FEBRUARY 2009

work with key candidates around
the country. When he worked for
Clinton’s campaign in 1992, Dagher
met a group of Jewish men
from New York who routinely set up
young college graduates with a salary,
car and health insurance so they
could volunteer with a presidential
campaign.
“The idea,” he said, “is to work
your tail off and get hired by the
campaign.”
As the race progresses, candidates
drop off and the volunteers go on
to join the front-runner’s campaign.
This worked with the Clinton campaign,
Dagher said. “They started
with one person but ended up getting
a total of three — and two of
them ended up working in the White
House where they would get meetings
for their people,” Dagher said. “Imagine
what we could do if some of our
organizations would put up $10,000
or $20,000 each election cycle.”
Raising such an amount could
be done “in a minute” in Metro
Detroit’s Chaldean community, Dagher
maintains. He plans to come to
Detroit and meet with community
leaders with the goal of getting 100
people to each contribute $2,300 to
a campaign, the maximum allowed
by federal law.
“No matter what happens I will put
them in a room and lock the door and
they will kill me or I will kill them,”
he said. “I am sick of hearing about big
houses and new Ferraris. Write that
check and you’ve taken the initiative
to say, ‘we are politically active and we
can help members of Congress.’”
The candidate, in turn, will remember
Chaldeans, Dagher said.
“They will think, ‘I never had dolma
in my life but when that vote comes
up [that benefits the community] I’m
going to remember them.’”
More than money stands in the
way of his plan, however. “So many
in our community want their kids to
become doctors or lawyers,” he said.
“How about a three-month stint in
Washington to do an internship on
the Hill?”
Getting out the vote is also essential.
“This is not the country for citizens
– this is the country for those
who vote,” Dagher said. “Why get involved
with people who don’t vote?”
A Ready List
If the community were to advocate
key issues, Dagher has a list at the
ready: “The protection of minority
rights for people back home; asking
for a homeland or autonomous region
in Nineveh; educating the federal
government about who we are and
not letting the Arab American Institute
define us; and educating ourselves
about the American process of
having a voice in government.”
He also believes the community
needs to take a good look at its tendency
to be clannish.
“We are not preserving our heritage,
we’re crushing it because we’re
not defining ourselves. We’re becoming
too insular,” Dagher said. “We
need to open up. There is strength in
intermarriage. You’re not ruining the
culture, you’re teaching others about
your culture like the Irish and the
Italians did. By joining the melting
pot you lose a few things but you gain
that much more.”
While Barack Obama seems more
aware of the Chaldean community’s
issues than his former rivals, there is
still work to be done, Dagher said.
Regarding the U.S. accepting more
refugees and the issue of establishing
an autonomous region for Iraqi
Christians in the Nineveh Plain,
“Obama has no position,” Dagher
said. “We have the opportunity in
the next year to educate him and his
team.”
But as the nation’s first African-
American president, Obama is sure
to be sensitive to ethnic groups,
Dagher said. “He himself has been a
minority at many times in his life,”
Dagher said. “He understands what
it’s like to be the weakest one in the
room, so to speak.”
Obama was a controversial candidate
among many Chaldeans because
he supports a woman’s right
to choose abortion. “As a Catholic
I have my problems with that too,”
Dagher admitted. “People are saying
he’s for gay rights, he’s for abortion
– but he has also talked about the
minority rights of Christians. Has
Hillary Clinton? Has John McCain?
Obama has said we have to lower the
rate of abortions but do not make it
illegal because it’s still going to happen.
Killing people, driving drunk,
buying pot – they are all illegal but
they are still done.”
People who shun the new president
based on his liberal views are
being short-sighted, Dagher said.
“Obama will be the president for
the next four years, maybe eight,” he
noted. “If you have nothing to do
with him, you are cutting yourself off
from all he can do.”
FEBRUARY 2009 CHALDEAN NEWS 29