Befriend the Thai Temple!

So for now the Berkeley Thai Temple is safe. Thank you all for your support during the campaign and for your help in letting the Berkeley municipal officials understand how important the temple is to the community. Some of you joined the Save the Thai Temple on Facebook, so you probably already got this message too:

If you haven’t already, please add the Berkeley Temple as a friend! I’ve just noticed that while there are 1,000+ members of the Save the Thai Temple group, the Wat Mongkolratanaram profile only has about 30! Keep your eyes open for very important updates in the near future as we continue our fight to SAVE THE THAI TEMPLE!

Peace, Love, Good Karma, and lots of Pad Thai! ♥

So it seems, the temple’s Facebook avatar is lonely. You can change that by befriending Wat Mongkolratanaram Berkeley on Facebook!

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Last Chance to Save the Temple!

The day approaches. If you haven’t heard about the threat to Wat Mongkolratanaram, go read my earlier post and visit savethethaitemple.com! There’s still time to go ahead and make your calls to the Berkeley city government! The Berkeley ZAB hearing is this Thursday, February 12, 2009. If you can make the ZAB hearing, please do! Represent!

I just saw this YouTube video from the September meeting where one of the neighbors compares Thai food to McDonald’s food, citing Super Size Me. Sigh. Let’s fight for the community! You can make a huge difference with just 10 minutes of your time!

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Save the Thai Temple

I saw this letter on Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, and I had to re-post it. Back in the day I used to write letters all the time to build support for temples that neighborhoods were trying to shut down. It’s funny how things haven’t changed in these past fifteen years.

Update: Here’s what you can do to help. Visit the Save Sundays at the Thai Temple website, click on “How to help!” and call, fax and email Berkeley’s elected officials. There are sample letters and phone transcripts already posted, so with just five minutes of your time, you can help save and preserve 27 years of Sunday traditions at Wat Mongkolratanaram! Why do I care? Because the same thing that’s happening to the Berkeley Thai Temple happened to Wat Thai of Los Angeles. The difference is that this time I’m not going to sit on my hands and watch another group of NIMBYs bully a Buddhist temple into submission.

Another Update: The Save the Thai Temple website is down, but if you’ve got a Facebook account, you can get all the contact information for Berkeley’s elected officials (including sample email and phone transcript) from the Save the Thai Temple Facebook group (see this discussion topic). Please contact them before the hearing on February 12!

Below is Pahole Sookkasikon’s letter to APA for Progress:

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