Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 542 - Why Is Talking About Vietnamese History Gets You Labeled A "Communist" In Orange County? - Tracy La

Transcript

542 - Why Is Talking About Vietnamese History Gets You Labeled A "Communist" In Orange County? - Tracy La · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember much, and more and more of those just, they're fishies, I recognize, without knowing their name.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They smile like they know me, so I've made that
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: years to have a story, I know I love someone, I know I work hard and know I come from from where far away, and let someone ask me who I wish, when I see a new,
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: They saved my wife and kept my story when I no longer could.
1:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if I don't remember where I come from, they will.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if I look at them, I don't know the name.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They still don't mind.
1:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast today.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I have Tracy Love, founder and executive director of Viet Rise.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been trying to get Tracy on for years.
2:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And the first time we met is up at University of Oregon.
2:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, good three, four years ago.
2:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the podcast.
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Kenneth, I'm very excited to be on actually.
2:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thank you, that's a very kind words.
2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, I've been wanting to go on for a while, most of it because you asked, but at the time, I felt like I didn't have enough to say.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I want him more to have it happen in the community and I want him more to talk with you about it.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So food is later.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's where we are.
2:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And that happens, you know, and I want to like audience people who are like,
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to do stuff with their art and their creativity, things come in time.
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I've learned.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's no need to rush any of this stuff anymore.
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, people, huge names will come on and reach out and they're like, can I get on?
2:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's like, you know, people who are relatively unknown, but I'm interested in their story.
2:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, no, I can't right now.
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is what we're doing.
2:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really honored to be invited.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I watch a lot of your stuff and I know a lot of people you interview.
3:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But I actually want to ask you a question for a steer member where we were at when we first met in Oregon.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we were in, it was like a big auditorium space and Professor Thunvol.
3:16
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a history professor at the University of Oregon.
3:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Head of, I think the Vietnam Studies program up there.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were going back and forth and there was all kinds of people there that talked about.
3:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was like the state of
3:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The study of history in current Vietnamese academics.
3:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was a lot of that.
3:42
[SPEAKER_01]: There was so many things I didn't understand on the topics that are covered.
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But this was in 2023, and it was symposium on 50 years after the end of the war in 2023.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were preparing for the 50th anniversary for good three years, of course, in the New York community.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a panel talking about reconciliation.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
4:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that remember that?
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember that?
4:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember that?
4:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember that?
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the three speakers were very adamant about they're being no pathway for reconciliation between Vietnamese Americans and the government of Vietnam.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very aggressive about it.
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll very intense about it at least.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so someone got up and asked, do you really think there is no way there could be any kind of reconciliation?
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of them said, no, absolutely not.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are very hedgehogs about that.
4:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as I was sitting there kind of eating my popcorn and waiting to see who spoke up,
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This man stands up, and he goes, you know, I'm a former Marine, and I was like, oh my goodness, what's he going to say?
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was with you.
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And you really won that said, you know what, we need to stop talking like that about our homeland.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Things have changed, you know.
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We can still honor our history in our past and what our parents and grandparents went through, but we need to open pathways essentially for us to reconnect with where we're from.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So former Marine, got up and said that in a panel of maybe like 100 people in the audience, three people that were well respected in the community globally, in the Vietnamese diaspora, and I was like, well, this guy's pretty cool.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thank you.
5:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
5:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
5:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you something that's really ironic about bringing that up right now.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
5:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't let the Prime Minister just went to New York over the weekend.
5:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
5:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And they like had like a big thing.
5:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like publicly, like it was like,
5:31
[SPEAKER_02]: and nobody protests it, like the prime minister of Vietnam.
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
5:36
[SPEAKER_02]: As communists, as you can get, just was at New York City at Columbia University and they gave them a medal or, again, you know, I saw a friend's post.
5:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I was supposed to be there.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that I said in 23,
5:54
[SPEAKER_02]: if I can go back in time now, I would have like quadruple down.
5:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's like, it doesn't make any sense that we're not gonna reconcile.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, for the reality of those people who think that we're not gonna reconcile, they're living in a different reality.
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I tell you, there are a contingent,
6:13
[SPEAKER_02]: group of people in Oregon, that do business directly with the government of Vietnam, in Oregon.
6:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll just say, like, I'm part of a board that like, and it's not because we are communists, we are clearly Americans, we are clearly children of the South.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, make no mistake about that.
6:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time,
6:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've said some really controversial things at dinner time, that have been that I've been kicked out of whole groups of people.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh really?
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, because of this, one time I was at dinner and they were like, I was trying to figure out like this sub-series and I was trying to figure out like, you know, it was a sub-series with the professor from Vietnam, from Vietnamese American community and we were talking about the identity is a political theorist and we're thinking about like a name and I was like, oh, you know, Vietnam heroes, but it happened to have Ho Chi Minh in it.
7:06
[SPEAKER_02]: and the table just stops.
7:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, sometimes things are just what it is.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's factual, you know, people see him as a liberator.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was the one that signed the Declaration of Independence in 1945.
7:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know we're going to get into that in a bit, but I wanted to bring up that story because you were one of the first people who were a little bit older, I don't know who you are.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 50.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, great.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I turned 51 in a month.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, too much.
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: At that time, I'd never see anyone in your age, speak up, and talk about our homeland like that, our motherland.
7:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Regardless of whatever the government is, that's still where our people come from.
7:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where my parents are from, my grandparents.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first thing I went to Vietnam, which was in late 2024, it changed so much for me.
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Being in Vietnam around people who look like me, I'd never felt that sensibly longing ever.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have to worry about someone looking at me in a certain way, thinking differently.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, it was a breath of fresh air and the country's so different now.
7:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And seeing my parents also in that environment, I had actually gone there 30 years after my parents came to the US.
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't even on purpose.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was so many special memories about my trip.
8:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That was your first and only time.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:13
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so there's a lot to unpack there.
8:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And your mom and dad were, was your dad in the military?
8:18
[SPEAKER_01]: He was after, in the Cambodia, the war in the world.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, you're OK, so much after.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: OK. Yeah, there were teenagers when the war ended.
8:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been a war.
8:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's levels to all of this political stuff, right?
8:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So your parents, your dad, specifically is not of that generation that fought in the, you know, in the actual American Vietnam War.
8:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So the kind of like the grind and the kind of like that, that sensitivity didn't get passed down to you and didn't get passed down to me.
8:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm, it did actually to me.
8:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my grandpa.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, okay.
8:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But it skipped the duration with your dad, right?
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.
8:58
[SPEAKER_01]: By grew up with my grandpa.
9:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So I lived in that same house.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like the patriarch of the whole family, you know, kind of.
9:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So he put it down, he like...
9:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He did, but he was more, he was really disappointed in the Americans and leaving Vietnam and I grew up with him saying I would never go back because he was in, you know, a education camp for 11 years.
9:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was the one that sponsored my entire family over here and so it was like
9:23
[SPEAKER_02]: How old were you when you came to the seats?
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I was born here.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you born here, okay.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So five months after my parents got here, four months.
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, got it, cut.
9:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's such a tricky thing.
9:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm telling you, things are changing.
9:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not going to be the same in five years because a lot of the people who are like, so gum-hobe are protesting are, you know, they're getting, they're just getting quieter, weaker.
9:44
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of people from Vietnam that I'm so close to that they're coming, that are not communists.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
9:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we got to stop that.
9:51
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to stop that, like, it's such nonsense.
9:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, and I get it, we, I honor,
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I honor my dads and my uncle's legacies, right?
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's not forget, like, there were death.
10:04
[SPEAKER_02]: There were people that died in loss a lot.
10:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I get that, but...
10:10
[SPEAKER_02]: We are out of crossroads right now.
10:12
[SPEAKER_02]: The things are changing.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm not, I mean, I'm not like you, where like, Ho Chi Minh was like, for dinner for you.
10:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would love to, you know, I'm not that courageous yet to like, step out and push that.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, my brothers lived in Vietnam since 2004.
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: He's married.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: somebody from Vietnam to say communism and all of this stuff to people in Vietnam Vietnamese Americans who moved there.
10:40
[SPEAKER_02]: There of course there's like this sentiment of like you know freedom of speech and all of those things get it human rights all of that.
10:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time we have to like figure out a way to work with all of it.
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a lot of discourse that are now on the honoring our parents and our grandparents history a lot of that.
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think generally across the board, they meet Americans, children of Vietnamese refugees, we'd love our family and where they come from in their history.
11:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We know it very well.
11:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But the part that isn't being talked about enough is where we're at today, politically.
11:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll tell you a story, we're in for a guardic of school board.
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And the few weeks ago, I sought the endorsement of the Democratic Party of Orange County,
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the course of 72 hours, there were 15 emails sent about me to the entire Democratic Party delegates, 15, or something like that, against or form me.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the Democratic Party meeting, you know, we get the opportunity to speak for three minutes and support my endorsement against.
11:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, I spoke and had two other supporters speak and...
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: The person that spoke against me, one of them raised up a picture of the others in the refugee camps, saying, do not vote for Tracy Law who, essentially, disrespects our history, and, you know, I was in the camp, so I know I'm talking about it, and you should, you know, prioritize my history, my feelings.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But this person, you know, she's running a first mayor of a city, and she owns multiple businesses.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: She's wealthy.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: She's, you know, she's doing a good job taking care of her family.
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: She's running multiple candidates.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: She has a lot of political power.
12:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, DJ Ratt, the one.
12:15
[SPEAKER_02]: DJ Ratt, who's on the podcast in the early years?
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I was on the piano with her actually last year.
12:21
[SPEAKER_02]: She did come out to Oregon too.
12:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she was there.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I did.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember.
12:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So she stood up and said that.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
12:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm surprised.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's interesting for me to see that and then to contrast that with the experiences that I see in the community, because Vitt rise or work that I do lately, we've been supporting Vietnamese seniors who are refugees, who there were in the camps or not, they're being evicted from their homes.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: like systematically, specifically those are mobile homes, and they're facing right now the consequences of capitalism and the exploitation of, you know, like seniors are living a fixed incomes, trying to live the rest of their days on the homes that they purchase.
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I talk about this work, but that never gets talked about by people like too hall.
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, they're constantly bringing up this imagery of them in the camps to say that they're experienced matters more, but I'm looking at our seniors, our refugees now, and a lot of these elected officials that have been speaking out against me, or if it rise, they're not talking about those issues that are happening in front of us.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it's a great frustration.
13:28
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a game.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm going to call it out.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, and, Deirdre, you can come on the podcast again, any time.
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mean to call her.
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.
13:39
[SPEAKER_02]: If there is a direct contradiction with Deirdre and Tracy, let's do it.
13:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about the policy contradiction, right?
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about, Deirdre, what do you disagree with on a policy level?
13:53
[SPEAKER_02]: This pulling out a fucking picture?
13:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not cool.
13:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a emotional shit.
14:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Tactical behavior, which I'm not cool with and I'm doing it like I'm more than happy to talk about it with you But that becomes a very political maneuver and I wonder and this is what I always wonder Deirdre, are you doing it because you want to win?
14:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's call it out for what it is if you do that because you want to win and you want to do this sort of imagery
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Then that's one thing, right?
14:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But if we're going to talk about policy and we can go to Nectototototon policy, then let's fight on that.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's where, you know, my speech when I asked them to consider endorsement, it was about policy.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always in the n about policy for us.
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So what is the logic that you're a communist?
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what she's saying?
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: The main arguments I've been getting is that the way that we talked about the August Revolution, it looked like we were glorifying coaching men.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So the key word is looked like or came across as.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it actually spiraled into a larger story.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I was at one of the senior's mobile homes a few weeks ago to talk to them about the situation.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, so is it true that you guys didn't march during the picnic with coaching his face on it?
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, what, this is the first time I'm hearing about that.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we didn't, of course, let's, you know.
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But what is the logic on your and about using which is an image in, you know, in such a public facing way?
15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so last year, to give some context, it was, or 25, it was a 50th anniversary of the end of the American Vietnam War.
15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It was also the 80th anniversary of a Vietnam one independence.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're at a time right now,
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, where, for example, blood, we're Palestinian liberation is that the forefront everyone's minds.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: They see the genocide.
15:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They see the tactics as really government has impoling and everyone trying to trick them into thinking otherwise.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And you see a lot of young Vietnamese Americans get politicized on their campus in high school or in college fighting for the liberation of Palestine.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: China, you know, argue against the occupation of these
16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: scheduler colonizers, Israel, that are taking over Palestinian land.
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was hearing this all, you know, I was listening to a lot of these young people talk about that.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But I realized that they weren't able to connect it back to their own histories because they don't know about our own history.
16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Most young, most families of Americans don't know about our history on 1975.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't.
16:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a cloud.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like in a game, like if there's a map,
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all gray, you know, and you're stuck in this, like, this map where you can only see what you've been through.
16:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So what you're saying is, wait, let's be clear.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You are saying that the Vietnamese American kids in college campuses are being sucked into Israel's narrative that are you saying that they're being sucked into the
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: How is it in there already?
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: They're rightly organizing for a free Palestine because they see the injustices and they see the importance of
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Palestine being independent and sovereign and fighting for it.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a good thing.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a great thing, right?
17:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 100%.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, sorry, sorry.
17:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We're here.
17:14
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, we got to shoot another same page here.
17:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And we don't need them in the same page.
17:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
17:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But I just need to understand where you come from.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all trying to come from, okay.
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was a little long window.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're saying that they are completely on the side of like three Palestine, which is great.
17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so proud of it.
17:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's amazing.
17:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're saying that they have a failure to connect
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think to see themselves as part of the struggle truly, it's to be in solidarity with Palestinians.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's important that we don't just come in as we're helping, but because we understand that our history and our freedom is linked together.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that quote.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of young people didn't know that history.
17:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so,
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw for many years as like a student organizer on my own campus, how young Asians, Asian Americans are kind of treated by other students of color as like you have to be guilty of where you're of being Asian American because they were privileges.
18:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're relegated to feeling like they should need help mothers as opposed to understand their struggle.
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, their own experience in the struggle.
18:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, I'm getting theoretical.
18:19
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, this is what we do.
18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: We should get theoretical because if I don't understand it, I'm going to ask until I understand it and hopefully it opens up and illuminates of for people listening.
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So have you ever been on a table where it was,
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you were the only Asian or you saw maybe one or two other Asians there and it was a group of people of color And they were talking about systemic injustice and the Asian person there was most a quiet I kind of had a gray with whatever was being sent.
18:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean seeing that we say yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm probably right one of them Yeah, but why were you why do you feel like you said no enough?
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, did you feel like you were more privileged therefore you shouldn't really say much?
18:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a good question.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Or seeing as more privileged, they're for you probably shouldn't say as much.
19:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, maybe because I wanted to side with the white people and I wanted to be white.
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
19:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, there's that, definitely there's that going on that I want to be, for sure, I want to be white and my insecurity kept my mouth shut.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, okay, I'm talking about a different example, but I'll take us back to where you, what there was my question you had to ask me.
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So at this point, you know, we talked for three years about the 50th anniversary of the war and we had just found out if it arrives.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I was 80th, 80 years and the central question for us was how come we don't really know about this.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we launched
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just wanted to tell a really brief retelling of the story of the August Revolution and why this was the anniversary of Vietnam's independence.
19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ho Chi Minh was the leader that gave the Declaration of Independence.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, you know, we weren't naive, we knew that it was going to ruffle some feathers because for the longest time, even mentioning his name in our community as, you know, in the Vietnamese American community has led to protests, or has led to waves of critique and criticism from certain members of the community.
20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So we knew it was gonna come in some way.
20:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know how big it was gonna get.
20:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, it's crazy that you did not know how big it was gonna get.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, actually, there were some, some of us did wonder if we were going to have our office shot up because it has happened before.
20:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're actually surprised that no one came to our office.
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not inviting anyone to come, but if you want to talk shirt, but don't shoot a office.
20:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to break this down.
20:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the way I think about it.
20:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
20:47
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the way I think about this whole thing.
20:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I think when like a couple argues, right?
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Especially when men argue, they want to be right.
20:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
20:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
21:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
21:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Memories do want to be right.
21:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But the women, and I'm just generalizing, just as an analogy, the women want to feel heard.
21:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
21:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's not about right or wrong with the women.
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
21:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And they emotional side of like just being
21:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you just shut the fuck up and just hear how I feel, right?
21:19
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how I feel like my partner is in the pass of how felt right now.
21:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Men are like, no, no, no, no.
21:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm stating facts.
21:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm spitting out facts and I think I can see both sides.
21:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I can feel both sides and what I mean by that is this, when I think about the whole Ho Chi Minh, 1945, that is the root of like kicking everybody out.
21:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we just went through the Japanese.
21:45
[SPEAKER_02]: invasion of four years or whatever.
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we're dealing with like the French.
21:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And then now in a few short years, we're like dealing with Americans in the Vietnamese people's eyes.
21:56
[SPEAKER_02]: If we take it back that far, tell what you mean, then we can really say that he was responsible for liberating, getting everybody out of the country and keeping it Vietnamese.
22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, is that your argument already saying that?
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why it was in top of the ask.
22:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I know, no, I'm saying, this is facts.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay, yes.
22:15
[SPEAKER_02]: If you think about Ho Chi Minh 1945, whatever he did, the end result, 80 years later, is that there's no foreigners inside of our country.
22:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You can make that argument, right?
22:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
22:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's start again, we can make that.
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's facts.
22:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
22:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
22:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And 4 million people are on the outside that are on the outside.
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Had to leave for whatever reason.
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are emotional about being on the outside of this situation.
22:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
22:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand that when people are emotion about the situation and feeling a certain way, I do have sympathy for my community.
22:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, like, allow me, and I'm gonna say this because this was like fighting words to like, people I love this day, but they they banished me from the kingdom.
23:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Because this whole chimney.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I said.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:09
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I said.
23:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So this argument is very, like, interesting.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
23:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Fresh in my heart, like I got kicked out of the kingdom for this.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
23:18
[SPEAKER_02]: My grandfather fought for the French.
23:23
[SPEAKER_02]: He was like a town big way, oh, he's the same, right?
23:28
[SPEAKER_02]: He got killed by the Vietnamese, which is the predecessor of the government.
23:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
23:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my grandfather, my dad and his brothers were on the Phoenix operation on the CIA site, right?
23:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So three guys on my dad's side and my mom's side were also people who are like all serving the South and fighting with the Americans and specifically the CIA on my dad's side, right?
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you got the third generation, me and my brother Tom both U.S. Marines, three generations serving the white man.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So now, I said to this derityable, I said, I have every fucking right to say whatever I want, right?
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I can say whatever, but I don't have it right, because then it's like hurting people, right?
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It hurt them, it hurt these people.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like the wrong, wrong time, wrong place.
24:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I said dinner party, and I bring this up my podcast, but it's like, what I'm gonna say is like, I'm gonna be offensive because I can be,
24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you guys serve in the military?
24:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Did any of you, like, you're, whatever?
24:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are valid questions, definitely.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have the position to say it.
24:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have, like, the courage to say, you know, but then.
24:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, at the same time, I realized look four million people on the outside, are not experiencing the way the government is running their country.
24:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got to separate all these nuances, right?
24:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, humans want things.
24:49
[SPEAKER_02]: How they're running human rights and Vietnam is another thing.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then this whole history of the South in the last 50 years and the three stripes, another thing.
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the only thing I'll say was that this is, it's obviously you know, this is very different from an argument between a couple, right?
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: No, those are things are interpersonal, but these conversations are so important even at dinner tables because it isn't just an interpersonal situation going on there, this is politics.
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It results in policy, it results in who has political power, it results in who controls what, who controls the narrative, and so there are really three main reasons why we wanted to talk about it at that time.
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: In addition to wanting to honor our history, you know, as Vietnamese people who
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We're, you know, liberated ourselves from Lauren, but it's not our history in Orange County.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the problem that they're thinking that they think, okay, we'll be do come for Vietnam.
25:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So not 1945, which you're in Vietnam.
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the key.
25:46
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the key thing.
25:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But I do understand it.
25:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I do like on a logical theoretical because we tell him, he's like, he post all these things about like the free Palestine and Vietnam being yeah.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, where does that come from?
26:00
[SPEAKER_02]: That comes from 1945, right?
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
26:02
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a come from like modern like 15 years ago.
26:05
[SPEAKER_02]: No, this whole thing that he's always saying free Palestine and the solidarity between Vietnam and Palestine and share the history, that's 1945 history.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: True, but you can also look at all the monuments about the high-budgeting sisters.
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, if you drive down Euclid, there is like this giant statue of some guy on a horse from 17th something.
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
26:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, we have to divide it up from 1940, but I get where you're coming from.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We choose the parts of our history that we feel connected to in Resonate, Wisconsin.
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We want young people to have more to feel proud of young Vietnamese Americans specifically.
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We wanted them to feel proud of our independence.
26:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So, a few other reasons why we brought a debt was an addition to being proud of it.
26:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We wanted to expand the permission structure of who was allowed to talk about our history and who was a lot of say Ho Chi Minh.
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And where are you able to talk about it?
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you able to talk about it?
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Being able to talk about it without being scared that you're going to be ostracized.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's why we read it at our picnic in person.
27:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about 50 young, Vietnamese Americans and some others and little sigh-ong.
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were kind of scared to say it at read it aloud, but we also asked, we put it back and done.
27:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the why are you scared?
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are we scared to just say a name?
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We should it be, but there's history behind it.
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but the more we condition ourselves to talk about it and make it okay, expand the mission structure,
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: then we're allowed to explore more parts of our history and where we come from and why the Vietnamese American communities so anti-communist now and what that results in.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: The second thing was, you know, red-bating has been used as a political weapon in little psychone politics forever.
27:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So, can you explain red-bating?
27:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Redbating is when you, someone or group accuses someone or group of being a communist in order to ostracize them or push them out of the community or make them seen as evil or bad or not good.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We had this history starting with McCarthyism in the 50s.
28:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it costs people with their jobs, you know, people took their lives.
28:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It really has huge detrimental effects on people, and especially during the McCarthy era, but that happens all the time still in Little Saigon.
28:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And in Hollywood, it happens a lot.
28:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and I, and I, you look, I applaud you for, for really, you know,
28:30
[SPEAKER_02]: because I get frustrated with this too.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe that we should be able to intellectualize everything and not be afraid to talk about anything.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
28:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't necessarily agree that, you know, for you to, to bless that hoochie man, it was something, I would, it would be hard for me to do, but at the same time, I do applaud you for doing it.
28:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I'm hearing why you did it.
28:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that, yeah, let's go.
28:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean?
28:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So I saw your podcast recently with Kevin Fan, that you talked about Hiluxie Men way more and way more depth than we did during our August Revolution stuff.
29:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally, but not on the streets, I'm like, you know, on the digital air waves, I'm like, those digital mostly.
29:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Digital, yeah, digital, look, if you put me aside and not on air, I give you, I give you some crazy viewpoints because
29:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, look, I think that this idea of Ho Chi Minh and who he represents for the current Vietnam?
29:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's a hero for Vietnam.
29:30
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, he is.
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But for this community in Orange County and the diaspora, it's hard to swallow.
29:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we definitely would present to you like that.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just, we tried to present it just as facts and it was as short as a slide deck.
29:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I think me and Kevin have gone way further than this a hundred percent a way further with hoochie men so Yeah, turn into that to par one and part two.
29:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We go we go pretty hard and it's awesome Kevin.
29:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He came to sunrise, actually, to present time.
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember him.
30:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:00
[SPEAKER_02]: He had dinner with me the night before.
30:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And he came to be a rise.
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that was incredible.
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually critiqued him a bit.
30:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I was a chaplain, Ho Chi Minh, and I said, I think your bias is coming out a little bit.
30:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So you were more critical of Ho Chi Minh's theories and beliefs that he wasn't any of the other anti-colonial leaders that he talked about.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were more criticisms of it in that chapter than others.
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god,
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: is we're telling.
30:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
30:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the red-baiting thing.
30:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we wanted to weaken our end, the process of red-baiting has a political weapon a little side-on.
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We also wanted to show if we can withstand something like that, an organization, then other organizations and other people can talk more openly about our history without an ostracized.
30:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, and I'm like, be more involved in to do this.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you've been building me.
