Author: Philip Marcelo
Associated Press
Boston (Associated Press)-He came to the United States as a young refugee and survived the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge. Now, Sokhary Chau is the country’s first Cambodian-American mayor.
The 49-year-old Lowell, Massachusetts councillor was unanimously elected by his colleagues to hold the highest position in the agency on January 3, and in the process became the city’s first Asian mayor.
“God bless America, right? I am a refugee, and now I am the mayor of a major city in Massachusetts,” Chau said hours after being formally sworn in. “I don’t know if this will happen anywhere else in the world. I’m still trying to absorb it.”
In his inauguration speech, Zhou reflected on his family’s dangerous escape from Cambodia and the deep immigration roots in Lowell near the New Hampshire line about 30 miles north of Boston. It was the early center of the American textile industry and has attracted waves of European and Latin American immigrants for generations.
Today, nearly 25% of the city with more than 115,000 residents are Asians, and it is home to the second largest Cambodian community in the country.
“As a proud Cambodian American, I stand on the shoulders of many immigrants who built this city before me,” Zhou said in front of a crowd including his wife and two teenage sons.
Zhou recounted how his father, a captain of the Cambodian army, was executed by the Communist Khmer Rouge during the civil war.
He said that the mother who died at the end of last year managed to keep her seven children alive for four years, survived “landmines, jungle, hunger, disease and uncertainty” and sent them safely to the United States.
In a later interview, Zhou said that when his family arrived in Pittsburgh with the help of the Catholic Church, he was about 9 years old. They lived in the monastery for a while and believed in Christianity.
In the mid-1980s, they came to Lowell’s growing Cambodian community, and some of his brothers and sisters immediately started working in the local manufacturing business.
However, Zhou continued his studies and received a scholarship from Phillips College, an elite boarding school in nearby Andover. He continued to study economics and political science at McAlester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received a scholarship.
Zhou said that before running for office, he was mainly engaged in financial services, including running a mortgage company in Lowell with his wife. He now works in the Social Security Administration.
Zhou was elected after the new Mayor of Boston Wu Mixue came to power, and her parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan. She was sworn in last November to be the first woman and the first person of color in Boston to be elected to the position.
Vannak Theng, chairman of the Greater Lowell Cambodia Mutual Aid Association, said Zhou is also one of the growing number of Cambodian-American officials in Massachusetts, including two other city councillors, a school committee member, and two state councillors. Lowell.
However, according to the Asian Pacific American Congressional Institute (a non-profit organization that helps Asian Pacific Americans hold public office), although Cambodian Americans serve on local committees and state legislatures across the country, no one is elected mayor.
The organization pointed out that, in fact, Long Beach, California is home to the largest Cambodian community in the country, and the first Cambodian-American city councilor was not elected until 2020.
Zhou’s election also took place after a federal lawsuit, which argued that Lowell’s election process violated the voting rights of minority residents, who make up nearly 50% of its population.
The recent settlement in this case led the city to change its electoral system starting with the 2021 election. Oren Sellstrom, the director of litigation at the Boston Civil Rights Lawyer Organization, which filed the 2017 lawsuit, said the result is that the city has the most diverse civil servant class.
“Just four years ago, the city’s elected officials were all white, and basically did not respond to the needs of the city’s colored communities,” he said.
Zhou’s role as mayor is mainly ceremonial. Lowell’s day-to-day operations are handled by a city manager selected by the city council. Zhou actually serves as the chairman of the city council, leading the meeting and chairing the school committee.
But he believes that he can play a role by ensuring that the urban workforce, including the police department and school system, better represents its diverse population.
He also admitted that his election is of great significance to the Cambodian diaspora. Before the January 3 vote, the political dynamics of the community played a role-his main competitor was a Cambodian-American congressman.
Zhou said he tried to stay away from “old world politics” and intended to focus on the details of governance. But I hope he can inspire the next generation of Cambodian Americans to come forward.
“We can no longer just be victims,” Zhou said in his inauguration speech. “It’s time for us to become leaders and achieve success.”
