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[SPEAKER_10]: Axis Mooney, one million neighbors is brought to you by a party, the Asian Pacific American Religious Research Initiative.
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[SPEAKER_10]: It's part of the Under God's Project funded by the Henry Loose Foundation and the AAPI Stories of Faith and Life Project funded by the Lillian Downman Incorporated.
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[SPEAKER_14]: I remember I get to beat up and get yelled at the American adult, tell me, you'd go home and I can't go home.
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[SPEAKER_14]: I'm just a kid.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Lyndon Win was just eight years old when she and her family fled Vietnam, right after Saigon fell to the communists in 1975.
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[SPEAKER_13]: a Catholic church in Oregon sponsored her family.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They were the first Vietnamese family resettled in the neighborhood of Halsey Square in Portland.
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[SPEAKER_14]: And I get kids throwing rock until push you.
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[SPEAKER_14]: There's a lot of things that children at that time go through a lot.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was ironic.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Linda and her family fled Vietnam to escape a violence and danger, and settled in Portland because a group of everyday Americans had invited them to come.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The church that sponsored them was very generous and helped them survive until her dad got a job, and she and her family had some good times in Oregon.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She especially loved picking strawberries together in the summers.
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[SPEAKER_13]: but it seemed she was constantly encountering people who did not want her to be there.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And they let her know.
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[SPEAKER_14]: We go through a lot when we came to United States because they blame you for their children, for their father, for their brother.
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[SPEAKER_14]: They blame you for killing their family and you're just a kid.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was confusing for young Linda.
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[SPEAKER_13]: What had she done to make these adults so angry at her?
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[SPEAKER_13]: On top of that, she wasn't completely clear on why her family had brought her to America in the first place, a country that was so enthralling and yet so unfair.
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[SPEAKER_14]: American, at that time, could be very cruel because, you don't speak English, you helpless, you're just a kid.
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[SPEAKER_14]: you forced to come to this country but you don't understand the reason you just know that something happened to your country and you have to leave because your parents say so but when you come here people different color eyes, different color hair you fascinated you thought it's the most beautiful country you could ever imagine
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[SPEAKER_14]: But in another hand, you were being punished by them at that young child.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The harassment and violence kept that beautiful country just out of reach, Rolinda and her family.
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[SPEAKER_14]: And so you don't go anywhere, you know, you just stay in your house and go to the grocery stores.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It's a situation that has replayed too many times in American history, migrants living in fear for their safety.
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[SPEAKER_13]: We saw this recently in Minnesota during the immigration customs enforcement siege there, families avoiding public places because they don't want to risk more harassment and violence.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Even as many Americans make great sacrifices to welcome migrants, there have always been others who've seemed determined to blame them for every problem the country faces.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It's the dual nature of American identity.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The question is this, which side will prevail?
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[SPEAKER_13]: from the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This is 1 Million Neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I'm Dr. Melissa Borha.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This limited podcast series is about how more than a million Southeast Asian refugees resettled in America with a help of faith communities and in the face of widespread hostility for its migrants.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This is episode four, Terror.
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[SPEAKER_13]: As terrifying as Linda's situation was, she says she learned to function in it.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Kids are highly resilient, but the hostility and violence persisted.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I was, you know, your children, so you must adapt.
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[SPEAKER_14]: I pretty much, in a year, but the beating, you know, the prejudice was for a long time.
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[SPEAKER_14]: The prejudice was still there.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The prejudice proved impossible to escape for Linda.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It became woven into her very identity.
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[SPEAKER_14]: I have a Vietnamese name, a very long Vietnamese name, and children were so mean they used to make fun of my name, and they used to, like,
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[SPEAKER_14]: go shoes at you because they can pronounce your name and use to beat you because they can't pronounce your name.
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[SPEAKER_14]: And I remember one teacher, her name is Ms. Star.
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[SPEAKER_14]: She just sees all that and she decides to change my name.
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[SPEAKER_14]: She's the one that gave me that name Linda.