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so actually if we want to think about we're all started from like like he said what your men it was actually Kevin.
31:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Kevin.
31:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It was Kevin.
31:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Kevin and Kenneth, sorry.
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I got I got roasted at that dinner and I'll never forget that because
31:10
[SPEAKER_02]: although I believe in the work that I do and in this whole idea of like really stretching the boundary, who I stretch with now is so important.
31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, because you know, we're not doing it just too because people offer fun.
31:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually trying to advance something better for the Vietnamese American community truly.
31:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I saw that when you stood up, you know, and it organ and then I hope people feel like that way about us and the thing is people do.
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why when people were,
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: pushing us to issue an apology for what we wrote.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'm not gonna turn my back on all the parents, the students, the young people, our membership, even the older folks that said, we appreciate what you were trying to do.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I said, sorry for doing that or I regret it, then all this support there be God after the ways of attack the hitters last year.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to turn my back on the people that supported us.
32:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But look, here's what's important, Tracy, is that if we're able to do this to Ho Chi Minh, then we should be able to do it to everybody and everything.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean by that?
32:11
[SPEAKER_02]: What I mean by that is if we're able to talk openly about Ho Chi Minh and say, all right, 1945, we all have this, like, we share this point with this guy who liberated Vietnam.
32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We should be able to critique the government if we want to.
32:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
32:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be at none.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we do all the time.
32:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We're on Bolsa every Sunday.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people out there who have touched it.
32:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that's, I think it works all in different ways.
32:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not here on this podcast to critique the government of Vietnam.
32:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not here to take away my sympathies for the four million people in the diaspora who are vehemently against Ho Chi Minh, but at the same time, if we're going to be able to dialogue about Ho Chi Minh and be open about it, then we should be able to be open about everything.
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I know Kevin talks a lot about that actually.
33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so the third reason why we wanted to do it was because we also wanted to raise the contradictions and the issues that little like on elected officials would talk about when the campaign or when they govern versus what they spend most of their energy on and what you say to most of it.
33:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been fighting the evictions of senior who are refugees, and we've been pushing for an empowerment of young people, again, evolving government, but they don't.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of them won't talk about that.
33:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I had a meeting with the direct trans, Congress member of direct trans, senior advisor.
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: We were at Fin Smith, shot up with Fin Smith.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I have a coffee shop.
33:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone knows that.
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you feel about that.
33:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know, Fin Smith.
33:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'll check it out.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But I do remember the controversy with direct trans.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So I remember the drama there.
34:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, ooh.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I see what people think it was drama, but for us, it was always about the issues.
34:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, can you talk about it?
34:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And Derek, what can we come back on too?
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, please.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Or come on, because they reached out during that time.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I see you're just saying, so at the time, so Congresswoman Derek Tran before he was a Congressmember ran on a platform of being pro immigrant rights.
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: He was seen as a champion for immigrant refugee communities because of the rhetoric he was using.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of us thought that, a lot of progressive organizations endorsed him.
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And a nice.
34:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then the Lichen of Riley outcomes, Lichen of Riley Act massively expanded immigration enforcement, basically said, anyone accused of a crime could be detained, accused of the crime like theft, and he voted on it.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: He voted yes, and actually a young Vietnamese American went on TV and asked them about it, and they said, why did you do that?
34:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, well, I support it.
34:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So he doubled down.
34:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We went to him at a town hall, asked him about it.
34:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He tripled down on it.
34:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a video of us, of him saying, he believes that it comes with the process, which if you read it, it really doesn't.
35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing in that.
35:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't expand your process.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes it away.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he agreed to a meeting.
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, eventually I met with a senior advisor and I told her here's two issues that it arrives really wants to work with your office on.
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one is ending the deportation of Vietnamese people.
35:20
[SPEAKER_01]: There has not been as many Vietnamese people deported or detained as there was last year.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: One day I'll try and take office, right?
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying it's correlated, but you could do something about it.
35:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said the evictions of seniors who are losing their homes because they can't afford the rent.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had a meeting set up afterward, and we even connected him with a community member who was, who's husband was important, because they wanted to help.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And he bailed on both.
35:47
[SPEAKER_01]: He catharted our meeting, and then the community member, the woman he was supposed to help, their office reached out to help, just needed a passport for her daughter, and they sent her just like a PDF after two or three meetings.
36:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so,
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That was, you know, two straws for us.
36:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the third straw was when he voted on the resolution to think ice.
36:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, he canceled on me too.
36:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is a modest operandi of that of dirt trend.
36:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm calling it out to like he canceled on me.
36:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was weird.
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's like so much back and forth to coordinate.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
36:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they ghost.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
36:23
[SPEAKER_02]: That's weird.
36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But is that how you do business.
36:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, is that how you run your operations and your relationships.
36:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the first, well, not the first red flag, but saying that the Lincoln Riley Act provided due process for immigrants, that was crazy because he's a lawyer.
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just not read the, you know, then he had supporters of his who were Laura saying, don't do this is wrong, actually.
36:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You should pull back your vote and there was a Congress member who voted
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: She says she regretted voting for it.
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: She was actually on a panel with her.
36:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't say it.
36:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He actually called Drupal down on his stance on the Lincoln-Wirley Act.
37:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm sure Dirk's a cool dude.
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He has weird shoes, he wears with outfits, but I hate your shoes, Dirk.
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
37:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But when it came to the policy and fighting for immigrant communities and being the first Vietnamese representative of Little Psychong and you didn't do anything really to protect
37:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You just appointed so much of us, so many of us.
37:28
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, in the last year, I always talk about this.
37:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The work that we do as creatives, activists, historians, academic, musicians, come from obsession.
37:38
[SPEAKER_02]: A session comes from a, and like, early childhood, what, why do you fight so hard for the Vietnamese community, the people who are in danger of deportation, eviction?
37:50
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
37:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Where does your trauma and obsession come from?
37:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never been asked that question in that way before, but I like it.
37:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't, you know, I wish I came up with that thing, but I didn't.
38:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, I've heard several guys like, in the neighborhood of like Rick Ruben talk about, if you don't have that childhood, whatever, trauma, obsession, then you will never take your activism all the way to like James Baldwin level.
38:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't do, you can't do life like for me, the Vietnamese podcast comes from,
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And music musicians are the same way and activists like you same thing.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I was born right after a parents got here.
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I saw the races in the fall.
38:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people who print collar homes getting my brother to say something English that was really wrong.
38:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And my parents and my grandparents worked until like four or five a.m. delivering newspapers.
38:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There was one incident in particular where I saw the mistreatment and exploitation of people in our community that just, like, boiled my blood.
38:54
[SPEAKER_01]: However, that doesn't allow 16.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: All that's up before I had already seen, but my dad was working at a restaurant and the manager of this restaurant, the owner, had made him work with 14 hours a day as for most of my life.
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I never saw my dad, because I forgot when it came home at midnight for years of my life.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, one thing's giving, they invited us over to their really big house in La Jolla, San Diego.
39:16
[SPEAKER_02]: In Vietnamese people.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't see people.
39:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, wow, this is really cool.
39:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They're inviting us to their house.
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my time with them, they see us as equals.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We get there, we're early.
39:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it sounds to an hour later that the rest of their family comes and they have my parents serve them, essentially.
39:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have to sit on the other side of the room in the living room.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd never been as angry as I was then.
39:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So everything compiled, compounded for me at that moment, the way that immigration treated when they can't speak English, the way that people with very little money can get exploited for their labor and work.
39:53
[SPEAKER_01]: 12, 14 hour days and get their tips stolen, and daughters, children are not seeing their parents because they're working so much.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that day I had many, I started my list that day.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Of people that I wish I could speak to and say, do things about it.
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But ever since then, I was like, there's something systemic here and we need to find out whatever it takes to figure out how to solve this or fix it, or make sure no one ever gets exploited or took advantage of like that again.
40:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That's heavy.
40:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's right.
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, it wasn't like chronological from there.
40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: At that moment, I was like, well, I'm so embarrassed even of me is actually.
40:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and the owner was Vietnamese people.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And they spoke, like, good English.
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You came here a long time ago.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were well-established.
40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, multiple houses that were just the same size.
40:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had two gigantic Christmas trees in that one home.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And many other Christmas trees.
40:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And here you're suffering.
40:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You're youth because of exploitation.
40:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and like the few moments where I actually get this time with my dad and my mom together, we were doing this for this family.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: The funny story was like, she actually hired me on one point to work with that same restaurant to keep her daughter company because she was trying to ground her daughter.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
41:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I get to hear a lot of this.
41:19
[SPEAKER_02]: childhood trauma of session to create beautiful things in the world.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: My ultimate worry for my two children, nine and seven right now is that they don't have that Tracy law when she was 16th story.
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Because if they have like the opposite where the daughter is being like you're being hired to like handle as a handler for the daughter.
41:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The daughter, my nightmare is that I produce that.
41:49
[SPEAKER_02]: my not ultimate nightmare.
41:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like it's almost like I and I used to agonize about this in my early years on the podcast that I used to always ask these people who are successful.
42:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what are we doing to like make sure our children are going to be successful one day.
42:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
42:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, how can I get my daughter and son to experience what you did in a
42:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because that's exactly why I'm afraid to have children, and I kind of don't right now.
42:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm 31, so people are asking now.
42:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm also, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on the world, like the straight-of-her-mooze has been closed.
42:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and not in this economy.
42:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why I think that the balance of equality and all this stuff, it swings, right?
42:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm afraid that America has taken advantage of the world for so long.
42:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And now that swing is gonna hit, I think it's gonna go pretty hard.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Unless we do something about it as Americans, I think we're gonna be facing some really weird, weird times.
42:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, when you think about Japan, it's nothing to do with what I'm talking about other than the pen, pengellum swinging, is that they went so hard with their economy and hard work and craftsmanship and their work ethics that now,
43:11
[SPEAKER_02]: There are people who don't care.
43:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It has like worth nothing and people are burned out.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, we don't want to work with you.
43:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like rates are really bad.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like rates are high.
43:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's mating, right?
43:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's pregnant.
43:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, what's the point of all this?
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But balance, right?
43:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It's this pendulum and Vietnam, too.
43:29
[SPEAKER_01]: like they turned on their own population, just like the U.S. is doing, you know, have been, but especially more so now that more white people are starting to see it.
43:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the schools, like, you know, I guess one thing that might help in the situation with your chises that there's a lot of their friends, if they go to public school or maybe even charter schools, they're seeing their friends' parents get picked up by eyes.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That happened in Garden Grove a lot, like by dozens of families,
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And the school district kind of tried to hide under the bus or like, you know, not to hide.
43:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, hide under the bus.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That might not be the correct phrase, but try to make it seem like it wasn't happening.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we had a school remember who literally said, you know, it's going to blow over.
44:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.
44:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not really going to affect us.
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: She's been amazed.
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And when she said us, she wasn't talking about all the little stuff.
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure she was just talking about Vietnamese people.
44:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not the Latinos.
44:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Not Latino communities.
44:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So why are you running for this position on the Garden Grove school board?
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that was, you know, one of the main things that it was like, I guess like the catalyst last year that made me make the decision or earlier this year that made me make the decision.
44:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I bet Ryze, we're working with families whose dads had been detained outside of their children's schools.
44:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were hearing this happening constantly across the entire county.
44:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And we looked to our elected officials.
44:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There was one in Garden Girl that actually cared of just Walter Minuton.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been there for eight years.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But the others, as I was Walter Minuton, we had Dan and Gwen, who has been there for over 15 years, I think.
45:03
[SPEAKER_01]: said at the scoreboard meeting, it blow over, it's fine.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not really affecting us, so don't need to worry.
45:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But when she said we, she was talking about Mexican kids or other Latino kids or Central American kids.
45:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I made me really angry.
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had young Vietnamese students are coming to us saying, that is happening to my dad.
45:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, I'm really upset this is happening to my friends' parents.
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there was a wave of walkouts last year.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there, was it early this year?
45:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, remember that?
45:33
[SPEAKER_01]: all across a lot of them led it and a lot of the students came to get rise actually to be part of our programs but it was like on their own volition they led the protest and then we invited them to come out to our programs and join our membership so these young kids they're taking it into their own hands you know
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did you start Vietnam rise?
