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Giao “Genie” Nguyen seized an unscheduled opportunity to speak with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger after a June 27 campaign event at the Eden Center in Falls Church.
As candidates prepared for photographs, Nguyen raised her hand and offered advice from near the stage. Spanberger, the 7th District congresswoman and final speaker at the event, stopped to respond. Because Nguyen had no microphone, most of the audience could not hear their exchange.
Nguyen lives in Prince George’s County but works at the Eden Center. She said she supports the Democratic statewide ticket of Spanberger for governor, Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor and Jay Jones for attorney general in the Nov. 4 election.
Her message centered on democracy, immigration enforcement and the experiences of Vietnamese Americans who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and the communist takeover 50 years ago.
Nguyen said Vietnamese Americans spent decades building businesses at the Eden Center, becoming citizens and contributing to the Falls Church economy. She stressed that many came to the United States seeking freedom and rejecting dictatorship and one-party rule.
She also told Spanberger that President Donald Trump’s second-term policies had alienated some Vietnamese Americans who previously supported him.
Nguyen said Eden Center employees were worried about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, particularly workers who may have entered the country without authorization but later obtained documents allowing them to work. She alleged that people were being detained without adequate review and criticized the administration’s effort to deport some immigrants to countries other than their homelands.
The Supreme Court had allowed such removals to proceed a day before the Eden Center event, she said. Nguyen argued that the policy was unconstitutional and urged Virginia’s next governor to defend constitutional protections.
She also condemned the administration’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the federal workforce reductions associated with Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Nguyen said those actions had harmed Vietnamese Americans and other people of color who pursued government careers after obtaining education in the United States.
Drawing on her experience with communism in Vietnam, Nguyen rejected past attempts to characterize Democrats as communists. She compared Trump’s conduct to the unchecked exercise of power her community had fled, describing herself and others as frightened by the country’s direction.
Nguyen also reflected on Vietnamese-American participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She said some community members believed Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and viewed their actions as a defense of fair elections.
The appearance of the yellow-and-red Vietnamese heritage flag at the Capitol saddened many Vietnamese Americans, Nguyen said, because people who valued the United States had been misled. Her appeal to Spanberger was ultimately for a state government committed to democracy, diversity and equal justice.