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[SPEAKER_14]: And I kept that name all my life since I come here.
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[SPEAKER_14]: That was my name to children begin to start calling me Linda.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Linda's experience was not uncommon, and certainly not the worst example of racist anti-refugee hate during this period.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Let's take a look at what happened just south of Oregon in California, which is home to the largest population of Southeast Asian refugees.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in communities across the state, churches were graffitied with hateful messages.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Cars were fire bombed, homes were shot up, elderly women were assaulted, and clergy were spat on.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Refugee youth reported that their classmates choked them, beat them with metal poles and baseball bats, and pelted them with smoke bombs and firecrackers.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In Davis, California, a white student, James Perman, fatally stabbed a Vietnamese student, tongue-win, outside a high school classroom in 1983.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Just three years before that, his family had fled Vietnam and arrived in America.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Grace Kim, a teacher at the high school, recalled that Perman had tormented twin and his two friends before the attack.
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[SPEAKER_08]: Just so.
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[SPEAKER_08]: transferred to our high school from Long Beach.
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[SPEAKER_08]: He bothered those three boys almost every day, calling name and threatening them.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But the problem wasn't just that the school had a single violent bully.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In the eyes of community members, the killing reflected the broader problem of racism.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In fact, the day before Hwynn's funeral, a group identifying themselves as the White students' union distributed leaflets at the school and claimed that immigrants were stealing jobs from white people.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This anti-Asian violence wasn't just happening on the West Coast, a well-known example from Massachusetts illustrates the same hostility towards Southeast Asian refugees during this era.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In 1988, the actor and musician Mark Wahlberg, then 16 years old, attacked Tonlom, a Vietnamese-American man, and beat him with a wooden stick so severely that he fell to the ground unconscious.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He later attacked Huatrin, called him a Gook in a slanty, and smashed him in the face.
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[SPEAKER_13]: These attacks came after Wahlberg's involvement in other acts of hateful violence, including one incident in which he hurled rocks and racist insults at a group of black fourth grade students going on a field trip to the beach.
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[SPEAKER_13]: For this incident, Wahlberg was found guilty of violating the civil rights of his victims, and a civil rights injunction was issued against him.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Still, he didn't let that injunctions stand in the way of terrorizing Tom Lomb, or Hoa Twin.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Vicious acts of violence flared up in so many communities across America that is work looking into what sparked this national explosion of hate.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Why were so many people acting out against Southeast Asian refugees in the 1980s?
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[SPEAKER_13]: There are a few reasons.
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[SPEAKER_13]: One, America had lost the long and bitter war in Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This was after hundreds of thousands of Americans were drafted, and tens of thousands died in the war.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Seeing refugees in their communities reminded some of Americans of that costly failure.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In 1975, Claire Boothluse, a leading conservative writer, observed that hostility towards Southeast Asian refugees was, as she put it, rooted in a suppressed sense of guilt, shame, and frustration, over the communist victory in the Vietnam War.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This feeling of shame was abstract, but the refugees and their communities were a physical place to express their feelings.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Many Americans were also uneasy about resettling people who not only looked like the enemy, but who they feared could actually be the enemy.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In an argument that's been repeated in recent years, some members of Congress expressed concern that refugees were not vetted adequately.
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[SPEAKER_13]: they claimed without evidence that communist infiltrators lurked among the refugees.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Then we have to consider that the 1980s was also a period of surging anti-Asian racism more generally.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Americans were mad about increased economic competition with Japan, particularly in the automobile industry.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Automobiles were supposed to be our game, but this is like a foreign competitor winning the World Series.
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[SPEAKER_03]: How could the key to the American economy suffer one of the worst collapses in American history?
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[SPEAKER_13]: When America failed, Asian Americans faced increasing danger as racist rhetoric portrayed them as an economic and a geopolitical scapegoat.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Here's Helen Zia, an Asian American activist and co-founder of the Civil Rights Organization American Citizens for Justice.
