Three weekly events this summer have played a big role in the fortunes of the mom-and-pop businesses struggling to survive on Garden Grove's historic Main Street.
Friday night's car show and Sunday's farmers market attract potential customers. But the regular Saturday protest by anti-Communists drives them away.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, September 06, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 39 words Type of Material: Correction
Newspaper protests: An article in Sunday's California section about ongoing demonstrations by anti-Communist activists against a weekly newspaper said protest organizer Long Kim Pham fled Vietnam as a teenager. He left the country in 1975 when he was 25.
"When they're out there, you can't hardly even walk," said real estate broker Scott Weimer, who owns a small office building on Main Street. "Most of the merchants here are fed up with it."
The target of the demonstrations is Viet Weekly, one of Weimer's tenants. When it hit the streets four years ago, Viet Weekly stood out amid Little Saigon's competitive and politically conservative media market. The weekly's alternative-newspaper attitude and its emphasis on local news and diverse opinions (plus a bit of cheesecake) ruffled feathers in a community where freedom of expression has long exacted a price.
"There is a segment of the Vietnamese American community that has very little tolerance for freedom of the press," said Jeffrey Brody, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton who once covered Little Saigon as a reporter for the Orange County Register. "In covering the homeland, [local Vietnamese media] exhibit a serious amount of self-censorship."
And the threat is real, Brody said, noting that the slayings of five Vietnamese American journalists have been linked to anti-Communist extremists, including the 1987 arson murder of a Little Saigon magazine publisher.
On July 21, about 500 to 1,000 demonstrators waving signs and bellowing through loudspeakers descended on Viet Weekly's office, accusing it of publishing articles supporting Vietnam's Communist government. They also lashed out at an opinion piece critical of U.S. foreign policy that had been written by a former Viet Cong soldier who said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "were an appropriate price for America to pay for the things it did to the world."
"We came to this country with empty hands, and this country welcomed us with open arms. We owe this country a big favor," said Long Kim Pham, a protest organizer who fled Vietnam as a teenager. "We feel that if we don't speak up, we are not being responsible as a community."
Public demonstrations against perceived Communists or entrepreneurs doing business in Vietnam are as common in Little Saigon as steaming bowls of pho. But the ongoing protests against Viet Weekly are exceptional in that they have drawn into the fray non-Vietnamese business owners along this tranquil slice of small-town America who have rallied to the newspaper's defense.
