Political turmoil in Little Saigon: San Jose mayor’s staffer sues over communist label

A worker in the San Jose mayor’s office is caught in a political storm surging through Little Saigon’s war refugee generation over claims of communist sympathies.

Tara Dang, who conducts neighborhood outreach for Mayor Matt Mahan in a city with the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, sued 28 people in May for defamation. The list ranges from local Vietnamese journalists to a school board member, all of whom Dang claims wrongly smeared her as a Vietnamese government sympathizer. Her lawsuit came under new focus the following month, after she testified in a San Jose councilmember’s restraining order case against a powerful Vietnamese business owner.