Saturday, October 27, 2018

Remember when 22 AAPI Hollywood celebrities joined in a GOTV PSA for the first time?



WITH THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS just days away, you might be interested in this oldie-but-goodie effort to motivate Asian American and Pacific Islander voters.

This Get-Out-The-Vote public service announcement (PSA), “Voice Your Vote,” first aired on television nationwide during the fall of 1996. The PSA was a historic merger between the APA community and the 22 APA Hollywood celebrities

Dean Cain, Rosalind Chao, Keiu Chinh, Margaret Cho, Stan Egi, Amy Hill, Shishir Kurup, Jason Scott Lee, Mako, Dustin Nguyen, Steve Park, Nia Peeples, Jenny Shimizu, Elizabeth Sung, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, Lauren Tom, Tamlyn Tomita, Denise Uyehara, Garrett Wang, Ming-Na Wen, B.D. Wong and Russell Wong. Oh, they looked so young!
The NAPAVRC was the first ever national effort to organize APAs all across the United States to register to vote and to go out to vote. Until the inception of the National Asian Pacific American Voter Registration Campaign, APA voter registration campaigns have been conducted at the local and state levels. Nineteen national APA organizations were members of this historic coalition. The PSA was created for the NAPAVRC by actor Tamlyn Tomita and Vida Benavides of Ace High Consulting, and produced by Jusak Yang Bernhard and Paul G. Bens, Jr. of I Can Make It Myself Productions. Funding for the PSA was provided by the AFL-CIO and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance.

The PSA was aimed at 18-35 year olds, the group least likely to vote. This November, most of the PSAs are targeting the Millennial generation, those born between 1981-1996 who are reached adulthood in the first two decades of the 21st century. They have the most at stake in this election but thus far, their voting record has been abysmal.

Twenty-four years later, AAPI voters still have a hard time getting to the polls even though immigration  and health care are a couple of the biggest issues of this election. Only 49% of the AAPI voters actually voted in the 2016 elections. 

Here's an example of a new PSA laced with stereotype-busting humor:

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