October 7, 2018
Tung Nguyen, PIVOT president  
Some people think America is the system that was built by the Constitution. And represented by its leaders. I do not agree. America is an idea. America cannot be found in its institutions, which are only the results of the idea.

October 1, 2018
PIVOT very strongly endorses Katie Porter in her race to represent California’s 45th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is a highly qualified candidate who will work improve the lives of Vietnamese Americans in her district and who will reflect our values as a member of Congress.

September 23, 2018
PIVOT strongly endorses Harley Rouda in his race to represent California’s 48th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He will be a great champion on all the issues that matter to Vietnamese Americans in his district.

September 21, 2018
Dr. Tung Nguyen, PIVOT President 
When I was young, I worked in my parents’ Vietnamese grocery store in San Jose, California. Most of the Vietnamese shoppers paid with Food Stamps. As a doctor, most of my Vietnamese American patients are covered by Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) covers their children. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Americans have benefited from these federal government programs, which allowed us to live and raise our children to be successful and to contribute to America. That is why PIVOT is very concerned about a proposed federal regulation called “Public Charge,” which will be used to prevent anyone who uses any of these programs from getting legal permanent resident status, or “green card.”

September 20, 2018
With great pleasure, PIVOT strongly endorses Joe Nguyen in his race to represent the 34th Legislative District in the Washington State Senate. Joe will be a progressive champion for the diverse people in his district.

September 17, 2018
PIVOT is very pleased to endorse Bruce Huynh in his race for the Board of Trustees of the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District. Shaping the educational experience of our children is one of the most important steps in building a better future for all of us.

September 4, 2018
PIVOT is extremely pleased to endorse Tram Nguyen for the position of Massachusetts State Representative, 18th Essex District. Tram immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam at the age of five and has lived in Massachusetts since. Her family came to America to pursue hope, opportunity and freedom, and Tram has dedicated her life to ensure that that dream for everyone. As a legal aid attorney, she has helped vulnerable people, particularly Vietnamese and Asian Americans, including victims of domestic violence, immigrants, the elderly, children, and low-wage workers.

August 16, 2018
Luke Kertcher is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania
Trinh Truong is an undergraduate student at Yale University
Like 20% of our classmates at Yale and Penn, we are Asian American students attending Ivy League schools.

One of us graduated from a public school in the rural Midwest, where only a handful of Asian Americans were enrolled. The other attended a high-needs, urban public school in upstate New York, where more than 47 languages were spoken by a student body comprised mainly of refugees and immigrants. One of us had no standardized test preparation beyond poorly resourced teachers printing past exams. The other is lucky to have been included in a limited-enrollment college preparation program for low-income students that offered test preparation. Both of us are first-generation, Vietnamese American college students receiving substantial amounts of financial aid.

July 2, 2018
Phuong-Chi Nguyen
My family came to the United States in 1975 after fleeing Saigon by boat. After being rescued at sea, we were sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego. I was born five months later, the first of my family in the country.  

In that first wave after the war, we were welcomed with open arms in America. Sponsors helped my parents find jobs and we were able to save money, buy houses. For my part, I went to school, worked hard, and listened to everything the teachers told me.

I was what Americans called the “model minority.” A good immigrant.

July 5, 2018
Kathy Khanh Linh Tran, Delegate, 42nd District, Virginia House of Delegates
In 1979, my parents and I were refugees, escaping from Vietnam on a rickety boat for several days. My mother remembers that on the night we left our homeland, there were no stars in the sky - it was so dark that she could not tell where the ocean ended and the sky began. As we left the shores into this watery abyss, she wondered how we would survive.