In honor of Asian Pacific Islander Desi heritage month at LBCC, Suely Saro, a council member of district 6 in the city of Long Beach talked about her own background, political activism in the Long Beach Khmer community, and her path to the Long Beach city council.
The event she spoke at was at an APID heritage month event called, called “Trailblazer in Action,” in which Vincent Calip, a computer and office studies professor was the host.
Council member Saro is the first Cambodian American to serve as council member in the city of Long Beach. Saro has been in office for six months now.
“She was born into a refugee camp in Thailand to parents that survived the Cambodian genocide. However, she pushed against the odds to receive three degrees at UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Long Beach and University La Verne,” said Calip.
Saro may have had a tough childhood, but it didn’t defy her of having great potential to receive a good education.
She explains how a first step of advocacy is always reporting a hate crime or incident.
“After seeing all of the rising Asian-American hate crimes and incidents that have happened, one of the things that I wanna make sure we do as a city is condemn the racist xenophobic acts that have occurred against the Asian-American community,” said Saro.
At a young age, Saro knew her circumstances were different and challenging, which made it her responsibility to help her family navigate in this country.
“I knew early on it was my passion to help and serve people, so I learned to be in tune with my passion, which was to work with communities that faced disparity,” said Saro
Saro also mentioned how this past year we relied so much on social media. We see other people hit milestones in their lives but we miss the journey they went through, which is what she believes can make social media so deceiving.
“There is always this image or expectation that not only our families present, but also our community and our society set us up for,” said Saro.
A common misconception Saro shared was that people think that members in the Cambodian community don’t get involved in politics, but are indeed. They’re involved in local politics, not in American politics.
That is why Saro feels that it is important to encourage others to take whatever steps they feel comfortable with, coming together is what has helped Cambodian’s have a voice in the media and even at a legislative level.
“It takes individuals as a group to come together to take action,” said Saro.
Saro wants to continue to affirm that she is always there to listen to the community and build ideas with everyone because that’s where she sees her role as council member. It is not just serving her constituents, but also knowing what is relevant to the needs of students to everybody else.
“No matter where you are at, it is where you’re supposed to be, because that is your journey and your experience,” said Saro.
Suely Saro hopes to see a relationship between LBCC and the Cambodian community, where there is a bridge and a pathway that occurs between the students that allows for career pathway opportunities in the Cambodian community or politics.