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[SPEAKER_07]: every Asian American just had the feeling of
looking over your shoulder where you went and are people looking at me like with hate or like they're going to do something to me.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But the hate of the 1980s couldn't be entirely blamed on the struggling American auto industry or the loss of the war and Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was actually nothing new.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was part of a much longer history of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in the United States.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The hostility toward Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Meng refugees recycled much of the same yellow peril racism that had been present in America for over a century.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In the 1980s, some refugee opponents claimed that Southeast Asian refugees were untrustworthy heathens, who were unable to assimilate into American culture, and dirty, diseased primitives who endangered American health and well-being.
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[SPEAKER_13]: People set the same things about Chinese immigrants a hundred years earlier.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Whatever their root cause, when hateful incidents boiled over, the effects were felt by countless people in ways that were impossible to measure.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Take for example, a man named Huynkong-Tu.
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[SPEAKER_13]: [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING When Huynkong-Tu arrived in the United States, he had already spent much of his young life searching for a safe place to live.
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[SPEAKER_13]: His father served in the Vietnamese military, so his family was constantly on the move.
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[SPEAKER_13]: After the Viet Cong took power, he fled Vietnam by boat with his grandmother.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They applied for refugee status, and after nine months in Malaysia gained approval to resettle in the United States.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They landed in Atlanta and stayed there for a few weeks.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And after that, Wichita, for a few months.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But that place wasn't right either.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Then they heard about a new or promising place.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Houston, Texas, a big vote in its favor.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Other Vietnamese people also lived there.
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[SPEAKER_16]: He and his grandmother paid the city a visit, and they liked what they saw, which did not include the large KKK population in the state.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Vietnamese refugees were migrating to the Texas Gulf Coast in droves.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The crab fishing industry had jobs, and that's where Hwinkong took started working after high school.
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[SPEAKER_13]: One of hundreds of Vietnamese refugees slowly working their way up
the crab fishing ladder.
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[SPEAKER_15]: He said he worked as a deck for three years and after that the
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[SPEAKER_13]: Eventually, he made enough money to help his family left behind in Vietnam come to America.
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[SPEAKER_15]: He said, like, after he was given the boat that time he was able to make some real money, to be able to break his family over here.
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[SPEAKER_13]: When Congo was prospering in Texas, living the American dream.
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[SPEAKER_13]: but Texas wasn't just a land of opportunity.
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[SPEAKER_13]: During this period, the Gulf Coast of Texas was overwhelmingly white, and the arrival of hundreds of Vietnamese refugees unsettled the local community.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Tensions developed.
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[SPEAKER_13]: When Huynhung took moved a short distance from Houston to San Leon, a community on Galveston Bay, he witnessed the strained relations between white and Vietnamese residents firsthand.
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[SPEAKER_15]: And he said, back then, he lived here and sang me on.
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[SPEAKER_15]: But mainly, he said.
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[SPEAKER_16]: But I don't know if you can take any of them.
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[SPEAKER_15]: He said, there was a large KKK population in the area back then.
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[SPEAKER_15]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
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[SPEAKER_13]: By the time when Khang Tu arrived in San Leone, Trouble had been brewing in the community for a while.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Much of it's centered on friction between Vietnamese fishermen and local white fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: By the time when Khang Tu arrived in San Leone, Trouble had been brewing in the community for a while.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Much of it's centered on friction between Vietnamese fishermen and local white fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: These white fishermen were bringing in less fish and crabs, which meant less profit and more stress for them.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The dwindling yields were caused by petrochemical pollution in the Gulf waters, but they didn't believe that at the time.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Instead, the white fishermen blamed their woes on the Vietnamese, whom they accused of overfishing.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Tension simmered in Galveston Bay for years, as Vietnamese and white fishermen worked the same waters with less and less to show for their labor.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Then, in 1979, an incident 150 miles away would ripple out to upset Winkong to his world.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In the town of Cedariff, Texas, a white fisherman named Billy Joe Applin got into a fight with two Vietnamese fishermen, a pair of brothers named Chin and Soundwind.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Billy Joe Applin had a knife, and their fight, Applin cut Soundwind, but Soundwind had a
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[SPEAKER_13]: That gunshot changed everything for the immigrants living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The simmering racial tensions exploded, like a powder keg.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The white retaliation against the Vietnamese-American community was fierce and immediate.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Within hours, vigilantes fire bombed three Vietnamese boats and one Vietnamese home.
