Just when you thought it was safe to go back to local politics ... Little Saigon is back. After months of relative quiet on the Story Road front, the Vietnamese activists behind the push for the designation have returned with a double whammy.
First, they officially succeeded in getting enough signatures to force a recall of San Jose Councilwoman Madison Nguyen onto a special-election ballot. Last Saturday, they celebrated as their Little Saigon banners went up along Story Road, a partial victory for their campaign as the name is not officially recognized by the city.
Their next battle is to convince San Jose officials to hold one election in the spring where voters can decide whether to recall Nguyen and who they want to replace her if she is recalled.
Incredibly, this Little Saigon business won’t be settled even after the recall goes to a vote. The activists still plan to fight the city over the designation. “We will try to make it make it officially on the map on San Jose,” Do said.
My counterproposal is this:
Rename ‘District 7’ to ‘Little Saigon’, remove their right to city representation until next election (or longer), and shift the $500K estimated cost of special election to a new special task force to monitor cash-only businesses for tax propriety. You know—so we all get our 1/8 cent bang-for-the-buck for BART.
YO!!!
They sell some of the best Mexican sweet bread in Little Saigon…
Has anyone seen the banners? After all the hullabaloo I was pretty underwhelmed.
The banners are spaced a great distance apart, high up on poles and don’t really get your attention. In fact, had I not been specifically looking for them I might have missed them altogether.
Another curiosity is that some of the banners have an image of the City Hall rotunda superimposed with what I surmise is a sketch of a Vietnamese-style building. Given the history of this controversy it seems very odd to include City Hall on the banners, IMHO.
That said, the banners were privately funded and don’t look like a pile of poop. I guess that’s progress in our fair city.
Yo! Get a job Dre or at least go see your P.O. so he knows where you at foo! Don’t try to be all barrio, just be you man…