Marpheen Chann Shares his Story at Maine Democratic Convention
SPEECH TRANSCRIPT
Fellow Democrats and Fellow Mainers,
Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. It is truly an honor.
My name is Marpheen Chann and I have the honor of serving as a Charter Commissioner for the City of Portland and as the first Cambodian American in Maine to hold elected office.
But my journey here wasn’t an easy one.
I was born in California to refugees who fled communism and a brutal and bloody genocide that killed two million people, that’s more than the entire population of Maine.
My family moved to Portland in the 90s when I was 5 to build a brighter future.
My single mom struggled to take care of herself and me and my three younger siblings. To put food on the table and a roof over our heads. I often went to school hungry on an empty stomach and went to bed having only eaten broken bricks of ramen or a bowl of rice.
That’s why I cared so much, that in our state, under Governor Mills and Democratic leadership, the future now looks a little bit brighter for public school kids in Maine because of free school meals.
My mom struggled with mental health and alcoholism, from the trauma that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on her as a child and from domestic violence.
So me and my siblings were put in foster care and later adopted by a white, working-class family in Western Maine.
While I love my adoptive family, like any other family, we have our arguments and moments of disagreement.
They voted for Trump in 2016. They raised us to be Republicans and social conservatives in an evangelical church with its own private school, where they taught us to doubt Science.
Where they taught us that Planned Parenthood was part of a population control conspiracy.
Where they taught us that being gay wasn’t okay.
My senior year in high school in 2009, I remember the Christian Civil League posted up with tables inside the sanctuary with petitions to veto the first-in-the-nation gay marriage bill that was just signed into law by then- Democratic Governor Baldacci.
A year later after spending a year at a bible college, I came home and came out as gay to my family and friends.
It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made and had I come out during high school, I probably would have been sent to a conversion therapy camp.
That’s why I’m thankful that Speaker Fecteau championed the bill to ban conversion therapy and that it was signed into law by Governor Janet Mills! Thank you Governor. Thank you Speaker.
I know the kind of world that some on the other side want us to live in because I was raised with that worldview… and it’s not pretty. They want to take us back to a time before marriage equality, before Roe v. Wade, before the Civil Rights Movement. They want to throw us back to the dark ages.
And let me be honest with you for a minute. The future is looking dim. It isn’t looking too bright right now. Especially for women, for people of color and for LGBTQ rights and Trans rights.
States like Maine where we have a democratic governor and a democratic majority are the last lines of defense for the rights and progress championed by many Democrats here today and the many who came before us.
As a young democrat, a millennial. I know I am standing on some pretty big shoulders.
Those who have blazed trails and broken down walls and glass ceilings, we owe them a great debt of gratitude…
And we can pay it forward for future generations by winning in the midterms and sending Governor Mills back to the Blaine House and building our majority in the Maine State House…
That’s how we’re going to build a brighter future. For ALL Mainers!
If we want to win up and down the ballot, we need to find ways to connect, to organize, to mobilize TOGETHER. Not just as liberals, centrists, or progressives alone… but as Democrats, together.
Because I don’t know about you but I don’t want to live in the past. I want to live in a brighter future. I want to keep turning the page.
Thank you!