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[SPEAKER_13]: These refugees who had moved across the globe to find a safe place to live new better than to stick around.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Within two days, 80% of the Vietnamese residents of C-drift fled.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Shown-win was tried for murder, but the jury acquitted him.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They saw his actions as an act of self-defense, but that didn't ease the tension.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The conflict between the two communities only got worse, especially when white fishermen enlisted the help of the Ku Klux Klan and its military arm, the Texas Military Reserve.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The KKK terrorized the remaining Vietnamese fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The broader Vietnamese-American community, and the white people who sympathized with them.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Clam leader Lewis Bean doesn't think the Vietnamese really intend to leave.
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[SPEAKER_06]: She says while the clan will not use violence, it is ready to act if they don't go.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to if necessary launch some measures that we have carefully thought out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: during May, if we do not receive relief.
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[SPEAKER_05]: When you say measures, you've carefully thought out what do you mean, what kind of measures?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the forewarned is for prepared.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We're not willing at this point to say exactly what we're going to do.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But we have a program and we're going to do whatever is in the interest of the citizens of this day.
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[SPEAKER_13]: What they did was burn crosses and torch Vietnamese-owned fishing boats.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They hung an effigy of a Vietnamese fisherman.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They held rallies and paraded around the harbor with weapons.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They spoke openly of their plans to inflict violence on Vietnamese fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Lewis Beam, the Texas clan leader, summed up his approach with the catchphrase, where ballots fail, bullets will prevail.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was a cruel plot twist.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Quinn Kongta, and other Vietnamese refugees in Texas, had spent two decades moving, trying to find a home where they could be safe.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They thought they had finally landed in a spot in America where they could enjoy a degree of safety and prosperity.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But on the Gulf Coast of Texas, they faced violence and persecution and needed to flee once again.
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[SPEAKER_13]: [♪ music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in
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[SPEAKER_13]: In 1981, two years after Billy Joe Applin was killed, the Vietnamese Fisherman's Association sued the Ku Klux Klan.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In early 1981 through press accounts, the center became aware of the efforts of a light Fisherman's Association and the KKK to read Galveston Bay of our community at the Meas, who had been permitted entry into the U.S. after the, what I would characterize as the disastrous
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[SPEAKER_13]: This is Joel Levin, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization that litigated the case on behalf of the Vietnamese fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Our lawyers met with the Vietnamese Fisherman Association that agreed to represent.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On April the 16th, the 1981, we brought a class action civil suit in federal court under the 13th and 14th amendments, traditional civil rights laws that guaranteed all people in the US, the right to be free from discrimination.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The Southern Poverty Law Center had been tracking and going after hate groups like the Ku Klux Clan for years.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And the case garnered national attention, with coverage in major newspapers, and rallies in locations far beyond Texas.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Tonight, the local Ku Klux Clan staged a rally in Santa Fe just off Highway 6 with the idea of being a race and money for illegal defense front.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That money going to defend some local clansmen named in a suit by Vietnamese fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The clan tried to use media to gain public sympathy.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Here's clan leader Lewis B. again, the man who had famously talked about bullets prevailing when ballots fail, speaking on the local Houston news.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I hate to disappoint everybody, but I don't hate Vietnamese.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've worked off for a small farm in Vietnam, shed my blood sweat and tears for their freedom, and since they've been here, I've worked with former Vietnamese veterans in projects of mutual
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[SPEAKER_13]: but the courts saw things differently.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In July 1981, a permanent injunction stopped the clan from harassing, intimidating, and threatening Vietnamese fishermen.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And a year later, the courts also shut down the clan's military training camps.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It was an important victory.
