Candidate profile: Chuck Park is done with the status quo

As a former foreign diplomat under the Obama and Trump administrations, and the child of Korean immigrants, his identity has been forged with a deep understanding of the underlying failures of the current political system, both from an insider’s and outsider’s perspective.

Park, 41, has branded himself as a progressive candidate who is fed up with the status quo, promising voters a meaningful alternative to current leadership.

For one thing, he refuses to accept donations from Political Action Committees — something that sets him apart from many other Democrats running for office, including Meng.

“I refuse to take a single cent from a corporate or lobbyist PAC,” Park stressed. “I believe there is a basic conflict of interest that explains our failure to actually deliver on our promise to protect our social contract.”

Park is no stranger to Trump’s harsh tactics — the former diplomat resigned from his role in the U.S. Department of State in 2019 during the first Trump administration in protest of the president’s immigration policy.

However, Park argued that both Republicans and establishment Democrats don’t fight for the things regular, everyday working Americans need to survive.

Between failing to deliver Medicare For All or failing to take on predatory energy companies hiking up energy costs, Park contended these elected leaders would rather spend tax dollars funding illegal wars in the Middle East.

However, that’s precisely what inspired Park’s platform that he said would deliver tangible change to Queens — the most diverse county in the world — and the American people if he were voted into Congress.

Park said his priorities lie in improving the material conditions that impact everyday peoples’ lives, whether through eliminating the threat of ICE abductions, supporting Medicare For All, funding universal childcare and free school meals, and establishing easier paths to citizenship for immigrants who want a chance to pursue the American Dream.

“The problem isn’t the Democratic base — we’re all ready to fight and we want to win,” Park said. “The problem is with our leaders. Our leaders are so out of touch with us.”

He argued that Meng, who has served in the role for over 13 years, hasn’t accomplished what she and other establishment Democrats have promised to deliver. He’s even challenged her to a debate to discuss these issues, which she has yet to agree to.

“It’s time to get out of the way,” he said. “It’s time to give someone else a chance to fight and build and make something happen.”

Abolishing ICE

Park’s parents — whose roots in Queens paint a quintessential picture of the immigrant experience once afforded to them decades ago — immigrated from Korea in the 1980s and worked as street peddlers, renting an apartment in Woodside and starting a family. 

Park, who was born in 1985, recalled his parents waking up at the crack of dawn, grabbing cigarettes and coffee, and hopping on the subway to Canal Street to sell t-shirts, jackets and clothing to tourists.

Through their hard work, his parents were able to buy a home, provide their five children with food, and give them everything they needed to build a future for themselves.

However, Park said the old promise of the American Dream — that if you work hard, the country will give you a home and a future — is being destroyed in front of everyone’s eyes.

“People are obviously upset in this country,” Park said. “I tie it to this social contract where a generation ago, you could work your butts off and you’d have a home and a future. Guess what? It worked. But today, that social contract has been fundamentally broken. It’s being broken everyday when ICE steals our neighbors and doesn’t even allow them to start to build their stories here. But it’s also been eaten away and starved by the oligarchs with big money and the politicians who support the Epstein class.”

Park said he’s watched President Trump, now in his second term, doing exactly what he did in his first term that led Park to resign in the first place — separating families and enacting cruel immigration policies.

Last year, Park said he broke down when he saw ICE raids on Canal Street devastate the immigrant community when nine street vendors were arrested. It struck a nerve in Park, who thought about how his own parents built their life on that very street.

“In a fit of anger and frustration, I opened my phone and said, ‘I’m doing this,’” Park recounted. ‘I went on the FEC website, filled out the form, and all of a sudden I was a candidate for Congress.”

While many elected leaders claim immigrants are violent criminals, Park said that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

During his time in Queens living side by side with immigrants of all backgrounds, as well as speaking with immigrants of all statuses while canvassing across the district, Park said immigrants are just like anyone else — they simply want to work hard, build a life and future for their families, and live in peace.

“They’re not committing crimes, and they’re not violent people — it’s totally a myth,” he emphasized. “A vast majority of people being rounded up, detained and deported have no criminal backgrounds.”

If elected, Park said not only would he refuse to fund ICE, but he would work to eliminate the department entirely.

“I’m not afraid to say the words ‘Abolish ICE,’” Park said. “It’s a popular position across the country. I’m shocked that many Democrats can’t say those words.”

Ending endless wars

Park said he’s tired of the country’s overinflated defense budget, which is currently over $1.5 trillion.

He noted that defense is the largest discretionary budget spending controlled by Congress — although approximately 22-25% of that spending goes to military personnel and, between 2020-24, 54% went to defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrup Grumman.

