Greetings. Whether or not you have heard of "80-20," we hopeyou'd reserve your judgment on this project, until we've directlycorresponded. We want to inform you regarding: what 80-20 isall about, how it has fared in the Asian American (AA)community, and why we seek you out.
We seek you out to ask you to lend your leadership.
The 80/20 Initiative is a national, non-partisan appeal initiated by a group of Chinese Americans but has expanded to include all Asian Americans. The basic idea is to take advantage of the heavy AA concentration in Calif. -- 7% of the registered voters in a state with 54 electoral votes and an early March, 2000 presidential primary -- to make Asian American voters a swing factor in the next presidential election, thereby inducing both major political parties to work hard to accord AAs with equal opportunity. 80/20 means if 80% of Asian American voters support this idea, we will become a powerful swing vote and through which we shall win our first-class-citizenship.
(2) How has the project fared in the AA community?
Better than 90% of AAs, whose e-mail addresses we had access to, became supporters. Our rate of expansion was exponential.
The 80-20 was formed on 9/27/98 in Foster City in CA. At the time, it had a mailing list of about 500. Today, 11 months later, we have 45,000 supporters. By end of this year, we expect to grow to 100,000.
The advantage of relying on e-mail is that it is costless, speedy and reliable. The work and resources that are required for e-mailing a million supporters is not appreciably different from e-mailing one person. In addition, a strong correlation exists between AA registered voters and AAs with e-mail capability and are comfortable to communicate in English.
Our statistics are as follows. Less than 5% of AAs requested to be REMOVED from our mailing list upon receiving our first e-mail. About 1% of AAs probably oppose 80-20 even after having received a package of 7 recruiting e-mails from 80-20. All remaining individuals, BETTER THAN 90%, became strong or moderate supporters. We hope to form a Pan Asian American Coalition of equal partners.
(3) Why do we seek you out?
We seek your leadership to a common effort to fulfill America's noble vision: "with liberty and justice for ALL." (Capitalization added)
In the next several days, we'll send you seven e-mails to provide you with more details. You are welcome to forward our e-mail to other leaders of your community. If you don't want to hear from us, send this letter back plus the word : REMOVE. Or, you could send this letter back plus the word: ENLIST.
As individual communities, our voices were not heard. However, TOGETHER WE SHALL OVERCOME. We and our children will benefit. America becomes "a more perfect Union."
Sincerely (members of Steering Comm., titles for ID purposes only)
Alex Esclamado, Nat'l President, Filipino-Am. Political Assoc.
Kenneth Fong, C.E.O., Clontech Laboratories,
Yu-Chi Ho, Harvard Univ., member of Nat'l Acad. of Engineering,
Stephen S. Ko, MD, Founder of Asian Am. Political Coalition N.J.
Michael Lin, former Nat'l President, Org. of Ch-Ams (1994-98),
Henry Tang, Chair , Committee of 100,
Chang-Lin Tien, Chancellor, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley (1991-97),
Dennis Wong, former Chair, San Francisco-Taipei Sister City Comm.,
Charles Woo, President, Magatoy, and
S. B. Woo, Lieutenant Governor of Delaware (1985-89)
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