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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #25 (June 24, 2008), page 7.

We are, ask anyone, all business. We take care of business, of our families, of our communities. Asians won’t wait for help, we don’t expect it from strangers, and certainly wouldn’t ask it of government. Ogh, government. Back home the more distance between big-face bosses and our cozy kitchens, the better.

But America can be different.

Say you’re bobbing around, gasping for air waaay out in Oregon’s cold-cold surf — wave your arms and soon enough an orange and ivory Coast Guard chopper will lower you a rescue basket. Or say: it’s real late, you’re slipping into sleep and you hear an intruder crawling into your kitchen window — punch 911 and soon enough a polished Portland Police cruiser’ll show up, blue lights flashing. Yanks are tip-top drawer at this kind of rescue.

But what if you’re not thrashing in gray-blue waves, what if you’re not panicked over somebody busting into your house?

Who do you buzz for low-tech, non-lethal backup?

A: Asian auntie nine-one-one (AA-911).

For handling something shorter than a North Pacific breaker, for fixing someone more manageable than a hungry crackhead, we get relief from the beef by getting a community auntie. Korean or Khmer, Hmong or Iu Mien, Lao or Viet Kieu, sisters all the same. You know where these ladies live.

Take the recent arrival of Karen rebel fighter families. Two generations rotating between highland jungle hideouts and Thai frontier refugee camps. Hair-trigger dads and skinny mas and silenced babies dodging that ethnocidal Burmese Army. That criminal regime’s soldierboys.

Now, set those traumatized families suddenly down in Portland, Oregon. Cold asphalt and hot electric Portland. Tidy 8-to-5 workplace Portland. Cool and crystal-clear drinking fountain in your polished linoleum school hall Portland. None of that in Karen language, mind you.

Who’re you going to call?

AA-911. Assuredly.

Last Monday, inside Portland’s marbled City Council Chambers, Mayor Tom Potter recognized the work of one of them, one of our First Responders. She wasn’t there in a zip-up flight suit, she carried no guns or sticks or cuffs. She wasn’t even on the job. In fact, that big thousand dollar summer youth project check handed over wasn’t even in her name.

What’s more, this column’s not about what this one big-hearted, broadshouldered sister does (after work, after family) for those dazed and vulnerable Karen kids, suddenly here. Way out in their southeast Portland apartment blocks.

No. This note is only a small repayment to a hundred women just like our sister Sudarat, a tiny deposit into their seemingly bottomless cardiac vaults. Where all this compassion capital comes from. What we cannot do without. How they do it, God only knows.

And this little payback is also our way of letting all those sisters in Mayor Potter’s City Hall know that their unprecedented presence in Portland government, that their unexpected understanding of our community’s business and their loving response to this urgent AA-911 call — makes them familia. Our familia. Aunties all the same. Al’hamdulilaaah.