Making a change from inside the campaign. 

The Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee is currently working towards creating mechanisms of increasing involvement of the Pakistani-American community members within the democratic and republican parties to work and become representative in their various capacities.  PAKPAC feels that in order to work for advocacy, the community members have to work in a multiprong approach.  One of those critical prongs is to work within the party system and also develop mechanisms to increase the number of elected officials of Pakistani heritage within the US politics.

As the first step nationwide conference call was held with the elected officials of Pakistani heritage within the varied political positions from both the democratic and republican parties.  Other members who had been candidates or are currently interested to run for political positions are also invited do join this conference call.

The joint efforts of all the participants of the conference call agreed to the following views and suggested the following road map to increasing the voice of Pakistani-American community within the US political process. 

(a) Agreement on the importance of changing the parties’ perceptions and views from within.  They felt that while most of the people try and help educate the party people from the outside through their votes and advocacy letters, that remains an important issue, however, it was clear that the views of the party representative is more likely to be impacted from the inside by more one to one discussions and appropriate education.

(b) There was also an agreement that all politics are local and it is important for people to become local important voices within their communities. 

(c) There was a feeling that the involvement in support of the Pakistani-American community to the members of the community seeking elections and reelections needs to improve

(d) Members agreed that they were willing to serve as supporters and mentor others who are interested to run for political offices and positions in future. 

(e) The representatives on the conference call mentioned the need to increase the members of Pakistani-American community who would be joining in as active quality members in various political positions in their respective parties. In this effort, we ask people who are interested for running within their towns, cities or states at multiple different levels should reach out to us so we can strengthen our network and further identify mechanisms of providing support.

(f) Using the 2008 elections including the primaries as well as the main presidential elections would be critical step in increasing the active involvement of the community in the political process. There was a coordinated plan that was initiated to maximize the number of Pakistani American delegates at both the conventions and increasing the presence of the community members including a hospitality suite to be set up the PAKPAC.  

Everyone felt the emergent need to build on strengthening this network and a regular and ongoing communication to build a momentum to tackle the ever increasing community needs.