The Patrick Henry Democratic Club 2008 Peace Organizer of the Year Thu-Trang Tran

Thu-Trang Tran is an American citizen and is under 30 years old.  For the past three years, Thu-Trang Tran has kept OC Recruitment Awareness Project and OC Peace Coalition going strong, on track and helped to make them grow and get grant monies. Thu-Trang has excellent organizational skills, excellent follow-through and is always careful of people's feelings and concerns. Her writing skills and speaking skills are very professional - she knows how to nuance the message to any audience.

Thu-Trang has used all of these skills in the pursuit of demilitarizing public schools in Orange County, California. She has worked tirelessly to promote and recruit volunteers for the counter military recruitment work in the Orange County high schools. She has also participated in maintaining the operation of the umbrella peace group, OC Peace Coalition, of which OC-RAP is one of about 20 members.

Thu-Trang filled in for a Coaltion Against Militarism in Schools (CAMS) representative at the last minute at a big conference at Cal State Fullerton last year. CAMS leader, Arlene Inoue was scheduled to give an hour and a half presentation with all kinds of props, but she did not show up. Thu-Trang sprang into action at the last minute and made a fantastic presentation. Thu-Trang is always well prepared and is cool under pressure. She reads all the memos and absorbs the websites, researches issues thoroughly and contributes sensitively to decisions of the groups to which she belongs. She makes the copies and shares information freely. We can always count on Thu-Trang to come up with ingenious solutions to complicated problems, be they where to meet or how to deal with a difficult person. She is always considerate of people's points of view and works for win-win solutions to problems.

Thu-Trang organized a counter militarism workshop in July, 2007 that attracted over 65 people from four different counties in Southern California. She delegated jobs, kept in touch with everyone by e-mail or telephone, used her Spanish language skills to involve the Latino/a community in the set-up and follow through of the very successful conference. She made sure that we got community support and funding so we could produce the event and supply a delicious lunch for everyone, all free of charge to the participants. She kept the long list of contacts for future calls to action to which people have responded.

She has a keen ability to interact with people on all levels of the activist and non-activist communities.

To sum up, Thu-Trang has taken the ball and run with it in OC-Recruitment Awareness Project and in OC Peace Coalition to make the organizations vibrant, inclusive, creative, growing, and she does it all with a sense of humor and a sense of style. Thu-Trang Tran is an absolute treasure!

Young Dems