It's not over yet! My PERSONAL opinion

Good God. This naming nonsense in San Jose just won't go away. I gotta be honest, when I heard something else broke out in this whole drama the day before Tet, it totally soured my mood. If you haven't been keeping up, the San Jose City Council has decided to name a strip of businesses along Story Road for the Vietnamese community. They chose the unpopular "Saigon Business District" over the obviously more popular "Little Saigon," which has infuriated the elders of the Viet community in San Jose. Since that decision, they have pulled together protests and petitions, demanding that the city change the name to Little Saigon and that Councilwoman Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American woman to be elected to the Council in San Jose, resign, calling her a multitude of names along the way, including the big label that we've all grown to love: "communist."

It's disclosure time! My honest, PERSONAL opinion is that this entire thing was supposed to be a gift to our community. Now it's the biggest headache for the city. We've burnt up 10 years of political capital on a ridiculously insignificant issue. This will not affect our lives in anyway except that our grandfathers, grandmothers, great aunts and great uncles, all of whom are justifiably emotionally scarred by their experience during the war, will be placated and sleep easier at night believing that the Communists have not infiltrated San Jose.

In the end, everybody loses. The city loses because it suffers the embarrassment of not being able to effectively represent it's own people. The protesters lose because they look like people who truly don't give a damn about the city and only about Vietnam. Our community loses because those protesters represent us, whether we agree with their stance and/or actions or not. We continue to lose because any protest or action that is organized against these protesters would automatically line us up with the communist regime, and non-viets just don't see this as important enough to organize around, so when the protesters continually ask "where is the opposition?" they don't see that the opposition is at home, doing homework, taking care of family, worried about gang violence, or poverty, cooking dinner, thinking about gas prices, thinking about their son/daughter/brother/sister

/mother/father in Iraq, trying to pay bills. They don't see the opposition who wants to say something, but just doesn't want to deal with being called a communist (McCarthyism anybody?)

and what if the Council backtracks and changes its vote? The city loses because it violated the law. The protesters lose because they look like a bunch of bullies who forced the council to change its decision (regardless of the legality of the decision in the first place). We lose because we look as if we want 10% of SJ's population to determine policy for the rest of the city. How are we supposed to get another qualified Vietnamese candidate elected now? The only question that will be on the minds of voters when a Vietnamese person is running is whether their loyalty is to the city, or to the Vietnamese. In many circumstances, that would not be seen as contradictory, but with the pure stubborness and insanity that those protesters are fighting this with, every non-viet voter in the city will have to ask "does this person represent me?" That's already what the rest of San Jose is asking about the council now. Madison may have pissed off the Viet voters, and she will probably lose any election she tries from here on out because voters will obviously question her ability to lead (or she'll win out of pity), but in the end, she'll beat the recall, because viet voters at most comprise 1/3rd of all registered voters in district 7, and NOBODY else cares about this issue but us.

I am not a fan of Mayor Chuck Reed. He sucks up to the Viet community all the time. He would usually show up to the parade/festival in his ao dai, handing out li xi, and then giving the standard messed up version of our new year blessing "choke man nam moi." If he is such a fan of our community, then what does it say when even he turns his back on us on this issue? Where is Zoe Lofgren, who has been our protector for decades? Where is anybody else who claimed to be our friend? Cortese and Liccardo don't even want to admit that they are trying to please their Viet funders because they are embarrassed by it. Only Pete McHugh has come out to support the community, but he didn't come out to support the recall, he only came out the spirit of the protesters' actions.

Sorry yall, I just had to vent. This entire thing is driving me nuts. Last year, EVERY elected office that represented the south bay, from local all the way to Congress, wanted a Vietnamese staffer, someone who could connect their office to our community. Now, we have to explain this drama to every person who works for an elected official, and sometimes to the elected officials themselves, and they are all staying very far away from it.