ANA Summary Our Story
ANA Our Story
The ANA story is all about a generational shift in Spyurk leadership, institutional development and political strategy for partnering with Odar political and PR professionals to support Armenia and Artsakh.
The importance of this dramatic transition pertains to an “Old Spyurk” who spent the last 75 years working courageously, making money, constantly fighting with each other and yet, still, quite successfully, paving the way for a “New Spyurk” to emerge.
The actualization of the ANA did not just happen in a vacuum.
The inspiration to form the ANA began at the University of Southern California (USC) with a theoretical attempt at imagining the reality of a global Spyurk unity. Then, ten years later, it found its fulfillment on the Hollywood streets in live protests and political action when Turkey and Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh without provocation on September 27, 2020.
Where It All Began
In October 2010, Dr. Z.K. Demirdjian, Professor of Social Sciences at University of California Long Beach, published a book about unifying the Armenian Diaspora worldwide. In this book, Dr. Demirdjian presented a plan for influencing the Government of Armenia through votes cast by 9 million Armenian Spyurk living around the globe.
A month later, in November 2010, Dr. Demirdjian and his Armenian colleagues sponsored an all-day event at the University of Southern California (USC) to launch an ambitious unity project outlined by Armenian activist and publisher Harut Sassounian in the epilogue to Dr. Demirdjian’s book.
The plan called for the establishment of a representative Spyurk political structure that offers its members a way to vote globally and to influence the outcome of national elections and official policy in the Armenian government.
Unfortunately, because there was so much disagreement among the leaders of the “Old Spyurk,” the USC event ended in turmoil and the project failed in less than 90 days.
Attending the USC symposium that day as a special guest of the sponsors, was Donald Wilson Bush (a Woodrow Wilson family descendant and political campaign consultant from Washington, DC).
After witnessing the fighting and failure of Spyurk unity at the USC event, Bush was inspired to understand the hidden weakness of the Armenian Diaspora in order to help them gain political, economic and military sophistication necessary to defend Armenia from Turkish aggression.
After Bush’s LebanoHye and ParskaHye friends introduced him to the great number of “New Spyurk” of Hayastanci Armenians living in Southern California, he eventually married into a large Armenian family (90+) who had emigrated, en masse, from Armenia to Los Angeles following independence in 1992.
His immersion into the Hayastanci-American subculture was completed in 2014 when Bush’s Armenian wife, Hermine Mnatsakanyan, gave birth to twin babies on August 26 in Glendale, California.
The following year, the Armenian President invited Donald Wilson Bush to address the Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide in Yerevan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2015.
This was a momentous trip that made Bush to truly appreciate how vitally important the Spyurk is to the survival and future prosperity of Armenia. It also made him realize how completely isolated and vulnerable the Christian Armenians are living in a region dominated by ethnic Muslims with only Russia to protect them.
When he returned to Los Angeles from that first trip to Armenia and Artsakh, Bush was a changed man. He came back totally committed to training up a new generation of Hayastanci professionals to complete their transition into leadership of a new Spyurk.
Today, after five years of intensive mentoring and familiarization with the ways that real power is attained in Washington, DC, Sacramento, CA and other state capitals, organizing members of ANA have become the first Spyurk leaders to hire Odar political and PR campaign consultants in an effort to preserve their beloved homeland.
This is the first effort of its kind in modern Armenian history to effect positive change in the Spyurk that can actually make Armenia stronger. This great change can only happen by harnessing the strong Armenian ego (without breaking it!) and by overcoming division and disunity through a partnership with anyone and everyone who is committed to supporting Armenia—including those who are not Armenian.