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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWatch: George Takei’s Endorsement Of Barack Obama Will Make You Cry
George Takei has become known as not only the actor who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek TV series, but as a humorous and engaging LGBT activist. But in this President Barack Obama endorsement video he recorded for the campaign, Takei wears a different hat a representative of the Asian American community, as he tells of the memory seared into his brain when soldiers came marching up our driveway and his family and he at the age of five were locked up in World War II internment camps.
We were in prison, behind barbed wire fences, for four years, for the duration of the war, simply because we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. We were American citizens, yet, because of who we were, what we looked like, we were in prison, without due process.
Stop right now and imagine a five-year old George Takei, in prison. That was America seventy years ago. It may make you cry, at least a little. It did me.
But, we have, as an Asian-American community, low voter registration, Takei states. Weve got to be actively involved in the electoral process. And if you really appreciate the price that has been paid, for that right, you should be in there participating, protecting our interests, and, in so doing, making our democracy a truer democracy.
We have a unique opportunity to support a president who is a part of us. He grew up in Hawaii, the Aloha spirit, his sisters half-Asian. He understands, and loves, the Asian-American community.
George Takei is a gift to America.
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/watch-george-takeis-endorsement-of-barack-obama-will-make-you-cry/politics/2012/10/06/50414
freshwest
(53,661 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Whisp
(24,096 posts)Cha
(297,258 posts)I'm not even Asian American! thank you and thank George Takei..that's a beautiful GOTV Vid!
Here's Maya's tribute to Asian Americans..
We have our own Mazie Hirono running for Senator here in Hawai'i..
http://www.mazieforhawaii.com/
sakabatou
(42,152 posts)Generic Other
(28,979 posts)Thank you, George Takei. Arigato Gozaimasu.
hunter
(38,313 posts)... and yes, a leader in the civil rights movement.
Lucy Goosey
(2,940 posts)George Takei has been one of my favorite people in the world for the past few years.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)I appreciate learning a bit more about Obama's family heritage, and I enthusiastically endorse Takei's call to voter registration for the under-represented Asian-American community...
but.
This message doesn't square well in my mind, with the indefinite detention provisions of the 2012 NDAA. No, it doesn't define Obama's presidency, and it certainly doesn't make the other candidate look any better, but it is sort of the elephant in the room, in contrast to Takei's message. And that is unfortunate.
RitchieRich
(292 posts)Sorry to put you in my boat, but thank you!
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)It's going to have to go to the supreme court. I'll leave the party-lines divide on the court up to your imagination.
RitchieRich
(292 posts)Occasionally they actually will vote with their conscience, not their party's expectation. Do you know about the status of this going to the court? I couldn't stomach reading any more on it after it was reinstated. Sad that I have more hope for Roberts than for Obama.
It seems to me that if this were a Red decision, people on the Left would positively loose their minds. How does it escape their attention that there will eventually be another Right president who will be free to wield these broad new powers?
Rozlee
(2,529 posts)Not many Americans know that we had 400,000 Nazi EPWs here during WWII working in fields and in our factories. They were housed in barracks prisons when not out working in prison labor. But, we didn't have them segregated from our population overall. One African-American veteran, disabled while fighting the Nazis overseas, once told of how despairing and horrified he felt at coming home and seeing Nazi soldiers standing in line to drink from "WHITES ONLY" water fountains. Our Asian-American citizens were treated monstrously during that time all because of their race.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Takei sama wa saiko desuyo! Honto desu.
Kimiko yori.