"Punch Them in the Face"

Little Saigon Inside received this in an email chain. It is a press release by South Bay Labor Council:

On Saturday, over 250 labor and community activists gathered at the South Bay Labor Council to hit the streets, letting residents of San Jose City Council District 7 know why the recall of Madison Nguyen should be rejected.

The volunteers knocked on thousands of doors, and discovered a simple fact: overwhelmingly, local residents think recalling Madison Nguyen is a bad idea. Emphasizing Nguyen's accomplishments in office, the volunteers covered every precinct in the Council District, talking to voters in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

At the end of the day, well over 80% of respondents indicated they opposed a recall.

Labor Council Executive Officer Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins said: "To get so many volunteers out on a beautiful summer weekend demonstrates Madison's support in San Jose. And such a high percentage of opposition to the recall shows how deep her support is in the district she represents."

But the real buzz in the comunity was the quote from a woman who introduced herself as Mary, chief strategist for South Bay Labor (showed here in picture). When asked by the volunteers what to do when they come across the recall people, stragegist Mary replied without a blink:" You should punch them in the face."

There was a dead silence in the room. Noticing the Freudian slip, Lamkins took the microphone from Mary and tried to ease the tension: " She was just joking of course."

A Rendezvous with History

It was quite a week for politcs nationally and locally. Through their determinations, Obama and McCain have made remarkable history. Come February 2009, the country will have either a first African American president or a first woman vice president. Locally, in the same month, Madison Nguyen will either be the first elected Asian American in San Jose (if not California) to be recalled or to survive the recall.

Whatever the case may be, it is safe to say that democracy is healthy and well in the land of free and the home of the brave.

For Nguyen, it would be a bitter sweet ordeal. She is elected to serve the people and now the people have spoken demanding their lawful rights within the democratic process to ask her to step down. She has an army of high power consultants, the powerful Democratic Party, the ever vocal Labor, the mayor, city councilmembers and all the political machinery and lobbyist money to buy her case that she deserves to stay in office.

The people on the other hand are mostly blue collar and middle class voters who stronlgy feel through irrefutable evidences that she only represents the powerful status quo of lobbyists, developers and wealthy influential and powerful people of San Jose.

The people have the right to expect their elected officials to be honest and ethical. Nguyen lied to the people and violated Brown Act, the corner stone of ethical and fair government, to protect a behind the scene deal that she struck with a wealthy developer as a quid pro quo favor.

The people of San Jose deserve better than that. The San Jose voters have a proud history of speaking out with their votes against elected officials who are unethical and unfit for the job.

Fourteen years ago, Councilmember Kathy Coles was recalled for showing disrespect toward the Asian community. Appearantly, Nguyen doesn't recall much about history and heritage. She rhetorically asked the thousands of people supporting Little Saigon why they have so much free time on their hands vs. those that have real jobs.

She is about to have her rendezvous with history and the name Madison Nguyen will live forever in infamy, win or lose her recall election.

A Political Stunner

The Madison Nguyen Recall Team surprised everyone with their submission of 5181 signatures to the city clerk office this afternoon, two weeks before the deadline. This is 60% more than the required signatures to force a recall ballot iniative. City Clerk Lee Price officially accepted the signature packages on Friday 8/28/2008 at 1:52 PM.




The Recall Team said they actually gathered closer to 7,000 signatures. However, some of them could not be verified properly. With the team running on empty after a very long exhausting 10 weeks, they decided to have the cut off at 5181 signatures.

From her office looking down to the recall team as they were talking to the media, Madison Nguyen commented: "I don't believe these are real signatures. It is impossible for them to gather these many signatures. Many of them I bet are fake."


The County of Registrar Office will have 4 weeks to verify the signatures and if verified, city council will have to decide on when and what format to hold the recall election. The last recall ballot in San Jose was 14 years ago with Councilmember Kathy Coles removed from office by voters in District 8 for making an offensive comment to the Asian community.

Maggie Q

Number 17 on the list of the Top 99 Women of 2008 in the popular Askmen.com site, she is a Vietnamese-American actress that has garnered a bit of attention in Hollywood. Born and raised in Hawaii, Maggie Q's unique look of being half Vietnamese and half European propels her modeling career that graces the covers of major publications like Cosmopolitan, Harpers Bazaar, Elle, FHM, Maxxim and Marie Claire.

She started her acting career in Hong Kong action movies. Among her first appearances in film was the lead roles in action thrillers Gen-Y-Cops and Naked Weapon in which she played the sexy but vulnerable martial artist assassin Charlene Ching.





She also appeared in well known movies such as Rush Hour 2, Around the World in 80 Days, Mission Impossible III and Live Free or Die Hard. She is rumored to have landed a role in the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine.


In a soon to be released epic movie, "Three Kingdoms: The Resurection of the Dragon", Maggie is starring as fictional Cao Ying, a grand-daughter of the warlord Cao Cao.

In the meantime, fan can download her nude pictures promoting vegetarianism on the Web.

The Vietnamese Women

With a long list of heroic women throughout Vietnamese history, it is not surprising to see some of the most successful people in the Vietnamese diaspora are women. The lastest heroines adding their names to history are diverse in their background and profession.



Wrestler Carol Huynh, 27, a Vietnamese refugee from tiny Hazelton, British Columbia, won Canada's first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, beating two-time reigning world champion Chibaru Icho of Japan in the final of the women's 48 kg class.









