Tag: USAID

  • Beyond war: Naja Pham Lockwood gathers her refugee stories

    When Naja Pham Lockwood was seven years old, she stole a plastic water canteen from another little girl as she boarded a US Navy ship. It was 1975, and her family was one of many fleeing Vietnam following the fall of Saigon.

    “I need for you to run over to that girl and take her water canteen. She’s not going to make it,” Lockwood remembered her father telling her. “You need to survive.”

    Lockwood and her family made it to Massachusetts as refugees that July, and they settled in Worcester. She brought her history with her and that was valuable when she wrote her bachelor’s thesis at Boston University on Ho Chi Minh and the politics of modern-day Vietnam.

    “Maybe because there were no Vietnamese around me, I really searched for my identity on so many levels,” she said. As a student, she volunteered in Cambridge at the Phillips Brooks House Association. Now living in Utah, Lockwood works with the governor to support refugees.

    Fifty years, two degrees, and two successful careers in investment banking and film production later, Lockwood has directed her own film, which explores the consequences of the Vietnam War for survivors and the refugee experience for emigrants now living in America.

    “Đất lành, chim đậu (On healing land, birds perch),” which was screened on April 27 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library as part of the Vietnamese community’s Black April commemoration, centers narratively on Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, “Saigon Execution.” It depicts Nguyễn Ngọc Loan shooting Viet Cong captain Nguyễn Văn Lém in the head during the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Viet Cong soldiers launched multiple attacks on South Vietnamese civilians and troops.

    The first time Lockwood saw the photo as a young girl, she couldn’t sleep for weeks. “Every year during the fall of Vietnam … that photo would be shown on television,” she said. “I had the entire room lit up while I was sleeping.”

    Her father, who had worked in intelligence for USAID, would sit her down and tell her stories to reassure her that the photo had a happy ending. He told her the Viet Cong captain, Văn Lém, had murdered most of a family earlier in the day before the photo was taken, but one of the children had survived and made his way to the United States – Huan Nguyen, who much later became the first Vietnamese American to achieve the rank of rear admiral in the US Navy.

    “All throughout my life, I thought about the photo,” Lockwood said. “I thought about the people involved.”

    She began tracking down and setting up interviews with the children of the two men featured in “Saigon Execution” roughly a year ago. She also interviewed Huan because she wanted to focus on the trauma and pain that survivors of the war continually suffer from, and on the journey he and the soldiers’ children took to move forward from Adams’s photo.

    “This event is more than a remembrance. It is a celebration of who we are and all we have achieved,” Huan said in a recorded statement before the film began. “Today’s reflections are not just memories of the past. They are bridges between generations.”

    Throughout the film, Huan reflects on his survivor’s guilt and the continuing pain and loss from the war. Although the children’s fathers were on different sides of the war, June, the general’s daughter, dealt with questions about her father being a “killer” as a child growing up in the US, while Loan and Thong Nguyễn faced the same dilemma with Huan’s story, whose family members their father allegedly killed. 

    “At the end of the day, there are no winners in war. All sides lose,” Lockwood said. She was compelled to create the film 10 years ago because of the “tremendous trauma” she witnessed during the 40th anniversary.

    “Refugees didn’t have time to even focus to heal, because they were so busy just trying to survive,” Lockwood said. “I think it’s this generation, their children, who are telling their stories.”

    Following the film screening, there was a panel discussion with Lockwood, community organizer Kevin Lam, and faculty member Vũ Diễm Hương moderated by Linh-Phương Vũ, co-director of 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative, which organized the event. There was also the opportunity for audience questions.

    Chhenlee Ly, 31, asked how he could tell his parents’ stories as a second-generation immigrant. His father was a refugee fleeing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and his mother and grandmother emigrated from Vietnam in the 1970s as refugees. His wife had mentioned the screening and suggested they go.

    “Honestly, I wasn’t even going to ask any questions or anything,” Ly said. He had choked up when he stood up to speak, and tears were still in his eyes. “I wonder if I should ask more.”

    Many who attended the screening said they hoped to start investigating their own family histories and learn more about their parents’ stories. Margot Delogne, whose father died in Vietnam during the war, now runs the 2 Sides Project, a nonprofit that organizes trips overseas for children whose fathers died on both sides of the war.

    “I actually didn’t read carefully what the film was about,” Delogne said. “The thing about this war and thinking you’re the only one who is impacted by it, when you start looking out of yourself and asking questions … there’s much more to the story.”

    Lockwood hopes she can continue to tell stories that look past known history and delve deeper into stories of heritage. The name of the film, “Đất lành, chim đậu” derives from a Vietnamese proverb that states that “birds, like humans, will live in peace and in fertile land, and they will settle there when the land is peaceful.” At the end of the film, Huan invokes the proverb to express the journey to reconcile his past with the rest of his life.

    “I’m really interested in stories about, how do we move beyond war, as children of war?” Lockwood asked. “I think it’s just part of my DNA.”

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Mass. federal workers still unsure about future, despite reinstatement

    When Michelle Huntoon got an email last Monday night reinstating her at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she laughed.

    The email, which overturned her immediate termination just over a month prior, felt like a “long, pointless joke.”

    When she was fired Feb. 14 under a wave of mass layoffs ordered by the Trump administration, Huntoon spent the day tapping her network — she was not doing unemployment. She got in touch with the private company that gave her an offer two years ago — which she had turned down to help fund loans for affordable housing projects — and was invited to start the following week.

