(This is a machine translation from the Vietnamese original article)
GARDEN GROVE, California – The California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (CHNSC) is organizing phone calls and voter education campaigns to create a voice for the Vietnamese community in the November 5 election.
CHNSC is a non-profit organization founded in 2005 that advocates for health, the environment, reproductive justice, and social justice issues for low-income people, women, immigrants, and refugees of Vietnamese descent.
Not only is CHNSC an organization that supports immigrant rights, it also actively advocates for the voice of Vietnamese Americans through various advocacy methods, including voter mobilization programs.
Mr. Vu Nguyen, in charge of civic activities of CHNSC, said the organization started participating in voter mobilization since 2016.
“Currently, we have about 10 people calling or campaigning for voters to go to the polls, instructing Vietnamese people on how to vote as well as policies that benefit residents,” said Mr. Vu.
“The callers are mostly retired uncles and aunts, people working in the nail industry, with support from students from UC Berkeley and Cal State San Francisco,” he added.
Mr. Vu also said that CHNSC has representative offices in Oakland (Northern California) and in Garden Grove (Southern California).
Services, resources, and labor rights are also available on the California Healthy Nail Salons Coalition website: www.cahealthynailsalons.org/
Fighting fake news and improving trust
Ms. Nina Ho, CHNSC’s communications coordinator, happily shared that next year is the 20th anniversary of CHNSC’s founding.
“CHNSC may be the only Vietnamese organization that is actively fighting for labor justice for refugees, immigrants, and Vietnamese women in the beauty industry,” she proudly said.
Ms. Nina said there is a lot of misinformation and fake news circulating on the Internet, making it more difficult to reach and educate voters.
Nina is also responsible for updating social media information and data to research voter outreach to combat fake news on the Internet.
“CHNSC’s mission is to work with you and for you,” she said.
Julie Vo, an advisory member of CHNSC, the daughter of a nail technician family, decided to participate in voter advocacy work because she realized that the community deserves to know the policies and benefits to protect themselves and their families.
“At CHNSC, we create a safe space for voters to freely tell their stories. And through that, we also learned that the community has lost faith in incumbent elected officials and elections,” said Julie.
“Voters have lost confidence and do not even want to go to the polls this year because elected officials have not done anything useful for the community, have not brought the budget back to the locality through essential policies, but instead have kept fighting each other,” she said indignantly.
She emphasized that the purpose of voter mobilization efforts by organizations is to create community strength. Therefore, voters must be responsible for their votes and candidates must also be responsible for the trust of the people.
“No Vote, No Voice”
Due to language barriers, people often believe and listen to false information on social networks, specifically Facebook and Youtube, unintentionally promoting the development of fake news and distorting official news.
“Most immigrants and seniors have language barriers, so our organization supports services that focus on policies and benefits for people in the nail and beauty industry,” said Van Dang, a civic activist at CHNSC.
“Some people don’t even know they have the right to vote, and don’t know they have to register to vote before they can vote,” Ms. Van said.
She also said the challenges of campaigning for voters are that Vietnamese people do not trust elections because they are still used to the lifestyle and influence of Vietnam.
She said some people who received the phone calls accepted and listened, but there were also some voters who were more hesitant, did not answer the phone or listened but reacted negatively.
“We talked to Vietnamese immigrants and found out that they still think that a vote cannot change anything. But this is a wrong assumption because we are a minority community, if we do not vote, we will lose our rights,” said Ms. Van.
“’No Vote, No Voice,’ if you don’t vote, you have no voice,” Ms. Van emphasized. [ibid.]