Reinventing an authentic ‘ethnic’ politics: Ideology and organizational change in Koreatown and Field’s Corner

Koreatown in Los Angeles

The first significant wave of Korean migration consisted primarily of highly skilled workers and professionals admitted under the occupational preference category of the 1965 US Immigration and Nationality Act. They were followed by their less-well-off family members (Yoon, 1997). Despite linguistic, cultural and structural barriers, Korean migrants generally benefited from a warm reception as legal, well-educated immigrants from a rapidly developing nation closely allied with the US government in its opposition to Communism. Like most voluntary migrants in the early post-1965 era, Koreans often settled in major gateway cities, including metropolitan Los Angeles where they established an ethnic enclave west of the downtown district (Light and Bonacich, 1988). Language and cultural barriers, lack of transferable credentials, and the advantages of starting a business in inner cities led Korean immigrants to an entrepreneurial path built on financial and human capital investment in small and medium-sized businesses (Light and Bonacich, 1988; Min, 1996; Waldinger, 1996).

When it came to politics, Seoul officials had a vested interest in curbing anti-governmental activities by their nationals living in the US; US military occupation, South Korean dependency on export trade, and geo-political dynamics following the North–South division of Korea during the Korean War made the US a powerful ally of the Seoul government (Chang, 1988; Kim, 1981; Light and Bonacich, 1988). ⁹ The government exerted its influence over Koreans abroad by speaking through a ‘tripartite alliance consisting of the General Consulate and the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), the ethnic media, and the Korean Association of Southern California (KASC)’ (Chang, 1988: 52). In addition to overseeing the vital aspects of migration and economic trade, the General Consulate directly funded, sponsored and monitored political activities among overseas Koreans (Kim, 1981). Operating covertly on behalf of the Consulate General, the KCIA was instrumental in quashing dissident activities and organizing rallies to denounce North Korean aggression and promote Seoul government policies (Kim, 1981). Korean associations also depended heavily on the symbolic and material support of the Korean consulate and did their part in mobilizing their membership around homeland events, as in the 1976 rally against the North Korean ‘axe murders’ of two US soldiers in Panmunjon (Kim, 1981). Later on, the Korean (American) Federation would assume the mantle by cultivating strong ties to the South Korean government (Park, 1999).

The early political leaders of Koreatown were thus mostly middle- or upper-class Christian males from Seoul who were well positioned to mobilize the social, financial and human resources of the ethnic community and to perform social service functions that mainstream institutions did not provide. More importantly, the leadership acted as the gatekeepers of pro-US, pro-Seoul, anti-Communist ideology well into the 1990s. As one 1.5-generation community organizer described it, ‘one of the reasons why our community is very conservative and mainstream and pro-US is that these values are reinforced by not just the US but also the South Korean government. The South Korean government picks the leaders and everyone’s supposed to accept it.’ When interest in North and South Korea reunification began to surface in the 1990s, perceived threats to the authority of established political gatekeepers led to heated confrontations, as demonstrated during one outraged protest by the Korean Veterans Association against a group trying to host a speaker from North Korea (Marquez, 2004).

Whenever dissident activists tried to challenge the status quo, the establishment portrayed them as traitors who posed a serious threat to the overall integrity of the Korean community, including disadvantaged co-ethnics that dissidents often claimed to represent. When progressive labor groups such as the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocate (KIWA) ¹⁰ engaged in militant protests against Korean-owned businesses over their exploitation of Korean and Latino workers, leaders of business associations accused them of destroying the Koreatown economy (Korea Times, 1997a; Korea Times, 1998b), using illegal and immoral tactics to damage the image of Korean businesses (Korea Times, 1997b; Korea Times, 1998a), and causing undocumented Korean workers and jo-seon-juk (Koreans from China) to lose their jobs (Korea Times, 1998c). An attorney for the Korean Restaurant Owners Association (KROA) referred to one 1.5/2nd-generation youth organization as ‘criminals who illegally take funds’ and KIWA as ‘socialists who use intimidation and threaten business owners’ (Korea Central Daily, 1997). A well-known Korean reporter castigated progressive 2nd-generation community leaders as ‘traitors to their people and history’, who time and time again prove ‘how removed they are from the community and how unqualified they are to deal with this most pressing Korean American issue’ (Lee, 1997: 3–4). The ethnic elite reinforced the notion that authentic Korean politics could be undermined by activities that challenged pro-capitalist and pro-entrepreneurial interest groups or encouraged ideological dissent within the ethnic community.

