Voter Campaign Targets Vietnamese

Taking a cue from voter education campaigns that mix pop star glamour with political awareness, a coalition of Vietnamese American groups is sponsoring a Rock the Vote concert targeting the nation’s largest Vietnamese emigre community.

The effort is the biggest ever undertaken to register new Vietnamese American voters. It also is the first major event to come out of the political movement sparked by the huge anti-communist rallies in Little Saigon earlier this year.

“There’s a collective awareness now. Everyone senses the dynamic that this is the time for our voices to be heard,” said attorney Van Thai Tran, project chairman and a member of the Vietnamese American Voters Coalition.

The daylong music concert, set for Oct. 17, stars some of the hottest acts in the Vietnamese pop world. It takes its name from MTV’s prominent voter awareness campaign.

Orange County is home to the largest community of Vietnamese immigrants in the country--an estimated 200,000. About half are citizens, and only 35,000 of them are registered to vote, said Nhi Ho, one of the coordinators on the project.

The registration drive will focus on younger people. Exit polls conducted by the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific American Legal Center during last year’s election showed that Vietnamese youths, 18 to 25, made up only 3% of those registered.

“This is something new and different to the Vietnamese community,” said Radio Bolsa disc jockey Viet Dzung, who is helping organize the concert. “We wanted to attract the attention of the public and specifically the younger generation, which is the MTV generation.”

Organizers already have approval to use the name and logo of the nonprofit Rock the Vote, which is based in Culver City. They still must decide, though, whether to use the Anaheim Convention Center or the Santa Ana Stadium for the daylong concert.

So far, 80 acts, including pop singers Y Lan and Linda Trang Dai, have agreed to appear, said Dzung, and organizers are hoping to get a total of 150 performers. All musicians are donating their time, Dzung said.

Public service announcements will air this weekend on Vietnamese media outlets, and the coalition plans to kick off its voter registration drive next weekend throughout Little Saigon.

“We wanted to get a head start on the year 2000. Next year will be very busy with elections and we wanted to be ready,” Dzung said. “We also wanted this concert to reunite all the factions that came together during the protests.”

Political consciousness reached a peak during the protests in Little Saigon over the display of communist icons in a video rental store, say community observers. The demonstrations drew as many as 15,000 people to the streets of Westminster and awakened the community to its political potential.

In the past, low participation in the voting process could be attributed to a couple of factors, Ho said.

“First, Vietnamese are very suspicious of the political process. They’ve had a bad experience in Vietnam. They don’t trust the process. Secondly, lack of English is a barrier,” he said.

“Politically, the Vietnamese community has been defeated on a number of issues--from the embargo being lifted to the trade agreement recently reached between the U.S. and Vietnam. The lesson we learned is that we need to be stronger.”

The campaign will focus on educating Vietnamese Americans about the power of their votes. The drive will be closely watched by Vietnamese American communities around the United States, Ho said.

“If we are successful, this project will be a model for others. We’re the largest [Vietnamese] community. If we can’t do it, how can they?” he said.

Registration affidavits will be available at 100 locations around Little Saigon, he said. Citizens can fill them out and return them to one of 20 locations to get an admission ticket to the free concert.

“If we can get 5,000 new voters, we’ll consider this a success,” Ho said. “Granted it’s small, but it won’t be easy. This is our first step.”

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Asian American Voting Trends

A November 1998 election exit poll surveyed Asian American voters in 13 Southern California cities on their age, voting history and party affiliation.

Source: Asian Pacific American Legal Center