Dear VietAID Community:
Bầu ơi, thương lấy bí cùng / Tuy rằng khác giống, nhưng chung một giàn.
Translation: Dear Pumpkin, please love the squash. Even though we’re different, we live together on the same trellis.
Our mission is to strengthen and work towards a thriving Fields Corner and Vietnamese immigrant, refugee community. For the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought major challenges to our community and neighborhood: separation and isolation from people we love, uncertainty about the future of jobs and employment, access to basic needs such as food, and fear of anti-Asian racism.
Even so, the death of George Floyd by police brutality jolted us, our city, our country, and the world. George Floyd’s death, and the deaths of Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Ahmaud Arbery and countless other Black people by the police, pushed millions to come out and advocate for racial justice, for a stop to the disease of systemic racism that kills as cruelly as any virus.
Over the past 25 years, VietAID has worked to provide programming to support the Vietnamese community as well as Fields Corner; our constituents are multiracial and intergenerational. We have always known that as part of a racially diverse city, the needs of our own community – healthy affordable housing, quality education, access to good jobs – is shared by communities at large, especially the Black community.
We thank and recognize all that the Black community has fought for and won, and which we continue to benefit from. We believe that only through solidarity, unity, and mutual aid that we will achieve our mission.
Vietnamese’s culture is rooted in compassion, summarized in the following proverb:
Một con ngựa đau cả tàu bỏ cỏ
Translation: When one horse hurts, the entire stable will not eat the grass.
Systemic racism in America has left many open wounds. And for the past few weeks, our entire community has been hurting. VietAID stands in solidarity and supports the efforts of healing for and of the Black community.
VietAID stands in support of Black Lives Matter. We know that in order for us to heal and grow together, VietAID must be active participants. To that end, we commit to:
- Working in unity, and following the leadership of Black led community organizations, on issues that affect our communities.
- To hold conversations among staff, Board, and community members to understand the role of racism in America and our role as Vietnamese people.
- To develop bilingual materials about racism and the history of racism in the United States to be shared with the Vietnamese community.
- To work to expand our resources to support Black and Brown constituents of our programs and the Fields Corner neighborhood.
This is the beginning. We welcome your suggestions on how VietAID can be a true ally to the Black community. Please email us at contact@vietaid.org.