Little Saigon Parade Set; Dispute Settled
Tet celebrations in Orange County’s Little Saigon neighborhood have regularly been marred by political infighting and controversy over its 19-year history. This year that friction had threatened to grow even more, with competing festivals and parades.
The dilemma of having two competing parades down Bolsa Avenue the same weekend was averted this week, however, after organizers of one bowed out.
“Every year there’s been fighting. No one group ever has the strength to win, but it’s enough to paralyze the community,” said Yen Do, editor of Westminster-based Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese daily newspaper in the country.
“It was dividing the community,” said DanCharles Maka’ena of the Tet Parade Foundation. “We couldn’t let that continue.”
Maka’ena was one of the founders of the group that has organized the Vietnamese New Year’s parade since 1997, but a bitter split resulted in the formation of two groups vying to hold the parade.
The groups had planned to hold parades on Feb. 20 and 21.
The reason the Tet parade was started two years ago was because the City Council had canceled the 17-year-old Tet Festival, held along a blocked-off Bolsa Avenue, because merchants had complained it disrupted businesses.
The Tet Parade Foundation’s decision to pull out the Feb. 21 parade was announced during a City Council meeting Tuesday.
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