Dependency on the US government shaped the elite’s agenda around not only anti-Communism abroad but also assimilation, mobility and the American Dream within the US. Some immigrant leaders approached their engagement in Koreatown as an extension of the social work they had begun in post-war Korea, and many viewed their activities as a way to show gratitude and repay their debt to the country that saved their homeland and welcomed them to a new home (Park, 1999). One 1st-generation leader actively involved in a Korean women’s association, the Koreatown Chamber of Commerce, and a Korean police association explained, ‘Korean people living in America should be thankful for living in America and should do some good things for the nation. I wish everyone would do community service. Then America will be strong and we can feel good since we are repaying American society.’ Achieving economic mobility, promoting the educational success of youth, and doing good works, in this view, was not only an individual project but a community endeavor.

Vietnamese Americans in Field’s Corner, Boston

In the Vietnamese case, large-scale migration to the US started with a wave of refugees fleeing the Communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975. Like Korean migrants, the Vietnamese arrived in the US with a strong anti-Communist orientation and a relatively warm reception from the US government, though ordinary Americans had more mixed views (Hein, 1995). A second refugee flow, in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, included people fleeing economic deprivations and persecution based on their political views, being Catholic, or being an ethnic Chinese minority. Initially, the US government attempted to disperse Southeast Asian refugees across the country, but secondary migration led to the formation of large co-ethnic communities in California and Texas, as well as smaller but significant communities in cities such as Boston (Zhou and Bankston, 2000). As Aguilar-San Juan (2005) notes, the Boston metropolitan area, and especially Field’s Corner, became an important gateway for Vietnamese migrants in the northeast. The early flows were later augmented by family reunification.

The early Vietnamese leaders, like their Korean counterparts, tended to be men from more privileged middle- or upper-class urban backgrounds. Unlike the Koreans, however, forced migration meant that early arrivals came with few financial resources. Vietnamese elites also vociferously rejected ties with homeland officials. Instead, early leaders drew their legitimacy from their former high status in the South Vietnamese government and military, the ideological Cold War climate in the US, and work with official settlement agencies. Initially, such settlement work occurred through voluntary organizations long involved in immigrant and refugee resettlement, such as Catholic Charities, Jewish Vocational Services, Lutheran Social Services and the International Institute of Boston. Later the Vietnamese community established their own organizations, or existing organizations set up to serve the Chinese community or poorer white and black residents in Field’s Corner expanded their missions and services to the Vietnamese. The individuals working in these agencies often became spokespeople for the community to the mainstream media and public officials; within the community, elites from the old South Vietnamese political regime dominated political activism.

The political orientations of elites in the Vietnamese and Korean communities were therefore quite similar initially, but their resource bases and organizational linkages differed. The early growth of Vietnamese community organizations depended much more on financial assistance external to the community, because the community lacked resources and its business sector was relatively underdeveloped. Official refugee status did, however, provide Vietnamese newcomers with settlement assistance, including government cash assistance for individuals and families, help finding jobs and housing through US voluntary organizations, and public monies for the creation of mutual assistance organizations (Bloemraad, 2006; Hein, 1995). For example, the Vietnamese American Civic Association (VACA), one of the main advocacy and social service organizations in Field’s Corner, began in the mid-1980s with funding from the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants to combat hate crimes and address social service needs among the rapidly expanding Vietnamese population.

Outside the social services sector, veterans’ and political groups, such as the Vietnamese Community of Massachusetts (VCM), ran on volunteer efforts and organized protests against the Communist government of Vietnam. Since Vietnam was no longer divided, unlike the situation in Korea, homeland control by the Communist regime closed off any transnational links. Challenges to the anti-Communist agenda or the authority of Vietnamese elites whose legitimacy relied on this stance were ruthlessly stamped out through red-baiting propaganda, blacklisting tactics, and social ostracism carried out by compatriots or through community institutions such as the ethnic media. Any hint of ties with people or institutions in Communist Vietnam was viewed as traitorous and could entail violent consequences. For example, a vigilante group calling themselves the Vietnamese Organization to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation (VOECRN) claimed responsibility for a string of arsons and murders of purported Communist propagandists in Southern California, San Francisco and Houston during the 1980s and early 1990s (Reyes, 1987; Zhou and Bankston, 2000).

