05/11/1999
Official Release - Assyrian American Civic Club of California


Mr. John F. Long
Chief, Population Division
United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Census

May 11, 1999

We, the members of the Assyrian American Civic Club of Turlock, residing in the cities of Turlock, Ceres and Modesto in California, have been cautiously following up on the very disturbing news regarding the attempts being pursued to change our ethnic name, Assyrian, in the year 2000 census to a composite of national, religious and at other times linguistic name.

It is a very well proven historic fact that the Chaldean name is a religious denomination of the Assyrian Church, and that Syrians was the Greek word for identifying all the Christians living in the regions of the Near East and Asia Minor and that the word Syriac is the language of this nation, mixing all these terminology's in order to identify the Assyrian nation by is of great grievance and unforgiving distortion to our identity.

We are proud Assyrian Americans from different denominations and we refuse to be categorized under any other ethnic group except Assyrian, our rightful ethnic name.

On behalf of the 1,500 Assyrian American members of our organization, I feel that any attempt for such an important change need to be approved by the majority of the Assyrians through their respective organization.

Mr. Ramin Odisho
President
Assyrian American Civic Club ofTurlock
P.O. Box 192
Turlock, CA 95381-0192