There are a few dozen anti-communist demonstrators huddled together on the sidewalk adjacent to the video store. They have been here for days, closer to weeks now. They are tired, hungry and weary, but are going nowhere tonight. There is too much at stake to just simply leave. To many Americans, images of Ho and the flag of Vietnam evoke bitter memories.
Vietnamese outrage is incomprehensible.
Free speech apparently now means the right to monologue. I see my mother carrying me over barbed-wire fences while being shot at by communist troops as her husband prepares to take off in a stolen cargo plane, cramming in as many people as possible, to escape certain execution. I see my parents trying to adjust to their new surroundings without being able to speak a lick of English. I see my dad taking a job in Arlington, Texas killing rats beneath people's homes just to make ends meet. I see my family driving to Orange County in 1979 because the eternal summers remind my mom of home.