In Boston, when the local University of Massachusetts campus announced a three-year fellowship program to study the Vietnamese diaspora in 2000, traditional elites in Field’s Corner protested bitterly against the inclusion of Hanoi scholars, even though many were dissidents in their homeland. A flyer circulated by VCM called the inclusion of people from Vietnam ‘a serious violation to the honor and dignity of the Vietnamese American community’, because the university ‘invited members of the criminal regime to study its own victims’. Mainstream news reports of the controversy quoted a non-Vietnamese familiar with Field’s Corner who claimed that ‘the Vietnamese community is not monolithic. The younger generation in particular is much less enthusiastic about simply protesting the communist regime’. However, no 1.5- or 2nd-generation leaders were willing to go on the public record opposing the traditional elites (Bombardieri, 2000; Vaishnav, 2001).

Opposition to Communism was both a homeland-oriented project, and one that sought to justify Vietnamese Americans’ place in the US, blurring distinctions between ‘immigrant’ and ‘homeland’ politics. Each year, the Vietnamese American community of Field’s Corner asked non-Vietnamese Vietnam War veterans to participate in their annual march commemorating the fall of Saigon, which passes in front of the state capitol and Boston City Hall. As Aguilar-San Juan (2009: 3) put it, Vietnamese American leaders of Field’s Corner coveted ‘positive recognition for their former role as US allies during the war in part to counter the effects of xenophobia and racism’ and also as a project of good citizenship. Along these lines, 1st-generation leaders were reluctant to criticize the US government because the country was seen as epitomizing freedom and opportunity. One community leader stated, ‘most of us, we leave [Vietnam] because we didn’t agree with the government back home.  …  The US is the first choice… for the potential of growth. The opportunity to choose, to go to schools that are very good.’ Among Vietnamese, economic goals for the 1st generation were modest, but the educational success of the 2nd generation was critical for parents who had made great personal sacrifices as a re-affirmation of the American dream that they hold dear.

Democracy from Kwangju to Koreatown

As the 1.5- and 2nd-generation came of age in Koreatown, a series of events in the homeland and in Los Angeles unleashed a wellspring of dissident activities that restructured intra-ethnic hierarchies and challenged the undifferentiated meaning of authentic ethnic politics. Through much of the post-Second World War period, South Korea had struggled through political turmoil. Successive governments repressed pro-democratic and pro-labor activism by manipulating elections and legal institutions, employing anti-Communist rhetoric and resorting to military force. However, South Korea’s rapid economic modernization, combined with frustration over decades of state dictatorship and ties to the US military, laid the groundwork for a series of uprisings that ultimately led to democratization in the 1980s. Critical among these events was the Kwangju Uprising of 1980, during which pro-democracy student leaders engaged in a bloody 10-day struggle with soldiers. During the uprising, between 200 and 500 people died and 380 to 3000 were injured (Shin and Hwang, 2003). The rebellions solidified linkages between student intellectuals and workers in South Korea, fueled growing discontent with the role of the US government and, in the process, created a space for articulating a broader framework for leftist movements within the Korean diaspora.

The Kwangju Uprising elicited an emotional outpouring among young Koreans in the US aghast at the tactics of the Seoul government, which some suggested were no different from the Communist dictators of North Korea that Seoul denounced. In solidarity with the protesters in Kwangju, Korean American students from several universities in Los Angeles staged a series of widely covered demonstrations and initiated blood donation drives in defiance of the Korean Red Cross, which refused to organize blood supplies for the protesters (Chang, 1988). One of the 1.5-generation activists interviewed explained:

Politically my interest started in 1980 when there was massacre in Kwangju. That’s when history started to make sense: under the auspices of US, who came in as liberator of our country and installed military dictators, who were brutally repressive. Basically there was no democracy, no freedom whatsoever. … I immediately identified with the democracy and unification movement in South Korea.