“The vast majority goes to defense contractors selling bombs and missiles and equipment to the military,” Park said. “Do we really need all that stuff?”

He pointed out that the United States’ largest military competitor, China, has three aircraft carriers while the U.S. has 11. 

“We don’t need 11 carrier strike groups to counter the threat of China’s three,” Park said. “The only people who think that’s a good idea to spend billions and trillions of dollars on that stuff are defense contractors that are making record profits… When you realize that’s where we’re spending our money, and not on school meals or health care, I think people get it.”

Park has also taken a strong stance against what he and many other scholars, human rights organizations and elected leaders are calling a genocide in Gaza.

He emphasized how important it is to acknowledge October 7 as a horrific day in which more than 1,000 Israeli civilians were murdered with brutal acts committed by Hamas.

However, he said everyone also must acknowledge that since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians — over 20,000 of which are children — were and continue to be murdered by the state of Israel.

Conservative estimates show the death toll at over 70,000, although some organizations such as the Institute for Palestine Studies and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimate the death toll has exceeded 100,000 but cannot be accurately accounted for because victims’ bodies are stuck under the rubble.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant should be prosecuted for war crimes,” Park asserted. “Netanyahu and his government killed thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent people, including children. And they did so with billions of dollars in weapons provided by the United States government, unconditionally. I think that’s a moral failing in two ways.”

First, Park explained that not only should American resources not be used to blow up children overseas — whether in Gaza, Caracas or Tehran — but elected leaders should be using those resources to invest in children, healthcare and families here in the U.S.

Second, Park said it’s a failure of elected leaders not to acknowledge the genocide because it’s being publicly documented. “People have eyes and can see what’s happening,” he said.

Meng, he pointed out, has repeatedly voted to send defensive weapons to Israel and also received over $460,000 in donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 2024.

He added that many prominent Israeli and Holocaust scholars — including Omer Bartov, Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg and Lee Mordechai — have also concluded that Israel is committing a genocide. “Who are we arguing against when you can’t say that word?” Park said.

Leading Queens

While many of the proposed policies central to Park’s campaign are on a national scale, he said there are issues faced by all Queens residents, who he promises to fight for not only in Congress but within the district itself.

For one, Park is staunchly against the Metropolitan Park casino being built next to Citi Field in Flushing, which he said was a “horrible idea.” 

“Read any research paper about casinos and the gaming industry and you see that the vast majority of revenue at casinos come from the local community,” Park explained. “It doesn’t come from high-rollers flying in to dump their money in Queens.”

Flushing is a working class immigrant neighborhood, Park continued, and he worried revenue would be squeezed from desperate fathers who could be spending their last dollars “chasing a dream on a slot machine.”

He worried about potential exploitation on a community-wide scale with taxis, ferries and buses transporting desperate people to the casino to gamble their livelihoods away in the hopes they’ll win big.

Park pointed out that Meng has stayed silent on the casino issue despite public outcry for her to oppose the project during recent protests, including one on Lunar New Year. 

“She is silent when it comes time to defend us,” Park claimed. “She won’t publicly take positions for or against anything.”

However, Park said since the casino will be built in Congressional District 6, he believes elected leaders representing the area — whether local, state or federal — should be pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to put a pause on the project until further discussion is had about its community-wide implications.

Park also pointed out that Queens is filled with residents of all backgrounds, many of whom are of different faiths and worship in a range of religious institutions.

While he grew up attending a Catholic church down Parsons Boulevard, just down the road was Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddique — a prominent mosque — Yeonkuksa Buddhist Temple, the Free Synagogue of Flushing, as well as the Gurudwara Sikh Center of New York.

That is why, Park said, he would speak up and defend every single community that is attacked, no matter their cultural or religious beliefs.

“I have spoken out against antisemitism, especially with the recent incident of swastikas painted across Brooklyn,” Park said. “I also spoke out when Councilwoman Vickie Paladino was calling for mass expulsion of all Muslims from this country. I think we need to call out hate, no matter who’s being targeted.”

Park said his goal in this election is not only to challenge the status quo, but to be a transparent leader that keeps his word.

If he doesn’t keep his word, however — he wants his constituents to call him out.

“I want to be accountable,” Park stressed. “I want to be explicit about what I’m committing to fight for so that someone can record me, write it down, and hold it in my face when I run for re-election. I want to abolish ICE, stop funding genocides, end wars, and fight for Medicare for All, universal healthcare and pathways to citizenship. So hold me accountable.”

For more information about Park’s campaign, visit ChuckForQueens.com.