    Now, with that income, as well as the money she’s to receive under her paid administrative leave at HUD, she’s set to make out pretty well, she said. But it’s not what she wanted.

    “At the personal level, I’m laughing at how I’m making out like a bandit for something I did not want,” she said. “On the other hand, I’m feeling so despondent about what’s going to happen long term for friends, agencies, services and the country.”

    Huntoon, who lives in Burlington, was among the thousands of probationary employees fired by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in an effort led by billionaire Elon Musk to downsize and restructure the federal government. Musk and his team have effectively gutted certain agencies, including the Agency for International Development and the Department of Education, while significantly reducing employment and spending at others, like HUD.

    A wave of court orders have attempted to reverse this course. On March 13, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the administration to reinstate fired workers from six federal agencies, just hours before a judge in Maryland ordered reinstatements across 18 agencies. On Tuesday, another Maryland judge said the shuttering of USAID was likely unconstitutional, ordering DOGE to reinstate employee access and prohibiting any more steps to collapse the agency.

    The orders have led to nearly 25,000 workers being told they’re reinstated, whether they be invited back to the office or put on paid leave.

    Advertisement

    Employees wonder if the moves are too little, too late. They also see irony in them: they were fired to save money but now are being paid not to work.

    “This was all done in the name of efficiency, and it feels like truly the opposite of that,” said Maddie Murphy, a reinstated employee in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s SNAP department who lives in Somerville. “They’re paying workers not to work, which I think is a really challenging pill to swallow.”

    Murphy received an email March 14 letting her know she was on paid administrative leave, and will receive back pay from the day she was terminated. Other than that, she received little communication after she was let go Feb. 14, other than the shipping labels sent to her house to collect equipment.

    Then, on Friday around 5 p.m., she received an email saying that she was scheduled to return to work on Monday, March 24, or could set up a future start date before the 31st. She’s still struggling with whether or not to return.

    The USDA was one of the agencies covered by the California lawsuit, which requires “immediate” reinstatement of employees and does not allow paid administrative leave for the six agencies it covers. The agency says it has a phased plan to return probationary employees but has not laid out a timeline; the government said reinstating people on a paid leave status was an “intermediate measure” in the process of full reinstatement.

    Murphy said she’s weighing the small picture, of loving her job and the team she worked with, with big picture concerns about what working for the agency will look like under the new administration — and if the same thing won’t happen to her again. Both rulings say the government has the right to reduce its workforce, outlined in a 119-page handbook detailing this restructuring, as long as it adheres to the law while doing so.

    “In a lot of ways, it’s a different job from what I took in September,” Murphy said.

    Claire Bergstresser, an employee at HUD’s Fair Housing office, feels the same hesitation. The Trump administration plans to terminate 50% of HUD’s workforce. Though she received the same email as Huntoon Monday night, the Maryland court order defines reinstatement as either bringing employees back to work or putting them on paid administrative leave. Both HUD employees have not heard about a start date.

    “I’m feeling that the moment they’re able to correctly let us go, they’ll do it again,” said Bergstresser, who lives in Everett.

    Like Murphy, Bergstresser said she’s been in the dark since she was first terminated. Every day she flips from her email to her bank account, to message threads with people she knows trying to piece together what’s happening.

    “That’s kind of what it’s like to be in this position right now. You’re checking everything, waiting for everything,” she said. “It’s all kind of [a game of] telephone.”

    For agencies that have felt the brunt of Trump scrutiny, attacks have been more calculated. Trump signed an executive order Thursday to close the Department of Education, though the department cannot be ended without congressional approval. He’s worked to dismantle USAID, leaving what’s left of it to be folded into the State Department, and says he will appeal the court’s recent decision.

    Rainer Assé, who lives in Brockton, has been on paid administrative leave since Feb. 14. In his role of an agricultural adviser, Assé worked with USAID units in 20 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, working to help agriculture-led development and economic growth since 2018.

    There’s been no instructions since, but he and his colleagues have all been waiting to get laid off under Trump’s Reduction In Force plans. He’s not sure whether the USAID court order will change anything.

    “It’s really hard to get a paycheck when you haven’t done anything,” he said, beginning to cry. “It hurts us so much. I need the money, but it’s such an insult.”

    Fired workers must receive 60 days’ notice and a severance package, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management website. Agencies are also being told to consider other options, such as offering early retirement or buyouts. Assé said he attended a meeting about both options last week.

    Some employees, like Bergstresser, said they’d return to the office immediately, given the opportunity. Others, like Huntoon, said they would not do so under the current administration.

    All are worried about the future of the work they did — from helping people with disabilities get housing accommodations to designing programs that helped women farming in Liberia.

    Huntoon is most proud of a closing she did about a year ago for an affordable housing project in Lowell with 400 units. She’s hesitant to take the drive to go and see it.

    “I feel like I’ll get kind of emotional seeing it and being like, that’s not something I’m going to be able to do again,” she said.

    Reducing workforce in private companies, state and federal government is not uncommon, of course. Paul Craney, executive director of Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for fiscal responsibility in the state government, said it’s not always a clean process.

    “Some of the people right now might feel like they’re caught in the crosshairs, but there’s a bigger plan from the Trump administration,” Craney said. “This is all kind of the messy transition when you’re trying to rearrange bureaucracies.”

    But the scale and speed of these reductions — and now the uncertainty — has disillusioned federal workers.

    “A reduction in force or downsizing — if it’s properly done, people can understand that,” Assé said. “But the way this was done, people are left without life saving medication, food is rotting. The waste of this, of resources and human life … It makes me ashamed.”

    This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.