For Korean Americans, the event weakened the political stronghold of the Consulate General and blurred the ethnic elite’s ideological distinction between ‘good Korea’ (South) and ‘bad Korea’ (North) (Chang, 1988).

Whether engaged with movements abroad or in political activities in Los Angeles, young progressive Korean Americans began to see their work as intertwined with issues and movements spanning the Pacific. They began to argue that uncontested support for anti-Communism diverted attention away from the transgressions of the South Korean government, as well as perpetuated the status quo of Koreatown politics and problematic aspects of American society and politics. Organizations aimed at promoting the future reunification of North and South Korea, such as Mindullae and One Korea LA Forum, gained popularity among the 1.5/2nd-generation. These and other advocacy organizations, such as KIWA, connected with labor and student activists in South Korea by providing public endorsements, information exchange, guided visits, or co-sponsored forums and protests. The 1.5-generation leaders of KIWA, for instance, sponsored guest lectures and visits with activists from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), a militant, pro-democratic trade union in Korea. Some KIWA members also started informal political study groups and created email listserves that informed younger generations about transnational activities from Los Angeles to Seoul. It became possible for these activists to feel Korean American and embrace a progressive, left-oriented politics.

The events that galvanized transnational student activism also helped to create a small but visible progressive space from which new leftist Korean American organizations and leaders would later emerge. Tracing the political histories and background of staff members, more Americanized 1.5/2nd-generation progressive groups such as KIWA and the Korean Resource Center (KRC) were created by 1.5-generation activists branching off from Kwangju-inspired transnational organizations such as the Korean Youth and Student Union (KYSU) and Young Koreans United (YKU), whose missions focused on promoting reunification and democraticization in Korea. In the words of one long-time member of YKU, ‘we have separate branches and everything, but in a way, there’s a core group of activists and progressive CBOs that you’re seeing right now across the United States who were mainly inspired by the YKU movement’. ¹¹ In an effort to train future generations of Korean American leaders who had not lived through the Kwangju Rebellions, organizations such as the Korean Exposure and Education Program (KEEP), established in 1994, provided alternative educational programs to ‘broaden understanding of and participation in liberation struggles and reunification on the Korean peninsula’ (KEEP 2000 brochure). Their main project was a three-week summer program where selected Korean Americans flew to South Korea to labor alongside farmers, meet with Korean student movement leaders and human rights activists, and visit lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations, migrant workers’ centers, and various other progressive institutions in Korea.

This is not to say that the majority of 1.5/2nd-generation organizations had direct, sustained relationships with social movements in South Korea. Transnational networks generally do not provide much manpower or financial support and, according to 2nd-generation activists, too much attention to Korea threatens to steer attention away from political and social problems within the US. Nevertheless, social turmoil and political change in South Korea helped to plant the seeds of ideological discontent among progressive leaders and opened up a space for alternative politics – ones that could be articulated as ‘Korean’ and progressive. As one 1.5-generation LGBT activist who helped to establish an international network of LGBT Koreans from LA to South Korea aptly put it, ‘[T]here’s a lot of these questions of authenticity and credibility that I personally don’t feel very comfortable with [in the Korean American community] but most of my friends are Korean American and I am involved in Korean and Korean American issues … but Korean American, my way, not their way …  ’ While progressive organizations are vulnerable to attacks by elites who portray them as ‘anti-Korean traitors’, such charges become more difficult in the face of pro-democracy, pro-reunification, and pro-labor movements in South Korea. In this way, an imagined progressive, transnational community helped anchor a broader Korean American political identity that is not beholden to the traditional leadership’s depiction of ‘Korean-ness’.

This newly imagined community would have been difficult to realize had Korean American organizations been dependent on the financial resources of the conservative, wealthy Korean American elite. Instead, their ability to access diverse resources grew after another critical political event, the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest. In the spring of 1992, Black and Latinos residents of LA took to the streets in response to poverty, police brutality and tense relations with Korean merchants. They looted and destroyed mostly Korean-owned businesses, which received virtually no police protection and little mainstream support, leading to over $300 million dollars in property damage (Kwong, 1993). In the aftermath, American foundations, organizations and government agencies began reaching out more aggressively and generously to community-based organizations to address economic and political problems between ethno-racial groups in Koreatown.

