Week 5: Politics

                              

Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Whose Community is it anyway? : Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity-The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam.

Whose Community is it Anyway? candidly reveals the transparency of a community cohesiveness could simply be rifted and diffused over differences of anti-communism sentiments.  Author, Caroline Kieu-Linh Valverde, candidly divulges the underpinning cultural values and attitudes that altered the unity, progress, social and political positioning of the Vietnamese community in San Jose. The incidents surrounding the people’s campaign for recall election of Vice-Mayor, Madison Nguyen, a Vietnamese American council woman, was an epitome of the deeply rooted political activism of Vietnamese Americans.  At times such as this, community’s strengths and weaknesses are apparent and easy to recognize. The author recognizes and honors the historical legacies of the Vietnamese older generation; at the same time, laments over the dichotomy of treatment toward Madison, an accomplished and independent council member who has in the past been praised and embraced by the community for her fight against social justices and betterment of the community. Madison’s triumph over the recall election signifies that if there were to be a hegemony voice of the community, it should be one that is representative of all members, not just those who could reverberate loudest and longest. 

Understanding of the reconstruction of Vietnamese community in diasporas requires the      knowledge of their long history of the Eastern    imperialism, Western colonialism, civil war and  diasporas. The emergence of Vietnamese in  diasporas was essentially a result of the lost of  South Vietnam to the North Vietnam communists.  The expulsion of the Vietnamese from their  homeland branded them with new status and  labels, such as boat people, refugees, political  prisoners and Vietnamese in diasporas. Vietnamese  in exile having witnessed the gradual expunging of  historical and cultural essences of the old Viet Nam and the mistreatment of those who stayed behind, beginning with their “Saigon” city now wears the name of their enemy, “Ho Chi Minh” City ignited an underlying visceral sentiment of love/hate relationship for the place they called “the burial place of our mother’s placenta”. Many are apprehensive to embrace it again due the psychological and physical wounds inflicted into their fleshes and memories. This is where the strengths and weaknesses of the Vietnamese communities lie, especially in the progressive world of globalization.
               
                    

The historical experiences  taught Vietnamese to be resilient across time and space;  however, appropriating the tenacious sentiments  of a distant past appears to be a dilemma in the  way they “imagined” their communities in  diasporas should be (Anderson, 1983).  With that  being said,  with all of their experiential wisdom,  they justified the deployment of political tactics  and treatments of the Madison Nguyen’s incident  was an attempt to protect the younger generations  from the infiltration of transnational  communist  government into the socioeconomic positioning of  Vietnamese communities in America.  The younger generations could not even imagine the deep rooted resentment from the elders due to the lack of shared experiences; thus, they can’t fully appreciate the sacrifices and the burden the older generations carried due to the lost of their country.  Granted that the trepidation for the  loss of cultural heritage and ethnic authenticity are substantiated and valid; however, the older generations should trust and allow the younger generations to learn by way of experience and reasoning; which are more meaningful than the belief by blind faith. Even more important, younger generations  who benefited from the lessons of previous generations should regard that trust with care and caution in order to avoid the pitfalls that many generations before us worked so hard for us to avoid.   After all, their experiences molded us into who we are today. Thus, trust, autonomy, empathy and respect are essential from both sides in order to close the gap between generations.  

True community is formed when people respect and listen to each other’s needs, showing compassion for an understanding of fellow members (Valverde, 2012). The “imagined” community that everyone aspires to build isn’t of “oness” but of multiple similarities and differences of composition, values and practices; never the less, moving toward common goals as one whole body make-up of diversity (Hall, 2003).    A divided community is stagnant and can’t position itself advantageously in the socioeconomic position of the social fabric of America and is an unfortunate situation (Valverde, 2012). The betterment of the community as a whole should prevail over sentimental disparity because socioeconomic positioning translates into social equality and better quality of life. 

Questions:

Given the fact that it has been more than 30 years, but many Vietnamese Americans couldn’t let go of their haunting past. Is it possible for them to find a common ground where they can build a neutral foundation for the future generation?  Or will their legacy continues to influence the cultural identity of the generations to come?

Will the new generations who are born and raised in an individualistic society be fully capable of understanding the sufferings and resentment of past generations?

For those whose hearts do not beat to the same “lop dop” rhythm of anticommunism be able to voice their opinions?

How much of self denying and sacrifice of personal freedom one is willing to live with so that  the community can progress toward a better socioeconomic positioning and social equality and justice  as a whole? 

Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Whose Community is it anyway?" : Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity-The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam.

   Valverde uses the case of  Madison Nguyen and her controversial rise in politics as a Vietnamese American woman to address the shadowed issues within the Vietnamese American community such as continued anti-communist sentiments, political discontent, and the four-step community building process.  In efforts to get the city to recognize the commerce contributions of the Vietnamese community while trying to please all submissions for a  prominent commercial area, Nguyen came up with the name, Saigon Business District. However, this decision was blown way out of proportion by a  number of individuals who favored to say the least, the term Little Saigon. The unresolved dynamics of these concerns turned a location-naming decision into a hostile debate on alternative, pro-communist motives of the entire San Jose city council and mostly brutal media attack on vice-mayor Nguyen. The attacks ranged from negative critiques of her physical appearance and gender to concerns of past romantic relationships to proposed alliances justified by her race.

   A key insight into the complexity of this case is predominantly the notion that the same Vietnamese community members who worked hard to elect and support Madison Nguyen into a San Jose school board and city council seat were at the frontline of her press conference yelling “you’re a traitor and a liar” and urging a recall of her standing position. Through a clear, in depth analysis of multiple perspectives engaged in this case, Valverde conveys Nguyen’s genuine commitment to the Vietnamese community and discusses the roots of miscommunication. A primary cause being “ the tensions in the continued efforts of Vietnamese Americans to produce their own reality” (130-131).

