational needs of immigrant students. In today's movement for immigrant rights, there have been a handful of national organizations that have been able to combine expert policy advocacy with grounded grassroots organizing and NAKASEC represents one of those few groups.
Q: How is NAKASEC regarded in the United States?
A: Our three community centers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are well respected, trusted places for information and service for Korean Americans. I also know that Korean Americans understand that nationally we have yet to yield strong political force and recognize the need to project and advocate for the interests of Korean Americans. We have been fortunate to receive wide and broad support from Korean Americans in smaller and larger cities throughout the years, including the media.
In the beginning when we were first formed, we were marginalized within the mainstream community as an ethnic specific organization but as we continued to launch effective mobilization campaigns that involved the participation of a diverse set of communities and constituencies from labor to the catholic church to community based organizations, I think the mainstream is looking at us differently and realizing that we may represent a new model for organizing. I think our mottoes speak for themselves: Know your roots, live rightly, live with strength and dignity, and live in harmony.
Q: What are some future directions for NAKASEC?
A: 2008 is an important election year for Korean Americans. In no time in history has the presidential elections posed so much potential for great change and also for greater hardships to our community. One of our priorities in the near future will be to ensure that Korean Americans, as well as other Asian Pacific Americans and immigrants naturalize, register to vote and in November vote like never before. We also believe that we are at a crossroads in our work and organization where we have established ourselves beyond our own community in the area of immigrant rights. We hope to branch out beyond that to address other national policy priorities such as health care & access, education and housing. These are issues we address locally day in and day out and we intend to focus on them at the national level and work with new organizational partners.
Q: What are your thoughts about 1.5 and 2nd generation Korean Americans?
A: 1.5 and 2nd generation Korean Americans are coming of age. We have the potential to build in the tremendous work of our predecessors and truly grow the political power of Korean Americans. But again, I believe it requires beginning with know who we are (where we came from), from living rightly (seeking social justice) and in living in harmony (working in coalition with other communities).
Q: What is needed for the political empowerment of Korean Americans?
Resources and capacity through the establishment of organizations. We need to build strong organizations that are committed to more than providing social services to our community but also help immigrants understand and retain their identity in this country and also help them integrate politically. Our community must come together as different generations, first and second, to project a unified Korean American voice. But what we seek cannot only be Korean American representation but social justice that benefits all communities including our own.
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