Tapping into the new support, various 1.5/2nd-generation community organizations extended their activities and influence. Perhaps best known is the Korean Youth and Community Center (KYCC), which was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the post-riot recovery funds because of its pre-existing social service contracts with institutions outside Koreatown. The riots and subsequent interest in Koreatown also benefited less well-known organizations: progressive organizations in Koreatown enjoyed resources, volunteers and networks within and outside the ethnic community, including progressive private foundations, labor unions, University of Southern California (USC)/University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) student networks, other racial/ethnic organizations, and overseas labor movements. This was the case for KRC, which until 2000, received no private or government funding and relied solely on unpaid volunteers who were motivated by the ‘wake-up call’ they received from either the Kwangju Rebellions or the Los Angeles Civil Unrest.

The diversification of Koreatown politics, and the decline of the traditional elite’s hold on being the sole spokespeople for the community, can also be seen in the success of organizations such as KIWA. According to interviewees, KIWA not only helped focus public attention on labor-related issues within Koreatown, but did so in innovative ways by leveraging ethnic and transnational networks to fight Korean businesses and corporations violating labor laws. In 1994, KIWA employed direct action strategies to help a union, HERE Local 11, in a case against a Korean corporation, Hanjin International, which had fired 575 mostly Latino employees from one of the largest hotels in downtown Los Angeles. KIWA rallied political support from local politicians, solicited the services of progressive Korean social service and religious organizations, used the ethnic media to draw attention to the corporation’s labor abuses, mobilized ties with South Korean labor unions for support, and boycotted the corporation’s major subsidiary, Korean Airlines (Saito and Park, 2000). Without resources and support from outside the ethnic community, it is questionable how effective KIWA would have been in drawing concessions from the Korean elite.

Reinventing ethnicity in political histories

Emboldened by these changes, a new wave of 1.5/2nd-generation organizations and leaders began to overhaul the meaning of authentic ethnic politics. This new leadership challenged the idea that being Korean meant supporting unfettered free enterprise and development, or that mobilizing for better working conditions was an act of betrayal against the ethnic community and the Korean articulation of the American dream. As one 2nd-generation college intern at KIWA explained: ‘I think [the work KIWA does] is important because someone has to take a stand and that’s been the problem with Koreatown in the past, where there hasn’t been anyone to really step up. If you live in Koreatown, then you know a lot of these business owners and you’re targeted if you say what you think, and you’re accused of tearing down the community.’ Young activists boldly contested the pro-US discourse that had been used to support the legitimacy of the Seoul government and community gatekeepers and overlook the exploitation of minorities in the US. One 1.5-generation activist argued:

We have this false love with mainstream America. Our parents keep teaching us that they are the friend, they came and saved us, blah, blah, blah. There was that moment in history when that was true, but unfortunately from Native Americans on down, there’s a different history here how dominant America has treated minorities … It’s very challenging because we don’t have a road map, we don’t have that history so we have to constantly draw from the experience of other communities.

In breaking away from the established leadership, the new generation had to create their own political place in America by drawing on the histories of more established minority groups.

Discontent with earlier articulations of ethnic authenticity generated heated disputes over the distribution of government funding, claims on political leadership and representation, and organizational support for new leftist movements, much of which drew on transnationally imagined communities and reinvented histories of movements abroad (Chung, 2007; Kang, 1994; Park, 1999). A community-wide controversy erupted, for example, when a congregation of church leaders, including ministers from the two largest churches in Koreatown, formed a partnership with the Christian Coalition and Conservative Right on a series of proposed initiatives that would have restricted public institutions from supporting or educating the public on homosexuality and prevented the legalization of gay and lesbian marriages in California (Ma, 2000). Their decision to organize a petition and post a Korean newspaper advertisement in support of the initiative mobilized a coalition of leftist Korean groups, Asian American organizations, and LGBT activists called Korean Americans for Civil Rights (KACR), who contested the church leadership’s worldview.

A passage from the KACR website captures how younger activists reinvented ethnic authenticity in the process:

Some conservative Korean Americans assume that lesbian and gay communities and Korean American communities are mutually exclusive … The truth is, there’s a long tradition of political resistance and pro-democracy struggles in modern Korean history … The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities in Korea have been actively organizing for a number of years now, often working in solidarity with the feminist and labor movements. Before the presidential election in 1998, the now-President Kim Daejung even issued a statement supporting LGBT civil rights … (KACR, n.d.)

