In Memoriam, Marilyn Piurek: FPA White House Liason, 1944-2017
From:
Polish Events <Polish-Events-DC@PoloniaCenter.org>
Subject:
In Memoriam, Marilyn Piurek: FPA White House Liason, 1944-2017
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(no subject)
Date:
April 5th 2017
--- Forwarded Message ---
From: federationofpolishamericans@aol.com
From: federationofpolishamericans@aol.com
In Memoriam, Marilyn Piurek 1944-2017
On behalf of
former members and the National Board of Federation of
Polish Americans, Inc., (FPA), we express our deeply
regret at the passing of Marilyn Piurek. This is a tragedy. For our part, we recall with pride and warmth
her contributions in the Polish American community in
the period of 1995-2000. Marilyn was very helpful to the FPA in our
program to gain admission of Poland to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization/NATO alliance, an effort that played out
on Capitol Hill, in our communities and at the White
House. It was in the last connection, however, that
Marilyn's access inside the Clinton Administration was
an important contributing factor to the decision by
the United States that Poland be admitted into NATO. Her role in pushing ‘Poland-to-NATO’ 'from
the inside' resulted directly in high level contacts
by the FPA at the White House, and the President
directing his National Security Advisor to meet with
Polish Americans, led by the FPA, thus raising the
public profile of the issue in the 1996 general
election. This
resulted in President Clinton's October 1996 Detroit speech which
cast the die for the formal
start of the 18 month process of U.S. Senate ratification -- irreversibly committing the President to
the proposition. Poland’s admission followed the subsequent April
1998 vote. Today’s news reports from Central/Eastern
Europe only reinforce the meaning and weight of that
decision by the United States to defend Poland. Our troops
are there. For this
reason, Marilyn was among those FPA members awarded
the Polish Armed Forces Medal by Poland’s Government in
2016.
Perhaps Marilyn’s
most enduring contribution here in the Polish American
community was her introduction of the FPA to the
Democratic Party-sponsored Ancestry Working Group. The resulting broad-based (mainly European
heritage) public outreach campaign to retain
ancestry-ethnic heritage enumeration in the Census,
which was crucially boosted by FPA intervention, once
again connected community activism with Marilyn’s Washington contacts in a way not seen before or since. But for
Marilyn's initiative in 1997, we would not have been
in the fight. By 1999,
after a huge 2-year grassroots mobilization which we
initiated and which extended far beyond the Polish
American community, we saw that the Ancestry question
would be saved once again. The result found in Census
2000 was that there were over 8.9 million Americans of
Polish descent. These facts
are indelibly part of Marilyn’s epitaph.
D.F. Denda,
Roman Korzan,
Federation of Polish Americans, Inc. (FPA)
=================
The FPA and FPA Political
Action Committee have been active politically since
1995. FPA National
Directors in 1996 testified before the United States
House of Representatives International Relations
Committee on behalf of Poland’s inclusion in NATO and
had meetings with National Security Advisor Anthony
Lake. The President Clinton subsequent campaign speech
(October 1996) led directly the following year to
introduction into the U.S. Senate of the treaty
enlargement protocol.
The FPA has issued various press releases in support of the defense missile shield in Poland.
https://archive.org/details/uspolicytowardna00unitThe FPA has issued various press releases in support of the defense missile shield in Poland.
=================
)