N.Y. / REGION

For Asian New Yorkers, a Persistent, but Quiet, Campaign for Lunar New Year

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Students at the Yung Wing School, a public elementary school in Chinatown, after performing songs from the Disney musical “Mulan” on Wednesday night. Christopher Lee for The New York Times 
On Wednesday night at the Yung Wing School, a public elementary school in Chinatown, students performed songs from the Disney musical “Mulan,” dancing crisply in traditional silk costumes ironed that morning by their parents. These were the voices of the next Asian-American generation in New York City — and they were loud.
Granted, many of them did not fully grasp the significance of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement the day before: Lunar New Year will now become an official public school holiday.
But their parents and community leaders did. It had taken 10 years to get the winter holiday on the calendar, the culmination of a persistent campaign by a handful of officials and advocates representing a divided and often politically reticent population.
“It makes us proud that the city is paying attention to us — and our holiday,” Wendy Lam, 48, the mother of a fifth-grade actor, said in Mandarin. “It’s an important day for families to be together.” She added in English: “So proud. We tried to get the holiday for so many years.”
Wendy Lam, 48, with her daughter, Fiona Wong. “It makes us proud that the city is paying attention to us — and our holiday,” Ms. Lam said in Mandarin.Christopher Lee for The New York Times 
The calendar designation is new, but among the city’s Asian-Americans, who make up 15 percent of New Yorkers, the question of why it took so long has been a perennial conversation. Albeit a hushed one.
“It took a while for our community to speak up,” said Jenny Low, the board chairwoman for the Chinese-American Planning Council, who was at the “Mulan” performance. “We’ve been a silent community for hundreds of years. We just have not been good about voicing our needs.”
Ms. Low, 52, said that she grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution before moving to New York when she was 12. For her generation, speaking out against the government was disrespectful, if not dangerous. It is much the same in other Asian cultures.
“In Korea, if you make a noise, it is not an elegant thing to do — but here, even the squeaky wheel gets oil,” said Christine Colligan, co-president of the Korean-American Parents Association of Greater New York. “You have to raise your voice.”
The city’s Asian population has increased to about 1.3 million in 2014 from nearly 873,000 in 2000, according to an analysis of census data by the Asian American Federation, a nonprofit group based in New York. And yet, only four Asian-Americans serve as elected city officials: two Council members, Margaret Chin and Peter Koo; Assemblyman Ron Kim; and United States Representative Grace Meng.
John C. Liu, the former city councilman and city comptroller, first led the campaign that overturned Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s veto in 2002 to enact alternate-side-of-the-street parking on the Lunar New Year. Over the next several years, lawmakers in Albany took up the cause, including Jimmy K. Meng, who was a Queens Assemblyman, and then his daughter, Ms. Meng. She worked with State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, whose district includes Chinatown, to introduce a bill in 2009.
“When I first introduced it some people thought it was ridiculous and that I should focus on something a little more tangible and viable in my first term,” Ms. Meng said. “Even some people in the Asian-American community told me not to waste my time.”
She was determined, remembering as a child in Queens when her schoolmates laughed at her for bringing dumplings to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Mr. Kim, who succeeded Ms. Meng in representing Flushing, endured the same skepticism, if not “soft racism,” in Albany.
“I’ve had colleagues refer to some of the issues I’m advocating for as ‘international issues,’ ” Mr. Kim said.
In 2014, Mr. Kim sponsored a bill that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law, empowering the city to study the rate of student absences to determine whether the Lunar New Year merited a holiday. But Mayor de Blasio, who had promised during his campaign to add the Lunar New Year and two Muslim holidays to the school calendar, never completed the study, Mr. Kim said, adding that lawmakers were frustrated.
The Lunar New Year parade in 2014. The holiday will be on the city's public school calendar this coming school year. Damon Winter/The New York Times 
So the Senate passed a bill two weeks ago that would establish the holiday. The Assembly, led by Mr. Kim, was planning to pass the bill before Mr. de Blasio declared that Lunar New Year would be an official school holiday starting in February 2016.
During the announcement on Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio said that a “strong message” from Albany helped spur his decision. “I said consistently it was something I intended to do, but it was taking us time to figure out how to do it right,” he said.
Though it is not a religious holiday, the Lunar New Year is one of the biggest cultural holidays in several Asian countries including China, South Korea and Vietnam, where many generations of families mark the occasion with food, pride and pageantry.
“It is really about Asian-Americans overcoming the ‘perpetual foreigner syndrome’ — this notion of Asian-Americans, no matter what, that we are still not quite American enough,” Mr. Kim said. “It validates Asian culture as part of the American fabric.”
And as Peter Kwong, a professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, put it: “It’s about time.” Students, he said, already had off for the Jewish High Holy Days, and in March, the mayor added two Muslim holidays to the school calendar.
But whether the addition of the Lunar New Year would lead to greater political involvement from the Asian-American community was unclear. Progress has been slow, Mr. Kwong said, because community leaders had historically been more focused internally and have not formed a weighty voting bloc.
“It takes two to tango,” Mr. Kwong said. “And I will always say the established mainstream political parties do not see the need or inclination to develop Asian party strength.”
Social welfare advocates, meanwhile, are focused on funding. “The dollars going to our community haven’t grown with our population,” said Jo-Ann Yoo, the executive director of the Asian American Federation. Her organization published a report in May that showed that from 2002 to 2014, the Asian community received just 1.4 percent of the total dollars of all city social-service contracts.
Steven Choi, the director of the New York Immigration Coalition, who formed a group in 2008 to protest city budget cuts to programs affecting immigrant communities, applauded the mayor for at least addressing an “easier” issue first in designating the Lunar New Year.
“For Asian-Americans, it’s a recognition that the community is more mobilized and organized than it has been,” Mr. Choi said.
Already, a group of young leaders are taking on issues with broader appeal, saying that despite the perception of a “model minority,” they are often subject to discrimination. The Asian American Student Advocacy Project, a program run by the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, a nonprofit group, spent the year working to improve college guidance in city high schools.
At the group’s year-end party at a sushi restaurant in Chinatown on Tuesday night, the members saw possibility in the Lunar New Year holiday designation.
“We want to make the issues we face as an Asian-Pacific-American community more prominent to decision makers today,” said Samantha Ng, 17, a graduating senior at Beacon High School in Manhattan. “This is one big step for us, culturally.”
Correction: June 26, 2015 
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a program. It is the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, not the Coalition for Asian American Students and Families.
Jeffrey E. Singer contributed reporting.