45:59
[SPEAKER_02]: What was the, like at that time, what was the catalyst to make you start that?
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: This was two years after the 2016 election when Donald Trump got elected.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And Dean Know who was the, which community of color supported Trump at the highest rate.
46:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Vietnam, Vietnamese people.
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Same.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea was a lot of people were like, why would Vietnamese people load against their best interests?
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: or their own interests.
46:25
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't know better.
46:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
46:26
[SPEAKER_02]: God, I just talked about this in a podcast this morning.
46:29
[SPEAKER_02]: On videos, I lose second TV in Vietnamese.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: They just don't know.
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a big part of it, but also the system, the community word that they live with then, it doesn't set them up to know.
46:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Venomese leaders who go on Venomese YouTube channels and radios shows lying to them.
46:48
[SPEAKER_01]: about was actually happening, but how can they know better when that's the only language that they're getting this information in?
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Or this is the only place?
46:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Social security for our seniors, health care, all of it now is being pulled.
47:01
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom, yanked.
47:03
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom is not a trumpet.
47:04
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom's a Democrat.
47:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But all of these old people,
47:08
[SPEAKER_02]: even imagine like voting for this administration and this happening to them or some of their kids are like being deported and societies and families are being ripped apart.
47:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean like there's a nightmare.
47:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely nightmare.
47:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's that and also the Democratic party is not offering any good alternatives at all.
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And they take our communities for granted thinking that they'll vote for them just because they're not as bad as their public in.
47:32
[SPEAKER_01]: and they need to see that.
47:33
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of us see that.
47:34
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of working class people see that.
47:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't get to have our vote just because we don't want something worse, you know.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of people like they in the last election, they just stayed out of it.
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to have something more inspiring for people to want to support and champion and vote for, but we don't really have that.
47:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of candidates that are showing their picture a single for me, because 40 years ago this happened.
47:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore it is every vote.
48:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we're getting right now, unfortunately, in Littus, like, on, especially.
48:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you have to do?
48:05
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of?
48:06
[SPEAKER_02]: message you have to convey to the people who are voting for you, you're constituents.
48:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I'm campusing, which I do every weekend, I depends on which community I go to.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been going to speaking a lot with the renters and mobile home residents, and I introduce myself.
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I say, I'm, you know, exactly the director of a nonprofit, and I fall for an control in the city in Santa Ana to prevent rent from increasing by more than 3% so that people like you can
48:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, I'll stay here home.
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean is our in English?
48:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I say I mean it means and I have someone to help because I can't.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they get it?
48:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They go, oh my gosh, okay, great.
48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
48:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But what does that have to do with the school board in their mind?
48:49
[SPEAKER_01]: that they know that it's a candidate that knows how to fight for the issues that are affecting them directly.
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Because mostly, we don't really know what school board does and that's what I tell them as like a hook to tell them what my background is.
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I say, I want more fiscal transparency in our school district.
49:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to just have more opportunities beyond thinking they need to just go to high education, they need to go to a vocational school, they can go to vocational schools, take on to trades, other things.
49:17
[SPEAKER_01]: and we name more support for immigrant students, you know, whose families are being separated.
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Why the school board and not another political office?
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be able to ask me that, but that's sort of my hardest.
49:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I work with students, and I work with teachers, and families, and that's where I want to make the change right now.
49:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, there's a lot of money in politics.
49:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
49:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, it's like, it's a money game.
49:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
49:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always been a money game.
49:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so now what?
49:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what do people like you who,
49:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Really, I do listen about what you want in the world.
49:49
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you combat that?
49:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, I'm too, I deal with sick.
49:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm also very headstrong about making it concrete.
49:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my thing.
49:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I'm not the kind of person that just talks about ideas.
50:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to make it happen.
50:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to implement things.
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going all in for our campaign.
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I've raised over $31,000.
50:11
[SPEAKER_01]: In order to run a typical school where to raise that's how much he made, which is insane.
50:14
[SPEAKER_02]: My area, but you know, like, I've been a dinners that are $31,000, you know, and you know what I'm saying?
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been a dinners, we're like, these rich people, I'm like, a weekend, we're shell out 50 grand for like their boys, right?
50:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And when those people are like, oh, we're gonna put somebody in this school board position and we're gonna pay you.
50:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they look at me and they're like, do you know anybody we could do that for?
50:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a hundred grand of them is nothing, right?
50:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You're dealing with that, right?
50:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like how, how does that even work?
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: How does the economics work for that situation?
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There have been candidates who, so actually in 2024, we ran a ballot measure in Santa Ana to enshrine our recordable ordinance.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We raised $12,000.
50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We had over a million dollars that were against our ballot measure.
51:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And we won.
51:03
[SPEAKER_01]: because of a long-time community organizing and solidarity and coalition building and non-stop-campus thing in years of talking about control.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's so much work.
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to burn out.
51:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to really invest so much time, energy resources, your dreams, your life, you know?
51:19
[SPEAKER_02]: When you look back on this hoaching and thing, do you think that it was worth it to put it out there against your...
51:27
[SPEAKER_02]: the chance of winning.
51:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think it was like, like, when you, in hindsight, is it, you know, was it, was it a cool trade off?
51:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it a good trade off?
51:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I think history will absolve us and will tell us, but I think
51:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, I would want to talk about her history like this anyway, so if it had to happen this way on the 80th anniversary of it, I'm going to independence and I'm okay with that and I'm proud of what we did and what has led to do I like being attacked randomly verbally on the internet or protested no.
52:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been hard.
52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to lie, you know, like there are days where I was like, this is insane.
52:06
[SPEAKER_01]: This person knows my full name where I live and are making random memes on my face.
52:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been there.
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
52:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been there.
52:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Three thousand comments all like guns pointing.
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
52:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on a shot-laze podcast and he...
52:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it can be brutal.
52:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's brutal.
52:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I shut down for like a year right emotionally.
52:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't say anything But it was like it hurt you to the point where and you're like I was misunderstood.
52:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I was you know, yeah But even if I was like saying what I wanted to say unfair
52:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually experienced this in college, you know, um, this is like peak college Republican Mila, you know, up a list days.
52:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I was student by president, you see, I. Oh, really?
52:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
52:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a video out there of me that, you know, the college probably was trying to embarrass me.
52:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But I saw the comments.
52:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was some crazy, weird violate comments.
52:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Scary.
52:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's scary.
52:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't be on the other for two years, you know, I was so scared.
52:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I was scared.
52:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, yeah.
53:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I feel like at the same time, I'm like, Tim, couldn't the hoochie-minting wait till after the selection?
53:06
[SPEAKER_02]: The election?
53:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
53:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
53:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the track record I have, the experience I have in the community, how hard I've fought to make the painting better.
53:15
[SPEAKER_01]: My team.
53:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the work of my organization, me, Camusin, constantly, and going out there, I think will make the difference for sure.
53:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll win.
53:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So bottom line is you're very principled.
53:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd say that.
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's important.
53:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
53:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Because when money comes around, you've got to stay principled to what you believe and not.
53:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had some...
53:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's Wade.
53:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've had some endorsements not given to me because I refuse to change my position on certain issues.
53:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, about the chemical incident and garden growth.
53:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
53:45
[SPEAKER_01]: My organization is leading the GKN out of garden growth campaign with Palestinian youth movement and other orgs to get them to be removed from the community because they almost, they're tanked almost explosive and destroyed both the whole and little side gone.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are groups who said they wanted me to pull back on that stance and take back my belief that GKN aerospace should be taken out of the community.
54:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, no, why would I do that?
54:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And we give you money, if you did.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll give you endorsement, we'll give you money.
54:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, it was even that much money.
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a really big endorsement.
54:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, no, I wouldn't know.
54:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when I think about these episodes and I have to sit down and really focus about what the one question is, right?
54:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So my question going into this thing was to explore this political climate.
54:41
[SPEAKER_02]: is so daunting sometimes when I think about the changes that we're trying to make.
54:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like a moderate, like I don't want to hear it one way or the other, but I know free Palestine is definitely magic for sure.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: From day one, it's just like, you still go bombing and killing a bunch of women and children.
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: There's gotta be a better way to do this.
55:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is,
55:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like non-negotiable for me.
55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I understand, yeah, right?
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Free Palestine.
55:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And just like looking at all these things, right?
55:11
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, thinking about like, oh my god, back in the 60s, like, how can all these black people were just like sit back and like let these white people do?
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, what would do the same thing today?
55:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I think about you as a leader in an activist, how do we know if we can
55:32
[SPEAKER_02]: accomplish and beat back the tides of like the pressures that are winning today.
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we, you know, on Star Wars term, how do we fight back the imperial forces and, you know, we're a band of bandits, right?
55:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, we're just scrappy and we have nothing, but how do you know in your heart that this is the fight that's worth fighting for and that you can affect
56:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm definitely not, not of us who are doing this, or any, we know that we're up against just, I really like a little ants and, you know, institutions.
56:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we see a lot of must being a trillion-air, all of a sudden, right?
56:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We just have to keep doing it.
56:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know anything else.
56:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, not, I don't know anything else, but this is like my life purpose.
56:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe in it so much.
56:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's who I am and what I want to see and I'm very stubborn about wanting to see about a world and doing what I can to make that possible.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone has their role in.
56:32
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends is like, they believe the same thing I friends who might not care, but we talk about this all the time like how do we know it's worth it What we're doing and it's just it just it's just another Tuesday Is a joke, but theirality is like it's just what we do we keep doing it
56:47
[SPEAKER_02]: When I was a kid, I had to work in my mom and dad's business, carrying ladders into Sylvester Stallone's house, Madonna's studio, I was the help.
56:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And you couldn't talk to them.
57:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You couldn't, it was like your 16 year of self going to that party.
57:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember feeling powerless and hopeless.
57:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And that became my trauma and my obsession.
57:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I still grapple with it every single day.
57:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I meet people like you, I'm like, look, you might not be perfect.
57:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not perfect for sure, but we're in the fight.
57:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
57:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to say that.
57:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know you well enough to say, like I agree with everything you do, I don't know, because it's just one of the things, but I do say this, that I applaud the fight that you have in you and we share the same trauma.
57:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We come from the same like, we're the help and that's like the other side that we do not wanna see the rest of the world suffering the way we did.
57:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't wanna see young Vietnamese men feeling insecure about not coming up like a white person who has money and it sounds like the same for you.
58:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to thank you for coming on the podcast after all these years and for sharing your story and best of luck to all of this is already a last parting words.
58:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much Kenneth and you are expanding the permission structure for us to do so much.
58:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The work that I do is easier because of people doing the work that you're doing.
58:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Trust like I really believe it.
58:23
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much more I wish I could say that you're able to say.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, this is all, the way it sinks, the way it synergizes.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I really believe in you and appreciate what you're doing.
58:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it takes all of us.
58:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just like one incredible person.
58:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to be a bunch of incredible people working together.
58:39
[SPEAKER_02]: When did I got out of the conversation with you today?
58:45
[SPEAKER_02]: that it's okay to fight.
58:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's okay to say uncomfortable things like with a whole whole human thing and to expand that boundary of conversation.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize what I was doing.
58:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I've just like trying to be me.
58:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't like always think that a lot, not a lot of people are listening, but the point is this.
59:04
[SPEAKER_02]: that we are living in a community of people that disagree.
59:08
[SPEAKER_02]: People might disagree with you.
59:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I might disagree with you in the future.
59:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But let's always keep the door open.
59:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Derek Tran, Deerja Tuhau, are you guys?
59:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you too.
59:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Deerja, all let's go.
59:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to put a round table together,
59:21
[SPEAKER_02]: After the elections, because you know, a lot's on the line, let's go, let's do this and do town halls, and open it up for like, you know, community to fight, but in a healthy way.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it'd be happy to do that, you know, a hundred percent.
59:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be great.
59:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Very cool.
59:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can definitely moderate.
59:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we all trust you.
59:36
[SPEAKER_02]: No, thank you, Tracy.
59:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but Derek, can you go on?
59:39
[SPEAKER_02]: No, he's still hasn't gone on.
59:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so yeah, so doors open for you, Derek, and all of you.
59:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you to you, I'll come out and Carlos, thank you for bringing your wife out today.
59:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
59:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my ride, so I could concentrate in the car.
59:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
59:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
59:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.