Long Beach could be on its way to creating a Cambodian American Cultural Center.
The City Council will vote at its Tuesday, Sept. 7, meeting on whether to ask the city manager to work with community members to create a vision and feasibility plan for such a site.
Councilwoman Suely Saro, who is the first Cambodian American to serve on the Long Beach City Council, brought the idea to the panel. In a memo accompanying the agenda item, Saro wrote that it’s important to preserve Cambodian culture, particularly in Long Beach, which has the largest concentration of Cambodians outside the country itself.
Long Beach has long celebrated its diversity, and Saro pointed to the Museum of Latin American Art, the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum, the Homeland Cultural Center and the Long Beach Japanese Cultural Center as part of that tradition.
Long Beach also recently developed an African American Cultural Center and is in the process of exploring a potential Latino cultural district.
For Saro, it’s time for a facility dedicated to Cambodian culture to join those ranks.
And the reason why Long Beach has such a large Cambodian population, she wrote, is further proof of why cultural preservation is necessary.
More than 2 million people died in the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, and many of those fleeing the violence wound up settling in Long Beach.
“The Cambodian genocide was a human tragedy,” Saro wrote. “Cambodian art and culture were nearly lost forever during the Khmer Rouge period. Therefore, it is imperative to have a Cambodian Cultural Center that not only promote but also preserve Cambodian art, culture, and history.”
If you go
What: City Council meeting
When: 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7
Where: Civic Chambers, 411 W. Ocean Blvd.
Information: longbeach.gov
