Mary Queen of Vietnam Church
New Orleans
Represented by Father Nguyen The Vien
Description of Changes
We nominate Father Nguyen The Vien for the HOPE award, for his work, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, spearheading the efforts of New Orleans East (NOE) community residents to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. More than 50% of the Vietnamese families in this community were homeowners. Despite multiple barriers to accessing post-hurricane relief, Father Vien provided vital leadership to empower the NOE Vietnamese community.
Throughout the rebuilding process, Fr. Vien has leveraged the role of Mary Queen of Vietnam Church (MQVN) to advocate for the resumption of basic services, ensure a community voice in the rebuilding and organize a long term effort to return homeowners to the community.
In early November 2005, Fr. Vien organized residents, mostly homeowners returning to NOE, in a petition drive to demand electricity and water. He submitted over 500 signatures, negotiated with the utility companies and succeeded in restoring power and water to the community.
In 2006, Father Vien led efforts to close the Chef Menteur landfill. Located only one mile away from New Orleans East, the landfill would have housed 6.5 million cubic yards of potentially hazardous waste in an unprotected dump site. Through partnership with National CAPACD, the Asian Law Caucus and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, Fr. Vien organized residents of New Orleans East to educate policymakers at the local, state, and national level. On July 14, 2006, Mayor Nagin signed an order to shut down the landfill.
Finally, Farther Vien, working with National CAPACD and the National Association of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA), has established the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation to ensure long-term housing and homeownership. This CDC is implementing the NOE recovery plan and developing a 300 unit senior housing complex on the land that has housed the FEMA trailers.
Impact
The clearest measure of Fr. Vien’s success is the concrete changes in public policy that have allowed a majority of NOE residents to return to their homes, including: the closure of the Chef Mentuer Landfill, the resumption of electrical and water services to NOE and the 200 FEMA trailers made available to NOE residents.
Pre-Katrina, MQVN consisted of about 6,000 parishioners. Post-Katrina, over 4600 parishioners or 80% of its people have returned. As a testament to the visionary leadership of Fr. Vien, on October 23, only two months after Hurricane Katrina, 2000 people attended Sunday services at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church. More than 75% of the business in New Orleans East have reopened, the majority of which are owned by Vietnamese Americans.
Even more impressive is the mobilization of the New Orleans East community to protect their neighborhood. Over 500 people signed the petition to restore electrical and water services to New Orleans East. More than 20,000 people attended the presentation of long-term rebuilding plans during this year’s Vietnamese New Year Festival at the church. Previously invisible to policymakers, the New Orleans East community has hosted Mayoral and City Council debates, unprecedented in the New Orleans Vietnamese community as well as serving as a voting site. Under the guidance of Father Vien, twenty youth from New Orleans East organized Get Out the Vote activities for the Mayoral and City Council elections, providing transportation to polling sites, assisting with onsite voting, and providing interpretation for Vietnamese American voters with limited English proficiency.
Furthermore, Fr. Vien has organized national attention on the issues of rebuilding in New Orleans East. In response to Mayor Nagin’s denial of permission to allow trailers on land owned by MQVN, Father Vien and community leaders successfully organized an act of civil disobedience by arranging rows of tents to be set up on the church grounds. The effort gained national exposure when CNN covered the story, and Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Mary Landrieu visited the tent city and resulted in Mayor Nagin granting permission for the trailers to be placed in the adjoining land. Moreover, the partnership with national organizations resulted in the attention from Members of Congress and federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Innovation
While the Vietnamese social service and faith-based organizations heroically provided immediate relief assistance to the Vietnamese families, they lacked financial, technical and human resources, capacity – particularly advocacy knowledge and skills- and a coordinated system to assist these families and communities to recover and rebuild. Fr. Vien and Mary Queen of Vietnam Church were able, not only to provide basic services, but to mobilize a community with immense barriers to participating in public policy.
Immediately after the disaster, NAVASA staff, board members and volunteers traveled to the impacted areas and Houston to learn of the problems facing the 50,000 Vietnamese hurricane victims. Most Vietnamese adult evacuees are first-generation refugees and immigrants who speak limited English and have minimal transferable job skills. Over 50% of the Vietnamese families were homeowners.
Fr. Vien leveraged the support of national Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations to provide bring attention to issues important to NOE. One example of national level organizing of Fr. Vien is the closure of the Chef Menteur Landfill. Located only one mile away from New Orleans East, the Chef Menteur landfill would have housed 6.5 million cubic yards of potentially hazardous waste in an unprotected dump site. Through partnership with National CAPACD, the Asian Law Caucus and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, Fr. Vien and the residents of New Orleans East educated policymakers on the local, state, and national level to shut down the landfill. National groups were able to bring the issue to the attention of federal agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus led by Rep. Mike Honda. Local activists gained the support of state city council members and state legislators, notably state Senator Anne Duplessis.
Minority Focus
Despite the multiple barriers to accessing post-hurricane relief faced by Vietnamese victims of Katrina, who were largely first-generation refugees and immigrants who speak limited English and have minimal transferable job skills, Father Vien provided vital leadership to empower his parishioners and the larger NOE community. More than 50% of the Vietnamese families in this community were homeowners. However, the community lacked the infrastructure to engage in public policy advocacy.
The turnout from community members for the advocacy campaigns is a testament to the support Fr. Vien has from both the parishioners and residents of New Orleans East. Over 400 community members participated in a rally outside the New Orleans city hall to protest the Chef Menteur Landfill and over 200 took part in a rally in front of the landfill itself. The majority of New Orleans East residents are Vietnamese- and African-American. Since the hurricane, the Hispanic population is growing, attracted by the strong voice that people of color have in rebuilding.