What does Chinese products and business mean today?  Lead paint in toys manufactured by slave labor; poison fish put on the market without health regulations for harvest.  What does Vietnamese products and business mean today?  American Vietnamese lured to "doi moi" finding themselves in jail because their Vietnamese "partners" have found it more lucrative to fleece them than sell honest goods.  (see "How Vietnam Venture Proved a Costly Move" for  Hoan Nguyen, an American citizen now in the B-14 prison in northern Vietnam in the Wall Street Journal online, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118702662210596089.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Those who know prisons in Vietnam--and there are many people in the USA who do, when the leaders of an entire people were imprisoned after 1975--know that the B-14 Prison is notoriously among the worst.  According to the author James Hookway, a French citizen, Nguyen Gia Thieu, was sentenced to 20 years in the Communist jails in 2003 for importing mobile phones.

The City of San Jose is considering naming one of its entry corridors (Story Road) the Vietnamese Business District.  Many immigrants from Communist Vietnam would rather see it named Little Saigon Business District.  There is a public hearing on the matter from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at the Tully branch library, 880 Tully Road, San Jose.

Petitions for the ethnic heritage name Little Saigon, which also honors the heritage flag of South Vietnam, have been organized by local residents and circulated at community meetings for some time.  Yesterday the Century Plaza management sent its Security personnel through the parking lot asking shoppers to sign in favor of the Vietnam Business Association.  See attached photo by VietAm Review and TiengDan Weekly which shows the Saigon for Saigon logo in front of the VietnamTown development on Story Road. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:  call the City Council members (numbers below)

District 1 - Pete Constant	(408) 535-4901
District 2 - Forrest Williams	(408) 535-4902
District 3 - Sam Liccardo	(408) 535-4903
District 4 - Kansen Chu	(408) 535-4904
District 5 - Nora Campos	(408) 535-4905
District 6 - Pierluigi Oliverio	(408) 535-4906
District 7 - Madison P. Nguyen	(408) 535-4907
District 8 - David D. Cortese	(408) 535-4908
District 9 - Judy Chirco	(408) 535-4909
District 10 - Nancy Pyle	(408) 535-4910

You can also try calling the elected mayor, Chuck Reed.  Perhaps his office is not so big that he will remember you.  His number is 408-535-4800, which is also the number of the Public Information Press Office.   The  tenth  largest city in the US must be saving money to have both phone numbers the same.  The mayor of Milpitas, Jose Esteves, has strongly supported the petition drive by local citizens to rename the business district for the ethnic heritage of San Jose residents from South Vietnam.

Pennsylvania Dutch, Nikkei, Cajun, Tejanos -- all these are American names of ethnic heritage proudly self-identified by each first generation of immigrants.  Little Saigon belongs among them.

Thanks to Nguyen Ngoc Tien, president of the Northern California Vietnamese Community Center and Tintucvn for the sources of this story.  Thanks to Ky Truong for the photo shoot.

Jean Libby, editor
VietAm Review