Reaffirming this point, one member stated, ‘Korea has a history of liberation theology and a history of feminist and lesbian religion creating community spaces and I think that needs to happen in LA’ Bridging contemporary US and Korean political activism, the passage underscores how the 1.5- and 2nd-generation leaders used appeals to the homeland to re-imagine identity and bolster their claims to ethnic political solidarity and action.

Accommodation and contained expansion in Field’s Corner

In Field’s Corner, the early 1990s was a period of transition. Locally, Vietnamese in Boston were outraged when, in 1992, City Councilor Albert ‘Dapper’ O’Neil was taped commenting to another city official, while he walked through the Vietnamese business district, ‘I thought I was in Saigon…. It makes you sick, for Chrissakes!’ These derogatory comments precipitated what is widely believed to be the first domestically oriented Vietnamese protest in Boston, with 200 people demonstrating before city hall for a public apology and racial equality (Bui et al., 2004). Political change was also expedited by evolving US–Vietnam foreign relations. In 1994 President Clinton lifted the trade embargo with Vietnam and in 1995 the US normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Within ten years, direct flights between the US and Vietnam were established, allowing those in the US to visit family in Vietnam, travel, engage in humanitarian work and even invest in Vietnam’s rapidly growing economy.

Events such as the O’Neil controversy and the normalization of diplomatic relations allowed some 1.5- and 2nd-generation Vietnamese Americans to become more vocal about their community’s need to engage domestic US politics. However, no single, defining moment disrupted the internal power structure as in the Koreatown case. Change in the goals, discourse and range of authentic ethnic politics was more gradual and evolutionary, with less outright challenge of traditional elites. The two main interests of the traditional leaders – social services and homeland politics – remained the main activities of community organizations in Field’s Corner.

Gradual change meant that longstanding social service agencies now included staff and leaders from the 1.5- and 2nd-generation, and some of these agencies now ran programs, often spearheaded by the new generation and targeting social issues less discussed within the community, such as domestic violence and sexually transmitted diseases. A group of 1.5- and 2nd-generation leaders and activists also helped to establish new organizations or initiatives centered, for example, on economic development Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (Viet-AID), HIV-AIDS education (Massachusetts Asian Aids Prevention Project), LGBT advocacy (Queer Asian Pacific Alliance) and domestic violence (Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence). Many of the more radical and progressive organizations were, however, pan-Asian, rather than primarily Vietnamese. This afforded younger activists some political cover, and a source of funding, but it also made it harder to articulate a new ‘authentic Vietnamese’ political project.

In various ways, the process of generational transition was shaped by the obverse of the Koreatown case: a smaller range of resources on which new leaders could draw, a narrower set of available transnational networks to Vietnam, and less room for ideological challenge within an idealized ‘Vietnamese American’ identity. Conflicts existed within the community, but they were kept below the radar of the mainstream most of the time, only bubbling up on rare occasions. When controversies around homeland politics – of greater interest to the 1st than the 2nd-generation – erupted, the 1.5- and 2nd-generation leaders usually went along or kept silent, unlike some of the activists in Koreatown. When 1.5- and 2nd-generation advocates started new initiatives, they usually worked to get buy-in from the traditional elites.

Resource constraints are one reason new organizations and leaders were reluctant to take on the established Vietnamese leadership. Vietnamese Americans’ early dependency on external support, especially government funding, combined with a weaker business community and more resource-poor Vietnamese population, meant that any expansion in mission, leadership or type of community organization had to tap similar pools of funding as those used by established groups. Reliance on external funding required inter-generational cooperation to present a united front to potential public funders and private foundations. The competition for external funding could have led to serious conflict between older and younger community leaders, but conflict was contained and accommodated. This is one of the reasons that younger leaders never challenged established elites during the University of Massachusetts controversy. Conversely, the older elite were willing to make a place for the new generation in social services, as long as they adopted the established social service and community-building framework.

