1st Cambodian American mayor in US takes office
By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
January 04, 2022 12:39 AM

Mayor Sokhary Chau addresses the assembly during the Lowell City Council swearing-in ceremony, Monday, Jan. 3, 2022, in Lowell, Mass., held at Lowell Memorial Auditorium due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chau, a refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge’s bloody regime, has become the city’s first mayor of color and the first Cambodian American mayor in the United States. (Julia Malakie/The Lowell Sun via AP)

A refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge’s brutal rule has become the first Cambodian American mayor in the United States.

Sokhary Chau, a city councilor in Lowell, Massachusetts, was unanimously picked by his council peers to assume the legislative body’s top post on Monday. He also became the city’s first Asian American mayor.

“God bless America, right? I was a refugee, now I’m mayor of a major city in Massachusetts,” the 49-year-old, who works for the U.S. Social Security Administration, said after being officially sworn in. “I don’t know if that could happen anywhere else in the world. I’m still trying to absorb it.”

Chau, in his inaugural remarks, reflected on his family’s perilous escape from Cambodia and the former industrial city of Lowell's deep immigrant roots.

Located on the Merrimack River near the New Hampshire state line, Lowell was an early center of America’s textile industry, drawing waves of European and Latin American immigrants over generations.

Today, the city of more than 115,000 residents is nearly 25% Asian and home to the nation’s second-largest Cambodian community.

“As a proud Cambodian American, I am standing on the shoulders of many immigrants who came before me to build this city," Chau said Monday before a crowd that included his wife and two teenage sons.

Chau recounted how his father, a captain in the Cambodian army, was executed by the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975 during the country’s civil war.
Full article: https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation- ... stage_card