On Wednesday May 28, 2010, Turkish-American constituents of Michigan’s 11th District met the Deputy District Director of Republican Representative Thaddeus McCotter at his main district office in Livonia. Congressman McCotter’s district covers the cities of Northville, Livonia, and also includes the TACAM Cultural Center.
This visit was especially important for our outreach initiative and especially for our constituent volunteers. In April as part of our activities responding to H.Res 252 those who wrote Mr. McCotter received a very insulting and racist response.
Once we were notified of his letter, TACAM leadership drafted a formal response to his letter. We never received a response to the hand-delivered letter and so we began to contact his office for a meeting.
After several attempts we were able to secure a meeting and on May 26th nine members of the Turkish-American community met with Deputy District Director Don Yowchuang.
Our meeting lasted around 45 minutes and during that time we expressed the Turkish community’s disappointment and disapproval of his choice of wording. We demanded a response to our letter, shared information with his office in order to educate them with a more balanced view of history, and finally introduced the office to the Turkish-American community in Michigan.
The volunteers for this meeting did a wonderful job of preparing for the meeting and in presenting the facts we set out to demonstrate. Throughout the events that led to this meeting the activities of our volunteers have shown the importance of organized collaboration, and also shown what a dedicated group of individuals are capable of.
We will certainly inform the community of any further news regarding this issue.
If you would like to sign up for our grassroots outreach program and receive group updates via email please go to our registration page.