March 25, 2019
PIVOT decries the White House’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2020, released on March 11, 2019. The budget runs completely counter to our values and policy priorities, and is harmful for Vietnamese Americans nationwide.
February 22, 2019
On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency concerning the southern border of the United States. This declaration came just days after Congress passed a budget that provided only a fraction of the requested funding for “border barriers.” Sixteen states have joined in lawsuits to challenge Trump’s declaration of a national emergency.
February 4, 2019
PIVOT recognizes that abortion at the later stages of pregnancy is one of the most divisive issues in American politics generally and in the Vietnamese American community specifically. Even though third-trimester abortions are rare and performed primarily to protect the mother’s health, it is also when the balancing of the mother’s life and the sanctity of another life is at its most difficult. For these reasons, PIVOT believes that we must engage in this difficult conversation in a constructive way, not simply to score political points or to carry out personal attacks.
Read MoreJanuary 22, 2019
Nguyen Minh Nguyet, PIVOT member
Last week, at the dinner table, my grandson, Hung, talked about his classroom fundraising for his school trip to Washington, DC in April. Hung is 13 years old, an 8th grader. His group of four close friends are all very excited about the project. They plan to sell baked goods. Ray's mom will help him make chocolate chip cookies, Marc plans to bring pies, and Sam's mom will make Japanese rice balls.
Read MoreDecember 3, 2018
Eric Tang and Viet Thanh Nguyen (published in The New York Times)
What is an appropriate punishment for a crime? The plight of thousands of Vietnamese refugees convicted of crimes in the United States and now threatened with detention or deportation demands an answer to this question.
For most of the four decades since the Vietnam War ended, refugees fleeing the Communist government in Vietnam have been treated differently from those refugees from most other countries. If they committed felonies, they would not be deported.
Read MoreNovember 26, 2018
Samantha Dang is an Associate Professor of Law at the Irvine University College of Law. As refugees from Vietnam, her family, like many others, made countless sacrifices to provide for their basic needs and establish a foundation for their future in America. They worked in many jobs AND used public assistance to survive and thrive in America.
Read more about Professor Dang’s family story, and why she’s fighting to protect thousands of families, like hers, that would otherwise fall victim to the proposed public charge.
Read MoreNovember 25, 2018
During this season of thanksgiving, we are thankful for the hard work that PIVOTers and our allies have carried out to take back our democracy. The 2018 mid-term election was the focal point for the Resistance in general and for PIVOT in particular, and the results more than met our expectations and validated our approach. Control of the House of Representatives will enable Americans to stop the march toward single party autocratic rule by Trump and his supporters. Taking back governorships and control of state legislatures hold out hope that we will be able to prevent gerrymandering and other voter suppression activities for 2020 and beyond.
November 20, 2018
Sono Shah
Heading into the midterms, our analysis at AAPI Data found 27 congressional districts in 11 states where Asian American & Pacific Islander voters could have maximum impact in 2018. We identified these districts as places where AAPIs represent at least 5 percent of eligible voters, and where the Cook Political Report had declared the race to be competitive.
How did these races turn out, and can we declare that AAPIs were likely influential those races? One way to answer this question is to compare the margin of victory for the winning candidate, and compare it to the AAPI share of the voting-eligible population.
Read MoreNovember 15, 2018
Viet Thanh Nguyen, as published in Time Magazine
Love it or leave it. Have you heard someone say this? Or have you said it? Anyone who has heard these five words knows what it means, because it almost always refers to America. Anyone who has heard this sentence knows it is a loaded gun, pointed at them.
As for those who say this sentence, do you mean it with gentleness, with empathy, with sarcasm, with satire, with any kind of humor that is not ill humored? Or is the sentence always said with very clear menace?
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