Activism Beckons a New Generation of Cambodians

Ra Pok's mother always told her to never talk to men, never argue with those in authority and never get involved in politics.

Pok, 20, did the opposite.

At 16, she joined Khmer Girls in Action, an all-female Cambodian organization. The group's goals: preventing unjust deportation of Cambodian immigrants, sponsoring leadership workshops for women and organizing cultural events.

"We need to step up and come up and talk about the struggles that we're facing," said Pok, sitting in the organization's second-floor office in Long Beach. "If I don't do this type of work, who will?"

She said the group's members, who are between 14 and 21, struggle within a community that equates political activism with violence and dissuades women from speaking out.

"My mother expects women to be at home," Pok said. "She thinks it's a waste of time and we should be at home taking care of our brothers. We have a culture of fear to challenge the status quo."

The new generation of Cambodians, many born in the United States, did not experience the political persecution their parents fled during the Pol Pot regime. Teens and young adults are more likely to get involved, said Que Dang, the group's executive director.

"You're seeing this hybrid. We have different values that aren't so traditional," said Dang, 32.

Khmer Girls in Action was born from a larger nonprofit called HOPE (Health, Opportunity, Problem Solving, Empowerment). Members broke away and established the all-female group in 2001 to help Southeast Asians in Long Beach.

The organization, now with about 20 members and grants from such groups as the Ford Foundation and the Liberty Hill Foundation, made some HOPE projects its own.

For its first campaign, an anti-sexual harassment initiative in 1999, the group surveyed 400 teenage girls at Polytechnic High. It found that nine out of 10 peers -- Asian and non-Asian -- experienced sexual harassment at school.

"People didn't know where sexual harassment started versus harmless flirting," Dang said.

After the survey was done, Khmer Girls in Action invited Long Beach city and school officials to a Buddhist temple to discuss the results. From that meeting, officials implemented mandatory sexual harassment awareness training for teachers and students, an improved grievance policy and a complaint hotline. After that success, members began working on Cambodian immigrant rights, the issue they feel more than any other plagues a community still haunted by a bloody past.