Throughout her career, Rep. Judy Chu has been a fierce advocate for her constituents, championing issues such as health care access, immigration reform and environmental protection.
Chu was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, representing California’s 28th Congressional District. As the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, she has broken many barriers and paved the way for future generations of leaders.
On this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” host Tanya McRae sat down with Chu and discussed some of her family’s history, how she entered public service, and some of the issues she’s most passionate about.
Chu’s father was a Chinese American WWII veteran, and her mother was from South China. Chu grew up in South LA, and then her family moved up to the Bay Area. She returned to Los Angeles for college to attend UCLA and talked about how she became politically active during that period.
“I was only active though because I took Asian American Studies classes,” she said. “I discovered that it was the laws of this country that had discriminated against Chinese Americans and Asian Americans, and that those laws needed to have our input and needed to be changed. That’s what led me to say, ‘I have to do something about it.’ I got involved in Asian American issues, such as in bringing more resources to the community, because I came to understand that there were far fewer social services for our community.”
Chu and her husband settled in Monterey Park in the 1980s. While working as a professor at East Los Angeles Community College, she helped form The Coalition For Harmony and ran for the City Council.
“There was a very ugly, anti-immigrant, English only movement in Monterey Park,” she said. “There are many new immigrants moving in, but the old residents had a hard time with it. They wanted English-only books in the library. English-only on the signs in the city. Then they passed a resolution saying that only English should be spoken in the city. Well, that was the last straw. That’s when a coalition of us came together to fight this. We got thousands of signatures on petitions, and ultimately, the resolution was overturned. However, it became so clear that the people in the City Council did not represent the population of the city. That is when I ran for the City Council and won, and served on that body for 13 years and worked to bring the city together.”
While participating in public protests, Chu has been arrested three times. First in 2006, while protesting for the rights of hotel workers. The second time was at the U.S. Capitol while protesting on behalf of Dream Act students. And in 2022, she was arrested at a rally for abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“It’s so important for the American people to see that their representatives are doing something about the most critical issues of the time. In this case, it was so shocking that this U.S. Supreme Court would take away the rights of half the people in this country, women who have this right for 50 long years. I knew that I had to do something to express my outrage. That’s why I got arrested,” she said.
Championing environmental causes is another part of Chu’s legacy. She introduced the National Climate Service Corps and Careers Network Act.
Chu explained, “This is to get young people involved in good-paying jobs that will fight climate change. And it builds upon the AmeriCorps program, which was to get young people to have jobs that could lead to greater opportunities. What President Biden did is he implemented it by executive action. And so we already have thousands upon thousands of young people signing up, which shows their intense interest in saving the planet.”
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