Successful rally with one missing piece

There was a successful rally yesterday evening in front of council chambers in Westminster protesting the take-back of a superintendent job offered to KimOanh Nguyen-Lam by the Westminster School Board.

Nguyen-Lam would have been the first Vietnamese American superintendent in the United States.

The Orange County Register is reporting that there were 200 people in attendance, and the Los Angeles Times is saying there were 500.

Regardless of the number of people at the rally and the following school board meeting, there was one person missing: Assemblyman Van Tran.

I’m not surprised though, Van Tran is probably interested in getting a more culturally diverse group of people representing the 68th Assembly District—but he wouldn’t want to throw any support at Nguyen-Lam, a Democrat.

What a predicament for Tran. Should he do what is morally correct, and piss off a few republicans? Or should he do what his republican buddies would want him to do, and piss off his constituents that showed up en masse last night to stand up for what is right.

Well Van Tran made his decision, and his absences said more than he could have said by showing up.

He could have at least done what Garden Grove City Councilmember Janet Nguyen did—she took time of work…oh wait, she’s unemployed…but she showed up and just refused to take sides.

Since the council made this decision, people had been saying that it was racially motivated, and I found no evidence of that. The only people that know what motivated this decision were the people that made it in closed session. I was happy to see some light shed on the “racism” claim in the Los Angeles Times story:

Many in the community said the job was taken from her because of racism. In interviews this week, school board members Sergio Contreras and Blossie Marquez agreed that racism played a role n the decision to withdraw the offer. Nguyen-Lam had been dismissed, Marquez said, “out of just pure prejudice.”

[Los Angeles Times]
[Orange County Register]