Westminster: Noting Irony Isn’t Enough

It’s not that I think the protesters’ cries in Westminster’s Little Saigon are less poignant than a month ago. Their stories of Communist oppression in their homeland ring as powerfully as ever.

Nor is it that I think video store owner Truong Van Tran has risen to heroic status. He may well be an overly theatrical opportunist with all kinds of ulterior motives for wanting to hang a poster of Ho Chi Minh inside his shop. Maybe he set out to antagonize as many potential customers as possible.

It doesn’t matter.

Enough is enough.

It should have been too much on the very first day almost a month ago when a local judge ruled that Tran had the right to display the poster and Vietnamese flag. Instead, an angry crowd refused to let him reopen for business as long as he kept the flag.

The rest of us let it slide.

The crowd’s latest plebiscite occurred earlier this week when, as Tran tried to enter his store for the first time since Feb. 20, he was egged and taken away by police for his own protection.

Again, the rest of us let it slide.

For reasons that are as obvious as they are disturbing, too many people have sat idly while protesters in Little Saigon have dictated how much free speech Tran will enjoy. By street decree, they’ve decided it won’t be very much.

It’s not that any of us miss the irony. We all make a nod to the fact that the anti-Communists who are fueling the Tran protests simultaneously decry the suppression of freedom in Vietnam, seemingly oblivious to their willingness to deprive Tran of his court-endorsed rights.

Yet no one seems to care.

We don’t seem to care that the crowd is controlling the police instead of the other way around. Tran will be allowed to do business when the crowd says he can, not the city of Westminster.

“He wants to get in and open for business,” says his attorney, Ron Talmo. “Everyone is telling him it’s unlikely he’s going to do business, but he believes he will, because for whoever comes in peacefully, he’ll explain his position, and understanding will be reached.”

Tran would seem to have all the acumen of a day-old kitten, but that’s beside the point.

One placard at the protest site has read: “Communists aka [also known as] murderers, don’t deserve First Amendment protection.”

Well, yes they do.

Not to mention that Tran isn’t a murderer. If he’s dumb enough to rile his potential clientele by reminding them of tyranny in their homeland, that’s his problem.

So, what should the cops do? Break up the crowd and risk a larger confrontation?

My answer would be, yes. To say no is to say this crowd--any crowd--determines what the law will be in Westminster. It’s to say the crowd will determine when free speech applies and when it doesn’t.

The protesters can picket and boycott and write angry letters to the editor, but they can’t be allowed to block access to Tran’s business. They can’t be allowed to intimidate people who may want to patronize it.

The protest leaders say they’ve galvanized the Vietnamese community. They’ve done much more.

They’ve made a martyr out of a guy they say is a boob.

They’ve anointed themselves judges.

And the rest of us have let it slide.

One footnote: I went out there a week or so ago, about 9 at night and long after the mall businesses where Tran’s store is had closed for the day. A few hundred protesters maintained vigil.

One of them was 31-year-old Francis Tran of Garden Grove, who told me how the Communists had confiscated his parents’ hotel in Saigon during the war and later kicked his ailing father out of a hospital to make room for soldiers. His father, Tran said, died a month later. Tran’s chin quivered as he recalled those days and said that’s why he would protest as long as need be to keep Truong Van Tran away.

You couldn’t help but feel Francis Tran’s passion. I patted him on the back and wished him luck.

If I’d had the courage, I would have told him I sympathized with his story, but that this other Mr. Tran has a right to post Ho’s picture and make a living. I would have said the protesters were costing all of us something with their suppression of the store owner’s rights.

I might even have reminded him of an unpleasant mantra from the Vietnam War. “We had to destroy it to save it” was the line used to describe U.S. overkill.

As Vietnamese Americans in Westminster weigh their love of freedom and their dislike of one anonymous store owner, now would be a good time to remember why we didn’t like that line.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.