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[SPEAKER_13]: One that required enormous bravery on the part of the attorneys, investigators, and most of all, the Vietnamese community.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Here's Joe Levin again, the Vietnamese fishermen's case was extremely difficult, not just for the complexity of the lawsuit, but more importantly to me for the courage of the Vietnamese who under dire circumstances chose nevertheless to file the lawsuit in the first place and continue it even as the environment of threats and intimidation grew stronger.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Looking back on how white supremacists terrorized him and other Vietnamese fishermen, Huynh Kung-Tu was a realist about the pervasiveness of anti-Asian racism and the power of organizations like the Ku Klicks Plan.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But he also recognized that the Vietnamese had the power to fight back, especially with the aid of allies in the government.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And for that, he was grateful.
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[SPEAKER_15]: He kind of has actually like it is what it is like at that point there's not much that he could do about it but he like
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[SPEAKER_15]: He's really grateful for the U.S. government
stuff because whenever they can't help they do that.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In some ways, unfortunately, the American legal system has lost that approach.
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[SPEAKER_13]: These days, it can feel rare to see a clear legal victory like what the Vietnamese fishermen in Texas won, and just as many people were the victims of anti-immigrant terror in the 1970s and 80s, there are similar incidents being documented today.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Take for example, Liam Koneho Ramos, a five-year-old boy who entered the United States with his parents in 2024 as asylum seekers.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In January of 2026, Liam was taken by Ice Agents on his Walk Home from school in Minnesota.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The agents are accused of using Liam as bait to apprehend his parents, even though there was no deportation order against them.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Liam and his father were sent to a Texas detention center in violation of a court order.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Another federal judge intervened, and Liam was returned to Minnesota to reunite with his family, but at the time of this recording, the family is in hiding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Liam's father says the experience has changed his son.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He says the truth is, he's not the same boy he was before.
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[SPEAKER_11]: Ever since he went in there, he suffered psychological trauma.
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[SPEAKER_11]: He's very scared.
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[SPEAKER_11]: He can't sleep well at night.
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[SPEAKER_11]: He wakes up three or four times a night screaming, daddy, daddy.
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[SPEAKER_11]: And then he tells me he has nightmares about police officers and remembers the moment the ice agents detained us.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It remains to be seen if anyone will be held accountable for what happened to Liam and others like him who were mistreated by ICE agents.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But if it follows established patterns, whatever accountability occurs will probably be partial at best.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This is what we saw in the case of Mark Wahlberg that I mentioned earlier.
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[SPEAKER_13]: For those attacks on Ton Lom and Hotrin, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He pled guilty to felony assault, and he was sentenced to two years in prison, but ended up serving only 45 days.
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[SPEAKER_13]: That like sentence wasn't the end of the legal consequences for Wahlberg, though.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Like all the examples in this episode, those acts of racism from decades ago still affect our world today.
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[SPEAKER_13]: By 2014, Wahlberg was a famous actor, musician, model, and entrepreneur, owner
of the fast food chain Wahlbergers.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He applied for a pardon, citing, among other things, it's desire to get a concessionaire license in California
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[SPEAKER_13]: The request prompted an uproar.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Here's former assistant attorney general, Judith Beals, who prosecuted Walberg.
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[SPEAKER_12]: Back in the 1980s, I think it's important to remember it was a racially charged period in Boston's history, and hate crimes were not in frequent, but this one from the very beginning stood out in the attorney general's office.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She said Walberg's crime was particularly bad, even in the larger context of Boston's racial violence, because he was a violating a civil rights injunction.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She said his lack of contrition was part of the reason why she opposed a pardon.
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[SPEAKER_12]: And in this case, I think what is really notable is that Mr. Wahlberg has not in any way acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes.
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[SPEAKER_13]: At least one of his victims supported the pardon, another did not.
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[SPEAKER_13]: While Burke eventually dropped his request for a pardon in 2016.