Marine pilot Captain Liz Pham, 28, an F/A -18 Hornet "Top Hook" and a member of the Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242. She is a daughter of a family doctor in Seattle and came to the US when she was 2 years old. Liz Pham is one of a very few women
F/A -18 pilots in the Marine. She is married to Captain Alexander Roloss, also a marine pilot in the same squadron.

Vic Aljouny’s Strategy and The Silent Majority

During the heated Little Saigon debate that lasted for 8 months, one of the main arguments that put forth by council members and Mayor Reed was the majority of the people in District 7 really did not want the name Little Saigon. From their “private conversations”, there is a silent large majority who opposes the name Little Saigon while supports Madison Nguyen.

With the mayor himself personally involved in the fund raising efforts along with his senior budget advisor, Nguyen raised over $103,000 with most of the money came from wealthy real estate developers like $2,500 from Mark Faulkner of Fairfield Residential in San Diego, $2,500 from Core Homes in San Jose, $1,000 from ROEM Development in Santa Clara. She also received money from business owners of far flung places like Concord (Dana Foods – $3,500) and mysterious entity like China Town LLC ($2,500). She also received over $25,000 from well known political players and lobbyists like Dustin DeRollo, Tom Saggau and Chris Neale.

This is to the contrast of the Recall Committee where they received most of the funding from a mix of white collar and blue collar working families in San Jose. More than 400 people donated about $43,000 to date.

Without big donors and limited resources, the Recall Committee has to rely on a grass root movement. By law, they have 120 days from start to gather a minimum of 3,200 signatures to have the recall initiative on the ballot. With only 3 more weeks left, the Recall Committee looks forward to achieving their goal. Their goal is 5,000 or more signatures. The conventional wisdom is that they will attain about 4,000 signatures.

Privately, Nguyen and her consultant, Vic Aljouny, decide to save their war chest for the recall ballot election for they know that the recall committee will attain the required signatures. Memo from the mayor’s office showed that the mayor has already asked the city clerk to look into a recall ballot similar to the Kathy Coles recall. They feel very confident that with powerful political machines like Labor, the Democratic Party, a cadre of influential lobbyists and consultants and a boat load of money, they will crush the recall team.

Little Saigon Inside does not believe in recalling elected official for making unpopular decision. Nevertheless in California, there have been precedents for such recall and the latest one is with the Gray Davis recall.

However in Nguyen recall, it is more than an unpopular decision. Unless Nguyen can make an honest case for herself – justify the reason for her back-door dealing with the real estate developer to name the area with a name preferred by the developer two months before a public vote – and the silent majority speaks up, the grass root movement will continue to gain momentum


As voters and taxpayers, people should be quite angry at the way the situation was dragged on for 8 months without resolution and now it will end up costing the taxpayer at least $400,000 because their city council member lied and tried to cover up a quid pro quo favor for a wealthy developer. Nguyen clearly violated ethics in her action. She admitted to the Mercury News but shrugged it off and said that nothing happened since the city attorney stopped it when he found out from the RDA, for it was also illegal.

And voters should be very mad with the way their city council members violated the Brown Act to collude behind close door in naming the area against the masses. This is serious matter for it is the corner stone of fair and ethical government.

As the Mercury News commentator Scott Herhold mentioned in his recent video blog about Little Saigon: “In many ways, Madison Nguyen brought this upon herself.”

The Case of Missing Lawn Signs

Last Sunday, July 27, two police reports were filed regarding two incidents of destroyed property – “Recall Madison Nguyen” signs – on the busy street of King, the very border of Councilmember Nguyen’s District 7.

In one incident, the victim, an old man of 70, was able to partially witness the incident. According to his statement, at about 4:30 AM, while he was reading in his living room, he heard two very loud noises coming from the street. He ran out and saw that the recall sign was gone, while a car parked at the curb nearby zoomed away. Unfortunately, he was too late to be able to see the car’s license plate.

What is so special about the incident? And why does it take two loud impacts to remove a simple campaign sign?

The Recall Madison Nguyen on the old man’s house was not just set on a simple wire frame like the campaign signs you normally see on people’s lawns. According to the victim, he did have a simple sign like that at first, and it had been quickly stolen. After that, he put in a considerable amount of effort to make sure it could not be stolen again – well, at least that was what he thought at the time! The sign was permanently screwed on to a sturdy rectangular wood frame that was bolted to the brick fence around his house. He even pulled out a picture he took to show his work.

Not to be deterred, our valiant sign thief, with two hard punches through the wood frame, was able to remove the Recall sign – while leaving the frame intact. Well, one thing the old man can be proud of, I suppose, is that his wood-work did withstand the violence!

When asked if he is going to put up a third “Recall Madison Nguyen” sign, the old man sadly shook his head and said: “I am not sure, probably not. If you heard the noise this morning as I did, you would be able to feel the considerable amount of force that these people had to use, to remove the sign. And that thought scares me. I don’t know what would be next. Smashing the windshield on my children’s car? Throwing a brick through my living room window? Can my grandchildren safely play in the front yard? I would like to think that the violence would stop with the recall sign, but look at the faked petition submitted to the City Council with 92 forged business owners’ signatures. I don’t think these people have much respect for the law. And that scares me.”