Meena Wong wants to be a Vancouver City Councilor
Meena Wong held a press conference at Vancouver City Hall this morning at 10am. Attending were various English language and Chinese language media.
Also attending in support of Meena were city councilors David Cadman and George Chow, school trustee Al Blakely, former city councilor Ellen Woodsworth, Sid Tan, Gabriel Yiu, Mel Lehan, Harvely Lee, and Ron Chin.
Since moving to Vancouver from Toronto, where she had worked as assistants to Ontario legislator, and Toronto city councilor Olivia Chow, Meena has quickly built up a wonderful network in Vancouver.
She counts me as one of her first friends when she arrived in Vancouver in 2002, and asked me to introduce her:
When I first met her, she was newly arrived from Toronto, and she came out to volunteer for the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month opening event that I was organizing.
Meena
cares about our youth. She has worked with the SUCCESS youth
leadership millenium program. She has worked with foreign college
students helping them learn about Canadian culture, Vancouver history
and finding them ways to participate and volunteer. She connected me
to the YLM program as a mentor.
Meena cares about the
environment. She helped build awareness of environmental issues in the
Chinese language community, by creating outreach for the Western Canada
Wilderness Committee where she worked with executive director Andrea
Reimer. I see Meena at info booths in Chinatown night market and at
cultural festivals.
Meena cares
about people. She cares about human rights. This is why she was
active for the Chinese Head Tax Redress campaign. Even though she is
not a head tax descendant, she helped bring the message to both Chinese
and English language communities. We helped conduct meetings and
convey information together.
Meena builds bridges. She has
worked for many non-profits and served on many boards including: Little
Pear Garden, Asian Canadian Writers Workshop and COPE. Every month she
hosts a dim sum luncheon for “progressives”. She introduces people to
people, community to community. She introduces amazing people, people
like Libby Davies, Mel Lehan, Ellen Woodsworth, Sid Tan, David Cadman, Gabriel Yiu, or
Olivia Chow from Toronto.
During the past Vancouver civic and
provincial elections, it was Meena Wong helping COPE and NDP reach out
into the Chinese language communities. She helps people discover that
they have more commonalities for progressive thinking people that can
overcome cultural and language barriers.
Meena
Wong knows what the issues are, and how to get results. She knows how
city hall works, and she wants to make it more accessible for everybody
no matter what language they speak. Meena speaks English, Mandarin and
Cantonese… and even a little French.
I know Meena personally.
She is my friend. She has supported me on many of my endeavors such as
Gung Haggis Fat Choy, Chinese Head Tax campaign, dragon boat teams,
Asian Canadian literary events… She is constructive. She builds
consensus. She builds bridges. She is respectful. She is
understanding.
This is why Meena Wong will make a great contribution to Vancouver's city council.