These dynamics can be seen in the founding and expansion of Viet-AID, the first Vietnamese American community development corporation in the US. This organization, located in Field’s Corner, was largely established by 1.5- and 2nd-generation activists. The push to start a new organization came after attempts to balance generational representation on the board of the prominent VACA ended in a shouting match between younger and older community members. The younger members had successfully nominated and voted on two new young board members, but, in the words of one witness, ‘the older people were kind of threatened by that, so they just brought in five older people. And there had been no vote on it and the board president had just gone and asked five of his friends to come in.’ The younger group thus set out to establish an alternative organization, as a challenge to the way things were done in the community.

However, these activists soon found it necessary to make compromises with the older generation to secure funding and the internal political support needed to petition outsiders for resources. This occurred most dramatically around the effort to set up a Vietnamese American community center in the neighborhood. As one former Viet-AID board member explained, ‘[I]n order to have community support and no confrontation or conflict with the older generation, we formed a committee and that committee is chaired by an older person. The challenge is how to make them feel that it is they who make the decision and not us.’ Once a more united front was established, it became easier to secure government and foundation monies. The community center was built, a sign according to the Executive Director at the time, of the political power of the Vietnamese community (Boston Globe, 1999). It was also a sign of accommodationist politics and contained organizational expansion: much of the work was done by younger members of the community, but prominent positions, at least in name, were held by older elites.

A second critical reason behind the contained expansion of ethnic politics in Field’s Corner lies in the very limited possibility of progressive political ties abroad. Whereas some Korean Americans could appeal to the authenticity of South Korea’s vocal union and democracy movements, there were very few such transnational alliances available for the new generation of Vietnamese American leaders. Vietnam remained an authoritarian regime. A few organizations and individuals sent money to fund charity work in Vietnam, often through religious institutions, but even transnational charitable giving was suspect by some elite.

Instead of direct ties, some 1.5- and 2nd-generation used narratives of symbolic transnationalism, but these were often grounded in famous historical events to avoid any perception of supporting the current regime. For example, one 1.5-generation Vietnamese American woman, fed up with the sexism of the VCM, the main anti-Communist political group, helped found and lead the Vietnamese Women’s League. It initially organized cultural celebrations around the Vietnamese New Year and ‘we also do civil rights marches because we want to ask for human rights, protection for Vietnamese in Vietnam.’ Subsequently, the organization quietly critiqued traditional gender norms, using, for example, appeals to the story of the Trung sisters, Vietnamese heroines who led a revolt against Chinese control 2000 years ago. Such a symbolic and historic appeal to a transnational identity allowed for a gradual broadening of political agendas and of community leadership.

The political context in Vietnam also made it difficult to articulate a strong and legitimate ‘leftist’ Vietnamese American political identity, given that ‘leftist’ was equated with Communism. In the US, support for social services, a feminist agenda, LBGT rights and similar initiatives were usually construed as politics of the Left. While the intensity of the community’s anti-Communist orientation had diminished somewhat by the late 1990s, a strong ‘leftist’ orientation – even one rooted in American issues – continued to be ideologically and political untenable. Consequently, 1.5- and 2nd-generation Vietnamese Americans focused their US activities on gradual expansion of advocacy agendas and social service activities, and their homeland political concerns on human rights or missionary initiatives in Vietnam.

An illustrative example involves a young 1.5-generation activist who did significant work on AIDS and domestic violence, though always as part of a pan-Asian coalition, where she brought in the ‘Vietnamese’ side of the issue. After the US re-established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, this activist wanted to participate in an exchange program to Vietnam during college. When she told others in the community about her plans, she experienced ostracism firsthand. Not only did the older generation disapprove, but to her bafflement, so did some of the younger generation:

I respected the older people’s perspective on it because I learned that the guy who made this sarcastic remark to me, he had been in the Army. …  but the younger ones …  came here when they were my age and they don’t know anything. And they were actually much more vicious about it.

Since then, this activist has stayed quiet on issues of homeland politics. As another AIDS-HIV activist put it, ‘they [Vietnamese community] are not allowing other people to have freedom of speech  … because they ostracize and shut out anyone who challenges their views’. The absence of viable transnational networks around progressive politics hampered the re-articulation of what it meant to be ‘authentically’ Vietnamese and allowed red-baiting and traditional political viewpoints towards Vietnam to prevail.