27:54.103 --> 28:06.404
[SPEAKER_13]: Today, he makes the media rounds talking openly about his Catholic faith, his conversion from a criminal to a devout Christian, and his support for Hallow, a prayer and meditation app in which he is an investor.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He's now a man who does Fox News interviews and bears lenton ashes on his forehead
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[SPEAKER_09]: I think we all have things to repent for, and, you know, do you have any examples of your own?
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[SPEAKER_09]: Oh, many, many, many from very early days, you know, I had a very, very troubled childhood until now, just, you know, being impatient with people, you know, being sure with people, you know, not being as understanding as thoughtful.
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[SPEAKER_09]: You know, it's just, you get caught up in all this thing, these things every day in your life.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And yet, while he has said he is sorry for his crimes, it remains unclear whether he has, as Beal's pointed out, fully repented for the racism that animated them.
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[SPEAKER_13]: We've described a lot of terror in this episode from playground bullying to outright murder and the organized violence of the KKK.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But that's not the entire story.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In spite of all this racist violence, sometimes the resilience of victims can create a pathway to a better world.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Juan Conta, the crab fishermen from Galveston Bay, found a way through the terror and looked for avenues to help others in his life.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He stayed in San Leon, where he has been active in the Vietnamese American community, and it efforts to welcome other immigrants and refugees who have made the Gulf Coast their home.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It is work that is born of his personal experience.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He knows the hostility directed towards refugees and immigrants.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He remembers how his own community was once on the receiving end of harassment, discrimination, intimidation, and violence.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And he has chosen to respond to these experiences by welcoming others.
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[SPEAKER_13]: When asked about his greatest accomplishments, his answer was simple, helping others.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He urged future generations to do the same.
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[SPEAKER_16]: Anytime when they do happen, you don't need to wait.
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[SPEAKER_16]: You have no time to wait right now.
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[SPEAKER_16]: It's almost 50 years old.
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[SPEAKER_16]: You have no time to wait.
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[SPEAKER_16]: You have to do what you can't wait now.
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[SPEAKER_16]: It's not tomorrow.
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[SPEAKER_16]: No.
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[SPEAKER_16]: They come and lead your hip right now, have them right away because they need your hip.
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[SPEAKER_16]: That's it.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Of course, helping others is complicated work, especially when the people you want to help are so different from you, because of culture, generation or religion.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Refugee advocates often speak about the importance of welcoming the stranger.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But the truth is, strangers are hard to help, because, well, they seem strange.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And as a result, almost every interaction can be confusing and complicated.
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[SPEAKER_13]: It's one thing to welcome the stranger.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But Refugee resettlement asks more than that.
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[SPEAKER_13]: How do you make them part of the fabric of your life?
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[SPEAKER_13]: Learn to eat together, celebrate milestones persist through hardship.
31:23.062 --> 31:31.473
[SPEAKER_13]: What welcoming the stranger isn't one grand act of kindness, but a million small feats of learning, accommodating, and listening.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And what if the biggest challenge isn't the welcoming part, but resisting the idea that you can save the other, that you're the savior?
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[SPEAKER_13]: How can you be humanitarian without taking away the humanity, an agency of the people you want to help?
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[SPEAKER_13]: We'll talk about that very challenge next time.
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[SPEAKER_13]: That's it for with this episode of 1 Million Neighbors.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Thank you so much for listening.
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[SPEAKER_13]: If you enjoy the show, please rate it and review it on your podcast listening app until a friend about it.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I'm Melissa Borha.
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[SPEAKER_13]: 1 Million Neighbors was created by Mead, Melissa Borha, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_13]: 1 Million Neighbors was produced by Andrew Gil and Bradley O'Nishi.
32:30.933 --> 32:33.997
[SPEAKER_13]: original music and audio engineering by Scott Okamoto.
32:35.179 --> 32:37.723
[SPEAKER_13]: Cari O'Nishi provided production assistance.
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[SPEAKER_13]: One million neighbors which made possible in partnership with Apari through generous funding from the Lily Foundation.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Until next time, remember, Radical hospitality isn't just for radicals.