Posted on 11/04/2004 10:43:38 AM PST by AmericanInTokyo
First Vietnamese-American lawmaker object of pride, threats
WESTMINSTER, Calif. - The first order of business for Van Tran, following his election night success, was a trip to a Vietnam War memorial. With a bodyguard.
That's politics in Southern California's Little Saigon, where the first Vietnamese-American elected to a state legislature - and the nation's highest-ranking Vietnamese-American elected official - is an object of community pride and death threats.
Tran said he has been told by two people he considers reliable that Vietnamese communists have targeted him for assassination because of his new political status and past activism against the regime that rules the homeland his family fled 30 years ago.
It's not the first time he's gotten threats: A year ago, he felt compelled to get a concealed weapons permit and is nearly always armed when he's in public.
"Everyone is proud of him," said Ngo Ky, a self-described activist in Garden Grove. "He doesn't belong to his family anymore. He belongs to the community."
"I'm a product of the Vietnam War as much as John Kerry and George Bush," he said at the memorial, where he also burned sticks of incense as a tribute to the fallen U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers who died in the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Good news! Thanks for the post.
Van Tran is the Man.
Here's one guy who knows the Vietnam War first hand, is 'reporting for duty', but was in fact ELECTED! :-)
Good for him, and I won't hold it against him that he worked for Dornan. (just kidding, kind of sort of)
Dont worry. Be happy. :-)
But the Vietnamese Americans are very proud people and love our country, and I am sure they are very excited and proud to have such a wonderful man from their culture in the legislature.
Van Tran is a true American.
Good news bump.
The man is a class act.
Thanks, but I'd still rather be a person than be a happy.
My status as white, European, pillager of native indigenous one-with-mother-earth-peoples, straight, Christian, male has kept me from getting a job before. Yes, the manager who hired me the next summer, after not being able to hire me the summer before, told me. Not enough check marks in my **special** peopleness columns.
The Vietnamese-American are STRONGLY anti Communist and very much on our side...At the Reagan viewing (repose) at the library there was a very large contingent of Vietnamese vet's all in dress uniform
I've made an effort to understand you. And in fact, I do.
Hey, AIT, after moving back from Kyoto to Hunt. Beach, I personally voted for this guy. I went straight ticket Repub. If anyone has ever ventured into northern Orange County, they know it is dominated by millions of Vietnamese. At Golden West College, a Huntington Beach junior college, they are the racial majority of students by 60%. I think 'Little Saigon' itself is a bigger population of Vietnamese than even Hanoi.
I used to volunteer to tutor Vietnamese in English at he aforementioned college, and some of the labor camp stories that I heard from the older generation were horrifying. 15 years hard labor for owning a bicycle store, etc.
Congraduations Van Tran and the Vietnamese community. One of the most conservative ethnic communities in America!
I would also add that there was a very large group of Vietnamese who participated in the the Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this past summer.
.
NEVER FORGET
VAN TRAN Associated Press Article Photos:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/041104/480/carf10111040124
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/041104/480/carf10211040125
Signed:.."ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer
VAN TRAN for Assembly Campaign-Little Saigon
http://www.VanTran68.com
Veteran-"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Battle of IA DRANG-1965
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm (Photos)
NEVER FORGET
.
Congrats to your friend, Ronnie.
Thanks for the good news from California ping.
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