Question:

What other reasons may vice-mayor Madison Nguyen’s have had to refuse changing the name of the business district from Saigon business district to Little Saigon besides her beliefs that the pro-Little Saigon protesters were not representative of the entire San Jose Vietnamese American community?

Michael Peter Smith. "Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics."

In Michael Peter Smith's essay, he states that, in world cities such as New York and Tokyo, the "inside" and the "outside" are rigidly defined in order to represent the flow of global space.  Global flows of information and technology are gathered and localized in these world cities.  This dichotomy of globalization and localization is highly problematic and can obscure the possibilities of global grassroots politics, which goes beyond the boundaries of the nation-state in which politics are defined.  This essay discusses the globalization of transnational migrants' culture and how global grassroots movements subvert the globalization/localization dichotomy.

            Rather than the typical "global reach" approach to the globalization of culture, which is attributed to "multinational capitalism and mass communications", Smith focuses on the "globalization of cultural and political practices produced 'from below'"(17).  What this entails is the ways that transnational migrants recreate and reproduce culture.  These transnational migrants or refugees live bifocal lives in which they remain connected to transnational networks and multiple nation-states, thus delocalizing the space in which they practice culture. However, because transnational migrants are not bound by space, they are also deterritorialized, living in imagined communities.  They respond to deterritorialization by attempting to reterritorialize another space, such as ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown.

The "think globally/act locally" way of thinking about transnational migrants and global grassroots politics still restricts grassroots politics into the binary of globally/locally by "restrict[ing] political action to resistance to the actions of local political and economic elites, such as mayors, urban service providers, 'growth machines,' business interests, and the local press" (25) and does not fit well into local politics. However, there are better ways to “reconstitute the notion of ‘grassroot’” politics together, which are practiced among the transnational migrants and refugees. Michael Peter Smith termed them as “cross-border grassroot politics”, which are thinking locally while acting globally, living bifocally (or thinking transnationally while acting multilocally), and thinking and acting simultaneously at multiple scales (25).

The process of “thinking locally while acting globally” is to think about the political sense of what the community wants/needs while doing something extraordinary in the political world to reach the goal. Smith used the Guatemalan refugees as an example of the process; they thought about returning to their home country while recruiting better representatives for their cause and putting the representatives as mediators between the Guatemalan government, UN, and themselves (25-26). This process was the idea to bring a movement to state what the people wanted and bring change for the better.

The second process is “living bifocally, or thinking transnationally while acting multilocally”; this process is to think about what the people in the home country need and what the other country could offer to be used as support, while using both knowledge from those two different countries to help shape a new transformation. A UC Berkeley organization called Students Against Intervention in Central America (SAICA) collected medical supplies, clothes, and other things to bring to El Salvador. In El Salvador, not only did they give out the supplies, but they also brought films and concerts and supported campaigns to support the people (26-27). Smith pointed this out as an example to the second process because of the impact that people from a different country with knowledge of both worlds makes a difference.

The last process is “thinking and acting simultaneously at multiple scales”, which is gathering on a big event about a topic and include many experiences/stories to ensure that they are told in order to create rights/laws for protection and justice. In 1993, on International Women’s Day, many women from all over the world came to the conference held in San Francisco and talked about protecting women’s rights and safety with their own experiences/stories from others (30-31). Smith thought of this as a combination of the other two processes and create it like an end result or last product of grassroot movement/politics.

With Smith’s three “cross-border grassroot politics”, he thought that it would be easier for the people to use them than to be repressed or follow the dominant order (31). They have the power and ability to create new grassroot ideas and politics to send their messages across the governments and maybe, the world. However, the present politics and order are not allowing new grassroot ideas/politics to blossom because ordinary people have been exploited, marginalized, and silenced by the dominant government order (32). If the people allow the government to step over them, it would be difficult to create new political ways to speak their words to make change.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrWwvI8JpI (Fall of the I-hotel trailer)   

“Saigon, USA” Film

On April 30th, 1975, many Vietnamese refugees and people migrated to the United States to flee from the new regime. Some traveled through boats, some flew on American aircrafts, and others fled by foot to other countries to temporarily stay in refugee camps. The immigrants and refugees were trying to find a place to stay and start their lives over. In the United States, the Vietnamese people were separated from others, but they managed to regroup in Orange County and created a place for themselves, which is known as Little Saigon. There, they built a community and spread their culture, ideas, and beliefs of their homeland. However, it is not like the Communist Vietnam of today; it is more of their ideal image of what South Vietnam was like before the war. The loss of their ideal homeland made them feel nostalgic, which motivated the people to build Little Saigon in the United States and spread their culture to others and their next generations.
  Asian/Asian-Americans are stereotypically known to be silent or not resilient, but at some point when the situation hits at the core of the people’s ideals, they would come together to send a powerful message. Trung Van Tran hung up a poster of Ho Chi Minh, which enraged most of the Vietnamese community. They rallied in front of his store to make him take the poster down and stated that they are not communists or communist lovers. This shows that the Vietnamese community still clings to their pasts and ideals because of the war and its traumatic effects (i.e. loss of family members and home). They will not associate with any communists because it would insult their political ideas of what Vietnam should be. As long as they cling to the ideal Vietnam, they will not stand for any insults or aspects of communism that will tarnish their image of their new home.

  Overall, the film did a good job in taking into consideration the sentiments of anticommunist refugees as well as the sentiments of pro-communists while portraying the complex relationships and tensions within the Vietnamese community. However, its main location of focus for the controversy is placed not only ,of course physically, in the US but also in concept. As a result it fails to include/ capture the contemporary homeland politics as well and complexities of a people's historic trauma being carried over transnationally.

Posted: Jennine, Rosario, Jillian, Marryanne